A few words about the final conference

The final conference of the Ecuisine project was held last November in Bayeux, France.

After 2 days of hard work to have all the modules ready and available on the Moodle platform, the Ecuisine team put on a small show to entertain and inform the guests of the public presentation given on the friday morning at the GRETA agency in Lycée Arcisse de Caumont in Bayeux.

All agreed it was one of the best presentation they had seen !

Below are a few pictures from the event as well as a few words (in French) that we put together to tell the (French) press about what we do.

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Dossier de presse eCuisine :

Le 29 novembre dernier, le GRETA de Bayeux accueillait la conférence finale du projet eCuisine. L'occasion pour les acteurs locaux de l'hôtellerie-restauration et de la formation de mettre découvrir une nouvelle offre de formation combinant apprentissage professionnel, linguistique et culturel dans un format résolument social et moderne.

Apprendre la cuisine à distance

C'est le pari que fait eCuisine en proposant de se former aux contenus du CAP Cuisine à travers des vidéos, des cours et des quiz en ligne : en tout ce sont plus de 120 vidéos (hébergées sur la chaîne YouTube du projet http://www.youtube.com/user/EcuisineTV) illustrant autant de techniques et étapes de base. À chaque vidéo est associé un quiz qui permet de tester sa compréhension. Le tout permet d'acquérir bon nombre des techniques de base du référentiel du CAP cuisine, mais aussi le nom du matériel et des astuces des professionnels (formateurs et enseignants) ayant participés à la réalisation de ce projet.

Un projet à dimension européenne

C'est le GIP-FCIP de Basse-Normandie (Groupe d'Intérêt Public pour la Formation Continue et l'Insertion Professionnelle) qui pilote ce projet européen de Transfert d’Innovation rassemblant 3 centres de formation professionnelle situés à Glasgow en Écosse (Glasglow Clyde College, http://www.glasgowclyde.ac.uk/), à Neuruppin en Allegmagne (Technologie- und Gründerzentrum Ostprignitz-Ruppin, http://www.tgz-neuruppin.de/), à Lodz en Pologne (36°6 Competence Center, http://www.36and6.pl/). Le GIP-FCIP s'appuie sur l'expertise du réseau des GRETA et particulièrement du GRETA de Bayeux qui propose des parcours de formation au CAP cuisine dans d’excellente condition matérielle.

Apprendre les techniques, apprendre la culture.

Pour se préparer à un stage professionnel en Écosse, un étudiant français peut donc suivre un parcours d'apprentissage qui va l'amener à découvrir l'anglais l'allemand ou le polonais à travers 4 recettes typiques. Parmi les ingrédients utilisés, on retrouve le haggis (panse de brebis) en entrée du menu écossais, une soupe de pommes de terre Berlinoise aux Bockwurst (saucisse fumée) ou des betteraves et des pierogy (ravioles farcies au fromage frais) dans les recettes polonaises. La menu français propose lui aussi des produits du terroir : agneau de prés-salés, saint-jacques au beurre de pommeau et tarte normande au Calvados.

Encourager la mobilité des jeunes apprentis en cuisine

eCuisine a pour double objectif de former les apprentis cuisiniers et de les rendre mobile afin d’accroître leurs compétences et leur employabilité. Ainsi, l'offre de formation s'articule autour de 4 menus composés de 4 plats qui vont servir de cadre à un apprentissage technique (réaliser une pâte brisée, laver des légumes) et culturel avec in fine l'objectif de partir à l'étranger pour découvrir le monde professionnel en Version Originale lors d'un stage dans un restaurant.

Vidéo, réseaux sociaux et ludisme

Pour atteindre ses objectifs, l'équipe d'eCuisine fait appel à une vision sociale de l'apprentissage : des vidéos à partager et à commenter, des jeux de mémorisation du vocabulaire qui laisse la possibilité de publier ses performances sur facebook, un réseau social dédié pour rencontrer des étudiants étrangers et continuer à apprendre par les échanges en dehors de la classe.

Un projet qui arrive à maturation

D'ici la fin de l'année, l'ensemble des contenus de formation seront disponibles sur le site ecuisinelearning.eu. En attendant, vous pouvez suivre l'avancée du projet sur la page facebook d'eCuisine : http://www.facebook.com/EcuisineLearning. Les organismes de formation souhaitant s'informer sur la mise à disposition des contenus de formation peuvent écrire à ecuisinelearning @ gmail.com.

How to prepare some eel ? + German Menu

Do you like eels ? The Chinese consider that it is a great stimulant for man's sexual power.

I don't know about the European point of view on the vertues of eel, but it is featured in the German menu. It's the starter dish : Aal in Gelee (Eel in in jelly).

They finished shooting the video and the good news is that it doesn't look like this funny video drawn from a famous French TV cooking show from the 90's !


Maïté aux prises avec une anguille - Archive... par ina

We had a lot of fun watching this video during the seminar and it became a joke among us.

No animal will be tortured in the Ecuisine videos, it's a promise !

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.

 

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 !

Download the seminar report

We made a document to summarize all that's been said during the 2 days of the seminar:

• Presentation of the partners' institutions
• Presentation of the teams who are working on this project
• Presentation of the pilot tool
• Discussions on the vocational curricula
• Discussions on design
• Technical choices
• Role attribution
• Financial guidance

Get it from google docs :

• as a pdf  http://bit.ly/yukQtB
• as a .doc http://bit.ly/reportfrdoc

Quick Seminar Debrief

Last week was our second seminar, an important step for all the partners : an opportunity to get together and find out the practical details about our collaboration the final outcome of the project.

The Scottish partner, Anniesland College, and the German partner, Technologie- und Gründerzentrum Ostprignitz-Ruppin GmbH [DE], came to France in Caen for 2 days. Unfortunately, the polish partners from 36°6CC couldn't come but Mosqi.to, the sub-contractor in charge of the design, brought a Polish touch to this meeting.


Many things were agreed on at this meeting :