Christmas Dinner in Scotland

This week, it's all about Christmas traditions on the blog !

Have any idea what it's like to spend Christmas in Poland, Germany, France or Scotland ? Stick with us this week to learn about all the fantastic Christmas traditionnal meals in our countries !

Let's start by wandering up north and enjoy a Christmas in Scotland, an answer the crucial question : do they add haggis to their Christmas pudding or not ?

The Scottish Christmas dinner would generally be a family event that would last for most of the day.

Mince Pies

The meal could consist of a starter of smoked salmon or a hearty soup like cock a leekie.

Smoked Salmon Mousse

This would be followed by a roast bird of turkey or goose or maybe even venison stew or beef .These would be accompanied by roast potatoes, roasted vegetables, stuffing and gravy.

Roast Turkey

Dessert would most likely be trifle, Christmas cake or clootie dumpling (a fruit cake similar to Christmas pudding). This would be followed by shortbread and tablet.

Christmas Pudding

Drinks are generally plentiful especially the famous Scotch whisky.

Ecuisine and IdA in the newspapers !

At the begining of Ecuisine was IdA, a program meant to enable german students from TGz, our partner in Neuruppin, to spend one month working in the kitchen of some top notch french restaurants in Bayeux.

Last month, 8 new students came to France to live the french experience. This experience proved once again to be a life changer for these students and the people that worked with them.

Last week was their "graduation ceremony" and it was very moving to see those kids surrounded by their host families and new co-workers : you could actually grasp how grateful everybody was in every word.

As we mentioned before, their coming was for the Ecuisine project an opportunity to run a few test on some of our products and their graduation ceremony was a great opportunity to say a few words about Ecuisine and explain how this will become an essential tool for the forthcoming editions of the IdA exchange program.

Here is the support we used for that presentation. We made using one of my new favourite tools : Prezi. It's a clever way to spread a message using pictures, text and videos. Nothing too exceptional it seems but just try it and you'll never open Microsoft Powerpoint again.

Ecuisine, apprendre la cuisine et les langues en ligne on Prezi

Testing, testing, 1, 2

We're so happy to have some of our products ready (or almost ready) that we decided we would show it to some students and get their feedback.

A first test was organised in Germany at the begining of September. They gathered a few students that were already involved in the Hoogatrans Project and told them a little bit about our project.

They were able to show them :
The german videos for the soup recipe
The french videos made for the desert recipe
The glossaries made with Engage explaining some of the terms used in the french videos.



The results of this test is on page 12 of the following presentation :

Präsentation 27092012 scotland from Ecuisine

Another test was conducted at the begining of Octobe. This time it was in France and the Guinea pigs were also students involved in the HoogaTrans project : they had been working in France for two weeks, in some of the most prestigious restaurants in Bayeux (Normandie, France).

We decided to test the Language Module that we will use as an introduction to our course. It is mainly about getting them used to french and helping them to find strategies to guess new words from the context.

The testing lasted for a full hour and students were really excited about the project. They also pointed a lot of points we will be working on in the forthcoming days and weeks. This will be very helpful for all partners.

The experiment and the conclusions are detailed in this document (in French) : https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5CuuqC9k_8OYVdGOW5pWjV6R2s

Everybody's talking about it...

Good news from the Polish partners this morning !

Kowesiu.edu.pl is one of the most significant portals on vocational education in Poland and they just published an article on Ecuisine !

Read the full article (in Polish).

The outcome of the Glasgow Seminar

The seminar for the end of WP2 was held last week (27/09->29/09) in Glasgow.

All partners were looking forward to this special event as it is both an opportunity to get together and discuss crucial points of our collaboration.

On the first day, partners took term in presenting the results of their work for WP1.


Download the presentation from Google Docs

A great opportunity to compare approaches and share advices on what-to-do-when-and-how-?
Watching the partners video was a revelation since the pedagogical power of these videos (especially when subtitled) was huge.

