Learning Plan of Erasmus Trainee from Italy

Find inspiration from my goals for this unique experience with TrainingMatchmaker.com in Belfast

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I am Valentina and I am a high school student from Italy. This summer I had the opportunity to come here to Belfast for a one-month Erasmus traineeship. This enables me to improve my English, my photography skills and learn something new about digital marketing and tourism. Since I was a child, I have always loved travelling so I seized this opportunity to live for some time in another county and learn about a different culture. I started my traineeship here at TrainingMatchmaker.com by meeting my Trainer, Christine Watson, a Chartered Marketer and the founder of TrainingMatchmaker.com, who also runs Watson & Co. Chartered Marketing. She explained to me the purpose of my traineeship and what I’ll be tasked to do during the month all my tasks immediately seemed awesome but also challenging.

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Photography

In the photographic field, I am supposed to document training events and the places that I am going to visit with photos and videos. I’ll also have the opportunity to improve my photography skills by attending some free #Today at Apple classes at the Apple Store in Victoria Square, Belfast.

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Media Marketing

Part of my traineeship at TrainingMatchmaker.com is also about the use of Social Media Channels to promote business. This includes creating social media content like Facebook posts, Instagram tiles and stories, LinkedIn articles, Tweets and Youtube content, which should be as effective as possible for the business. To help me achieve these goals, I will learn how to use hashtags in the best way and improve my ability in creating outstanding graphics content with free graphic design tool: Canva.

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Learning and development of skills

From our initial meeting, Trainer Christine has encouraged me to attend free courses. For instance, she advises me to try the Disney Pixar online free course called Art of Storytelling, on Khan Academy, which teaches you how to tell a story that can excite the reader or the watcher. Another interesting free learning opportunity is the #TodayatApple‘s course programme at Victoria Square’s Apple Store here in Belfast city. There you can take part in a lot of free classes about different fields such as photography, video making, music composing, coding and graphic art.

Other free online courses that I was suggested to complete are Google Digital Garage and lessons by Harvard and MIT. On 5 July I plan to go to Google EMEA MQ in Dublin with Trainer Christine to attend the Google Breakfast Briefing: Grow with Google – Leveraging YouTube to drive Performance. I’m very excited to go to Dublin because I’ve never been there and in a Google seat as well. It will be an awesome chance to learn something new about Youtube and digital video marketing and I’ll see inside Google too!  

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My itinerary plan

My Trainer Christine works in Tourism so as part of my Erasmus traineeship I’m encouraged to research and plan fully my time here in order to experience as much as possible of what Belfast and Northern Ireland has to offer visitors. These will be some places I’d like to visit during my Erasmus traineeship here in Belfast:

• • Visit Belfast: this information centre will be my starting point where I can find some information about free events and city tours I could take part in Belfast and across all of Northern Ireland;
  • Belfast City Hall: it offers a free 45 minute tour that tells you about the main events of Belfast’s history;
  • Victoria Square and Dome with the beautiful landscape you can see from there;
  • Crumlin Road Gaol: where I will take part in a guided visit around the now disused jail where a lot of people were enclosed during the troubles;
  • Titanic Museum: there I will learn something new about the famous transatlantic ship and its history;
  • Maritime Mile: I will use my mobile to speak via text message to sculptures and buildings – and they will text me back! This is a new thing in Belfast and won a Tourism Award this year;
  • St George’s Market: where you can buy a lot of different things from food to clothes and jewellery;
  • Albert Memorial Clock: Belfast’s answer to Pisa’s leaning tower;
  • International Wall or Peace Wall: is a Wall covered by murals which were painted by catholics and protestants both – many famous people from around the world have signed this wall;
  • Giants Causeway: is a UNESCO World Heritage site, composed by a magnificent, mysterious geological formation on the North East coast of County Antrim;
  • Ulster Museum: one of the most important Museums in Belfast and free to enter;
    • Game of Thrones Exhibition: on one floor of Ulster Museum you can find the 80 meters long Bayeux style tapestry with the whole Game of Thrones Story embroidered onto linen;
  • Queen’s University: inside you can find a free Art Gallery and the statue of Galileo Galilei, outside a beautiful garden with plenty of statues and trees;
  • Belfast Exposed: is a photographic gallery which hosts international exhibitions;
  • The MAC: a cultural hub in the Cathedral quarter;
  • Street Art in the Cathedral Quarter: the Cathedral Quarter is famous for its presence of Street artworks which are available for everyone who walks along its streets;
  • Parks: Botanic Gardens, Ormeau Park
  • Big Fish: is an artwork positioned close to the Lagan river, in the Cathedral Quarter but near the Titanic quarter with the shape of a fish: its scales are made of old pieces of journal newspaper articles painted in blue;
  • The Rise: is an enormous sculpture with two globes, one inside the other;
  • Belfast Central Library and Linen Hall Library: two of a number of libraries in Belfast;
  • Linen Quarter: where I will go into all of the hotel lobby areas and coffee shops to test the speed of their WiFi, the quality of their espresso coffee, check out the drinks prices and the working environment in general, in order to find the best options for TrainingMatchmaker.com Trainers when they are having business meetings or wanting to get some work done when in this part of the city. I will be capturing all of this intelligence in a blog post.

 

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About me

I’m Valentina Ochner, I’m 18 years old and I come from Italy (Trentino – Alto Adige). In Italy, I attend the High School Leonardo da Vinci in Trento. Here I study mainly scientific subjects such as mathematics, physics and computer coding, but also humanistic ones. During my free time, I play different sports like volleyball, canoeing and rowing. Here in Belfast, I found a nice Rowing Club where I can row, on the Lagan river, while I live here. Moreover, I play saxophone and cello respectively in a town band and in a little music school orchestra. One of my passions is also photography and video making. I have a reflex camera from Christmas 2016 when my parents gave me it. I learned by myself reading the instruction booklet of my Nikon D3300. For my 18th birthday, my parents give me an Olympus E-PL9 mirrorless which made amazing videos and photos. It’s perfect to take pictures around the city. My favourite photographic fields are portraits, street photos, sports shots and urban landscapes. Furthermore, I’m very fascinated also by reportage photography and by journalism in general. I love travelling and experiencing new cultures and places, so when my school organised this Erasmus traineeship project I immediately registered for the selection.

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About #weareEurope

The project I am taking part in is an intercultural Erasmus traineeship co-financed by the European Social Fund and the Autonomous Province of Trento within the FSE 2014-2020 project, called #weareEurope, that aims to make the European Union known to high school students. I came here to Belfast with 14 other Italian students in order to improve our English and experience what it like  living in another environment. Every student has their own job in the working field they asked to be in: for me, this is photography and marketing.

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