Entrepreneurship Education in Europe
Report from the 3rd Comenius project meeting in Cham, 6/10 – 11/10 2011
At the beginning of the meeting our guests should get to know the city of Cham. During a guided tour through Cham some references to the home countries of our guests could be made. The famous earl Nikolaus von Luckner got his title of nobility from the Danish king Christian VII. and the Austrian empress Maria Theresia visited Cham during her journey from Prague to Vienna.
Friday the 7th October 2011 was dedicated to our project topic “Entrepreneurship Education in Europe”. Sandro Bauer´s presentation of the “dragon of Furth im Wald” impressed our guests enormously. The worldwide biggest robot walking on four legs is a masterpiece of Bavarian engineering. The following visit of the “Zollner Elektronik AG” demonstrated what a local enterprise is able to achieve: worldwide innovation in many technical areas.
In the afternoon the eagerly awaited presentations of the six participating groups of pupils took place at the “Berufliche Oberschule” in Cham.
The pupils had five months time since the last meeting in Odensee to develop innovative business ideas. With the aid of a power point presentation or a prototype the products or services should be presented to the audience.
The first group of the host pupils from Germany presented a brand new service. Under the trade name “Chamlandmakler” properties of cities and communes in the district of Cham are to be conveyed by an Internet platform. Cities and communes have the big advantage that they can call attention to properties which are not offered by an estate agent, credit institutes or privat persons. Furthermore this platform offers all potential house builders the opportunity to find a suitable property effectively and timesaving with the aid of a filter. It is able to enter data concerning price, size and location of the property, building code and the desired infrastructure. At the push of a button suitable properties are shown which can be visited.
The second group of pupils from Germany wants to act in a totally different business area. Their idea is the development of a padded carrier handle which can be fixed on every kind of bag with a hook-and-loop fastener. The aim is to avoid the cutting of the hands through heavy bags. Furthermore a chip for the supermarket trolley and a carabiner to fix it at the trolley are attached to the handle so that the user has always all necessary items for shopping at hand and that he can´t loose the handle. At first the handle shall be supplied by supermarkets which can add their brand to the handle if they wish.
The two groups of Austrian pupils also presented an idea for a product or a service:
The company “Sun-Car-Solutions” wants to find its way into the market with a sunshade made out of acryl glass with integrated protection against ultraviolet rays. The new sunshade is fixed similarly to conventional sunshades at the driver´s side of the car but it neither constricts the field of view nor is the driver blinded by sunlight during the day or by headlights of forthcoming cars during the night.The cleaning service “Dirtbusters” offers rapid help for young and young at heart revellers by disposing of garbage and chaos after danced through party nights. Themed “You stay in bed and We clean like mad!” the hosts of a party can sleep late after a party while the “Dirtbusters” take charge of recovering the original condition of the accommodation and dispose the garbage in an environmentally friendly way
The innovation of the first Danish group is clever hidden storage room for coins, mobile phones and so on. The idea came to the pupils out of their own experience. Because men often don´t want to carry extra bags for their things they often store them in the pockets of coats, shirts and trousers. Apart from the missing safety in regard of burglary and loss, baggy pockets appear very scruffy. Sewed in pockets at the inside of ties are to bring relief. The storage room is discreet hidden you carry the most important items close to the body and the tie is furthermore produced out of very durable high-tech material. As clients working men as well as young men who wear a tie when going out are to be attained and also fashion-conscious ladies
A simple but effective solution for the clearance of the annoying crumbs in the kitchen was presented by the group “OutCrumbs” from Denmark. Through the insertion of a longish cavity in the kitchen work plate even the smallest crumbs can be removed from the work plate by wiping them into the gap. A pipe which is fixed under the cavity carries the crumbs immediately into the dust bin so that an additional pick up of crumbs which often fall to the ground when cleaning the work plate conventional is not necessary.
On Saturday the 8th October 2011 the next step of project work was scheduled. In the morning Klaus Schedlbauer presented the Comenius participants who appeared at the “Technologie Campus Cham” the steps of the business plan. Now a business plan has to be written for all project or service ideas. To illustrate the process of founding a company, Klaus Schedlbauer invited the founder Herbert Mauerer. His personal experiences impressed the audience. After a short round tour through the “Technologie Campus Cham” the group started a tour to Regensburg.
Divided into two groups the city of Regensburg was discovered by the participants:
The visit of the castle St. Emmeram led to the traces of the nobility of “Thurn und Taxis” who were ennobled to the function of the imperial general postmaster in the 17th century. The visit showed that the social life was always adapted to the royal court in Vienna.
In 1748 sovereign Alexander Ferdinand of Thurn und Taxis was appointed to imperial representative at the perpetual Reichstag in Regensburg. This setting – the old town hall of Regensburg – was the destination of the second group. From 1663 to 1806 the “Ständevertretung” of the Holy Roman Empire hold their meetings there. It was their task to conclude laws or vote for peace or war.
The Sunday trip (9th October 2011) was themed in the sign of the region Bavarian forest. The Comenius participants reached the peak of the Arber – with 1456 metres the highest mountain of the Bavarian forest – by cable car. An unexpected onset of winter bestowed the guests a wonderful winter landscape, which the pupils used at once for a snowball fight.
After a homely lunch in the “Arber Schutzhaus” we went on to the national park Bavarian Forest. This is a small section of the biggest connected central European woody mountains Bavarian forest / Bohemian forest. In the “Haus zur Wildnis” we gazed at fascinating pictures of famous wilderness areas of the world up to the wilderness in the Bavarian forest and the Bohemian forest. A round trip through the animal open air ground brought us to wild horses, cattle, wolves and lynxes.
On Monday the 10th October 2011 the regional capital Munich was on the schedule. The Federal Republic of Germany has 16 Federal States, each State has its own parliament, the parliament of the Free State of Bavaria is called Bavarian “Landtag”. There Mr. Stangl of the CSU State Parliament Fraction welcomed us, informed us about the functionality of the Bavarian parliament and brought us to the plenary hall. There he explained the achievements of the Bavarian State Government and also talked about the specifics of the Bavarian educational system.
If Vienna is the city of the wine, then Munich is the city of the beer. So it was a good idea to have lunch in the Munich “Hofbräuhaus” which was founded by duke Wilhelm V. of Bavaria in 1598. A guided city tour brought our stay in Munich to a round figure. Many participants will still remember the “Königsplatz”, the “Pinakotheken” and the “Stachus”.
The completion of our Comenius meeting in Cham was the common formulation of the new working assignment “compentence focused work assignment”, which is available to all participants as a word document.
The Austrian participants:
Doris Wieshaider, Susanna Weiss, Werner Trnka, Gerlinde Hipfl
Anel Alagic, Arwin Azadi, Ibrahim Cambaz, Yasemin Dugan, Volkan Kaymaz, Jasmina Krdjalic, Danijela Makuljevic, Magy Mansour, Nordin Sabovic, Misel Sandor, Philip Trojan