The leading partner - GIP-FCIP - then invited all partners for some hand on practice of the first module produced by the french team.

Though all agreed that this was a fantastic tool, many criticisms and concerns arose. The main concern had to do with linguistic help: there were too many words in the glossaries and that involved a lot of image searching, sound recording and creation of the language quizzes, not mentioning all the translating process that would prove to be overwhelming. All in all, this was simply too much work and we needed to find a simpler approach.



This also was a big concern for the french partner and we anticipated such remarks. They then presented an alternative version of the course that didn't involve the creation of complicated wordbanks. By using a tool called Quizlet (as mentioned in this early blog post) we would be able to easily generate wordbanks and quizzes without having to spend too much time on handpicking free and roylaty free pictures or having to record the audio entries. Integration into the course also becomes simpler since it's only about copy-pasting an embed code from the website.

All agreed that this tool was a life saver and decision was unanimous that we would switch to this tool and still offer a few more hand-made and custom-made quizzes to assess basic vocabulary issues and prepare foreign students for an experience abroad.

Next step is the Polish Seminar in April. By then all partners should have 2 recipes fully ready. Everyone is very excited (and a little worried too) about this new step forward.

One last word to mention the formidable hospitality of our Scottish partner, Anniesland College, who had a special surprise for us in store : they prepared the 4 recipes on their menu.

Haggis, Neeps And Tatties With Drambui Cream, the entry course of the Scottish menu

Moreover, they served in the beautiful, cosy and very Scottish setting (Tartan carpet on the floor !!!) of Steven Anderson, one of the Chef involved in the project. For more information on Chef Steven's place, visit Steayban's website)

Tartan carpet on the floor ! And very cosy setting.

 

EcuisineBuddy - The social network

We recently started working with Ingenium, a Caen based compagny that specializes in Elearning.

They've been very helpful and suggested we use a social network since it combines ease of use (for students to find the courses but also for teachers to reach their students) and adds a social layer to the learning experience. Also, we just love the hype, and what is more trendy than having your own social network ^_^ ?

Here's a preview of the website as it will be. We received it this morning.

I don't want to go into details, but it comes with many features that we really like. For example, German students will be able to connect and interact with French students wether it is to practice French or make enquiries before visiting France.

The site will also enable students to publish blog posts or pictures of the recipes they made.

There will be a special section devoted to the chefs who worked on the project where they can publish their details and advertise for their restaurants if they want to.

Of course, the page redirects to our LMS, this blog and a special snakes and ladders boardgame that we will soon tell you about...

From a technical point of view, it is made using Buddypress, a Wordpress offspring.

Getting there ! A few news before Glasgow Seminar

A few news from the project as the 4 partners are about to meet in Glasgow for the WP2 seminar.

Our dear Scottish friends in Anniesland college is still in the process of filming their 4 recipes. They will be hosting the next seminar and I'm sure they'll have plenty of exciting things to show us.

German team has been working hard on its own courses.
Following the model set by the french team, they've been able to finalize all the videos for their first course : the Berliner Kartoffelsuppe, AKA the famous The Potato soup, Berlin style. You'll soon know everything to know about what makes german soups so unique.

The Polish team took a different approach : they decided they would start by shooting all the videos for their 4 recipes. And they did. They sent the files and they are perfectly neat : nice fast pace editing, clear pictures and sounds and yummy recipes featuring pierogis, beetroots, cottage cheese and cabbage... and if you thought there wasn't such a thing as "Polish food", prepare to be amazed !

In France, all videos have been shot, edited and uploaded to the YouTube Channel. All the courses for the first recipe, "the norman pie" is ready and being translated in German in order to be tested by beneficiaries of TGZ OPR GmbH. Those lovely guinea pigs are soon coming to France and they shall be prepared in the best way possible for this experience !

Also, we started working with a compagny based in Caen in order to find a solution for the deployment of the course. We found many ! And I'll tell you all about them... but just not now :-)

Happy cooking from the Ecuisine team !