At the meetings of the board members of the EFTRE board will be offering seminars in the host country of the meeting. These will be free of charge to students, teachers, teacher trainers and academics who may be interested to see how, "things are done" in other country's RE classrooms and seminar halls.

The first of these will be in Torhout in Belgium in October, 2008. There will be three seminars on Friday 10th October. These seminars will be in English.

Paul Hopkins (UK): New technologies for exciting RE - link to seminar website

Paul Hopkins is an independent academic and advisor in the use of technology in education especially in the use of technology in Religious Education. He has written and lectured widely on the topic including books, articles, CD-ROMs and websites. He is recognised as one of the leading figures in the UK on the use of information and communication technology in RE.

In his seminar students will look at some criteria for making judgements about the use of internet resources, at some of the resources that can be found on-line at some of the ways of using technologies more creatively in the teaching of religion and at ways in which the technology can be used in assessment. The seminar will take place in the computer lab for a "hands-on" experience. See his website at www.mmiweb.org.uk

Sonja danner was a teacher of RE, italian and history in secondary schools and now working in a Teacher Training college of Vienna. She is the responsible for the inservice training of teachers of Protestant RE in Austria and also involved in the teachers training. She collaborates also with the competence centre of human rights in the college.

In the workshop participants - teachers and students - will have a glimpse on various methods for a creative handling of material in RE and also methods of handling a challenging group of pupils.

Lesley Prior is a Religious Education (RE) Advisor and Lecturer. For many years, she has offered advice, help and support to RE teachers working in schools in the London Borough of Hounslow. Lesley has also lectured on RE in a number of colleges and universities and is currently the Subject Leader for the Secondary PGCE in RE at The Institute of Education, University of London. She is recognised as one of the key figures in the UK involved in training teachers of RE.

In her seminar, students will learn to identify different types of thinking skills, explore their generic characteristics and evaluate some of the ways in which they are used in RE. There will be an opportunity to participate in some workshop activities.