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Bert van Aggelen

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SoLiLL- Project Group “Bread and Housing”

Bert van Aggelen
Université Tous Ages, Université Tous Ages in Lyon

Personal Testimony

When I learned that at the University at Lyon, they were looking for members to participate in a SoLiLL group and the context of this Socrates-Grundtvig project, I was very interested in getting involved. I had already a little experience of research through being a member of the Group “Accueil des Visiteurs” de Lyon, in the l’UTA. At the same time, in my professional life, I had always been in contact with foreign countries, peoples and cultures, speaking several languages.

At the beginning we were only 8 (eight) members, but this I found during the time not an obstacle but an advantage for communicating between us. Also, due to the different cultures and experiences of the members in the group, it was a challenge to overcome our differences of opinion on some subjects.

Concerning our research subject, after a consultation with the Group “Accueil des Visiteurs de Lyon”, we discussed their proposal among us and started our research on the subject “Montée de la Grande Côte” right away.

I was happy to start the historical research, with contacts which I knew already and was looking for others. The information collected was so overwhelming, that I had a lot of problems to transmit it to my friends as well as to find a way of communicating it to our foreigner partners. Having no knowledge of informatics, computer, the Internet, ..., I found myself obliged to install a second-hand equipment at home and to learn how to use it. With the help of the other members of our group as well as several members of the Internet group of the University, I learned how to process the results of my research and those of the other members of our group, as well as to receive it, to send it and to communicate via e-mail messages between us and with the other international groups. Concerning the international groups, the communication was unfortunately difficult, while no “communication-tool” was available to overcome the language barriers. As the English language was no problem to me, I met the difficulties for some of the other members of our group as well as in the foreign groups. I was also able to use my knowledge of languages to translate documents into the French language, which was appreciated by the other members of our group. A multi-language system was proposed by some members of the Lyon group, which was introduced later (see below).

During the almost regular meetings in our group, it came sometimes to differences of opinion, but they were always treated in a good atmosphere and final decisions were accepted by all. Everybody had the possibility to express his point of view, which was a source of a lot of rich information on computer technology, research and mutual respect.

The project partner meeting in Vicenza was a rich experience for me through meeting students and co-ordinators of the other teams and being able to discuss and exchange our different points of view on the project, the general approach to the project and to find common solutions. This was not always the case, but in spite of the language barrier and the differences in culture (which is in my opinion a good thing) the quality of working pervaded.

Back home, with a lot of new information, and with the help of my friends, I tried to realise the presentation of our research results and to overcome my lack of knowledge in using computer, which was not always without difficulties. Nevertheless, with the help of the other members, I was and I am still surprised, that at the end, my first attempts became the basis of the final presentation of Lyon’s research, which I am very proud of.