So… one year on and this is what happened:

Some students of Italian, having heard from previous year students about the italian trip in Jesi start again the “drilling”….. : “why are we not organising a trip this year ???”

Unfortunately we did not get organised in time to arrange a trip during the Easter holidays but students did not give up and suggested June …. so comes June and we are off again to il Bel Paese!

From 17th to 24th June 2014 our second trip to Jesi took place with another bunch of enthusiastic students, see below!

University of Southampton students in Piazza Federico II in Jesi: saltiamo dalla gioia!

WHAT IS NEW IN 2014:

Given students enthusiasm for this type of activities and having witnessed how they loved engaging with Italy and italians, I thought i would gear their positive energy to create something useful for them to showcase, as well as for other students to use as learning resources.

Thanks to the Southampton Opportunity Enhancement fund I managed to secure some funding which in part helped towards costs for students travel and accommodation.

In exchange, students would produce resources about their experiences. The result has been overwhelming and students used all sorts of technologies  and applications to create versatile resources that could be uploaded on the web and easily shared as open resources.

The rationale behind students as producers of resources is the following :

Students will develop their academic skills by engaging actively with real life situation where they will be asked to test their learning and put into practice their knowledge of Italian language, culture and way of living. This will be particularly satisfying and rewarding as they will be able to realise the value of accelerated learning in combination with their knowledge of other languages.

In terms of research, they will be investigating aspects related to the local area, its territory and economy, hence integrating history, art, architecture, archaeology etc.

Students’ personal interests will also take a lead on what they will be researching about. This will facilitate students’ engagement and commitment.

The opportunity for students to participate to the Italian field trip, would not only allow them to improve their language and cultural knowledge, but at the same time expand the possibilities for cross-curricular activities involving history, art, architecture, archaeology etc. enhancing students experience and allowing them to take a holistic approach.

The presence of an academic during the field trip will give the opportunity to implement close collaboration and team work between student and academic, hence providing an out of curriculum dimension to the learning experience.

Finally, by producing resources, students will develop their Digital Literacy skills which are  highly valuable in todays’ job market.

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LA NOSTRA ASSISTENTE

The funding we secured for the trip also allowed us to have an “assistant” who would liaise with academic in charge and would help out during the trip.
We had very good applications and I wish i could have taken all those who applied with us on the trip, but in the end Cassandra Fuente’s application was considered to be outstanding and she was chosen as our FIRST ASSISTANT on the italian field trip.

Cassandra’s wonderful application is an outstanding example of how language students can apply for jobs in target language without any fear: she sounds confident, her Italian is excellent and the content of her application is spot on in terms of what she included…. certainly very convincing, in fact she got the job!!! Listen to how she “enchanted” us >