We are happy to announce the start of activities of our LOLA news. Here, you will find all kinds of information on activities that are going on and new material available. Please feel free to comment and ask questions.
Enjoy!

LOLA was present at the final ConsumerCitizenshipNetwork Conference (25&26th of March, Berlin). The conference was the opportunity to meet all the LOLA Ambassadors and share ideas and opinions about the Future of LOLA. Berlin Conference has also be chosen to present the official LOLA Brochure (has shown in the picture). Click here for more information about the brochure.

A LOLA ambassador workshop was held in Tallinn University the past 7th of May back to back with the Consumer Citizenship Network conference, Assessing information, in order to organize activities and pursue the LOLA implementation process. A busy program has permited to share our views about LOLA and it’s future. We thank all that participated and helped!!!

Also in Portugal during the same days, João Fernandes and Alcina Dourado held a conference about LOLA. please visit the portuguese blog for more information and pictures on this.

For the sustainability week of the European school in Brussels, the LOLA team decided to participate in a small implementation introducing sustainable lifestyles to the secondary school students.

The morning was divided into 4 parts, in which the children were exposed to problems, cases, guidelines. you can download the .ppt of the day and program here (available ONLY IN FRENCH).

Also, the paper is available for reading and comments here (go to site).

Nieves Alvarez from the ECONS Network is now our ambassador from Spain. Congratulations and welcome to the ECONS team!

Also, Alcina Dourado from the Escola Superior de Educação - ESE, Campus do Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal - IPS mounted a LOLA expo with the help of João, her ambassador. The exhibition was held during 03-21 March in order to include the 14 of March, international day of the consumers rights. Afterwards they are going to adapt the LOLA exhibition to an itinerant exhibition and make it available to everyone that can be interested in request it. They are now starting to promote it by using the school website, poster, press release, internal television, invitation.. wow!
some more news on this here.

All these Activities from Portugal were posted on the portuguese LOLA regional site and below in this mail you can find more specific information.

From Portugal’s side as well, the LOLA Project has been accepted and promoted by The Ministry of Education of Portugal (see http://www.crie.min-edu.pt/ )

There is a section on the LOLA home page were you can access all regional blogs. We remind you to mail (to each specific address that was sent to you) some information about yourselves so interested teachers may contact you.

Secondly, the next big event will be the LOLA One day seminar in TALLIN the 7th May and we are expecting your official replies. Thank you Leena and Irena for your confirmation of assistance. Shortly there will be more news about the development of that day.

Please don’t be shy to share any more event’s or news that you might have.
Happy Easter from Belgium!

As suggested in our garden lunch meeting in Athens, this is our very first Ambassador monthly mail in order to exchange questions, suggestions, information about implementations and other subjects that you might like to discuss.

Some small news: we have posted your names and countries in our LOLA page to give you some more recognition about your roles in this process and the possibility to contact you through us.

Joining our Ambassador team are Marino Melissano & Bianca Friundi from Bolzano, Italy and Irena Zaleskiene from Lithuania. Welcome! The ambassador kits should be on their way next week.

Regarding the implementation process, once you have confirmed the participation of teachers, we kindly ask you to please let us know when do they’ll start the implementation and also the basic info of the teacher’s name, school and age group that they intend to teach.

Also, please if you have translated any material of the teaching pack or others send it to us.

We are very happy to introduce to you our 8 Ambassadors which will be helping throughout the Implementation Process of the LOLA Project. Their role is to support the activities of the teachers and classes who will be willing to implement the LOLA process.

If you would like to contact them to let them know that you would like to participate or that you have already used LOLA, write to us to lolaXsolutioning-desing.net (please substitute the X with @) .

Our current LOLA Ambassadors are:

FINLAND_ Leena Graeffe_ University of Helsinki
FRANCE_ Christophe Bernes_National Consumers Institute
IRELAND _ Miriam O’Donoghue_Curriculum Development Unit (CDUEC), with the help of Mella Cusack and Conor Harrison.
ITALY_ Marino Melissano & Bianca Friundi_ Centro Tecnico Regionale di Ricerca sul Consumo Europeo - CTRRCE Bolzano
LATVIA_Vija Dislere _The Latvian Association of the Teachers of Practical Subject (PMPMA)
LITHUANIA_ IrenaZaleskiene_ Vilnius Pedagogical University
PORTUGAL_ João Jarim Fernandes_ Politechnical Institute of Beja – Educative Superior School of Beja and Alcina Dourado_Setubal Higher School of Education
SPAIN_Nieves Alvarez Martin_ Escuela Europea de Consumidores (ECONS)

The Next step of LOLA project right now is to promote implementation in secondary schools in and also outside Europe… For that, we need a group of LOLA ambassadors that volunteer to relay the project in their own countries!

What does being an ambassador mean exactly?
We call it Ambassador for both the talent of promotion it requires and the honorific status it confers…
The first task of the LOLA Ambassador’s role is to communicate and disseminate the project: how about organizing a presentation of LOLA at a national teacher conference, distributing brochures or setting-up a small LOLA exhibition (with our help of course)

You will get a lot of questions about this project…and some teachers/headmasters will probably be interested to take part. Your second task is to support them in this participation, show them the LOLA website where they can subscribe and download the Teaching Pack…

Last but not least, your role will be to report back on the participation of the different schools in your country to the LOLA team (to improve and fine tune the Teaching Pack) and at the final CCN conference in 2009 (maybe presenting a paper or taking part to the activities of the LOLA task group)…

To support the LOLA Ambassadors themselves in their roles and tasks, an Ambassador Kit has been prepared!!! is the lovely package that you see in the animation….
It will include a checklist of activities, a set of LOLA brochures, a set of A4 prints to install a small LOLA exhibition, a complete teaching pack, a Participation Certificate for each school volunteering, some reporting formats and all material in digital form on a CD .

If you have any doubts or questions, please do send us a mail to lolaXX@solutiong-design.netXX
(please remove the X’s)

This process is coordinated by the CCN and SEP; and it is also supported by a team of voluntary LOLA Ambassadors (who are active members of CCN). For ensuring direct and clear communication paths with participating schools around the world, the role of ambassador per region or country simplifies relations and feedback to the project. Each ambassador will have certain duties of disseminating information and reporting a For that aspect, an Ambassador Franchising Kit has been created in order to facilitate and prepare their responsibilities. The recruitment of ambassadors process has already begun.

_Click here to download

LOLA Teaching Pack & Reporter Book
The LOLA exhibition at CCN conference in Hamar, Norway had presented the progress of the LOLA pilot project with the state of the art of the Teaching Pack, the achievements of the schools involved and the perspectives of follow-up…
This first section showed the Teaching Pack in details, the step-by-step didactic process and the corresponding tasks in the kids Reporter Book.

LOLA pilot project in-progress…
5 European teaching training schools involves in the experimentation and discussion of the LOLA Teaching Pack. The second section of the exhibition presented the progress achieved yet by each of groups of students and teachers: translations of the Teaching Pack in original language, presentation of the case of social innovation collected, feedback on the didactic benefit of the process and adaptation needed…

LOLA promising cases…
During the LOLA experimentation process, the students involved and their teachers collected a series of cases of promising initiatives in terms of sustainability. The third section presented all the results achieved yet in the form of a text summary and relative patchworks of photographs.

LOLA discussion & follow-up…
The LOLA pilot project is half-way now. The purpose of this presentation and the LOLA workshop here during the CCN Hamar conference was to discuss and complete the material gathered.
The last section of the exhibition invited the visitors to take a pencil, a post-it and add ideas, comments, reactions and suggestions for the follow-up of the project…

Different European teaching training schools were involved in the experimentation and discussion of the LOLA Teaching Pack. Separate blogs were open to collect the work of the students in each school and clicking here you can access them:

_HIHM, Hedmark University College, Hamar, Norway
_IPBEJA, Politechnical School of teacher education, Beja, Portugal
_KATHO-RENO, Teacher training college, Torhout, Belgium
_VPU, Vilnius Pedagogical University, Vilnius, Lithuania
_Manuel Gutierrez Aragon School, Viernoles, Cantabria, Spain