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Starting with lots of inspiration!

WISA - Erasmus+WISA 1st Transnational Meeting, @ Makrychori, Larissa, Greece

The Makrychori High School had the pleasure to host the 1st teaching and learning event of the WISA Erasmus+ project, during 11-16 February 2019.

On the project objectives, all the planned activities aimed at fostering the democratic attitude in digital media: to strengthen the EU future citizens’ skills such as critical thinking, wise information management, trace of propaganda, marginalization of hate speech, the ability of teenagers to create and share online content by themselves, ultimately to produce free speech respecting society.

From Day One, the delegations of 3 partner schools, Biskupske Gymnazium a Materska Skola (Brno, Czech  Republic), Colegiul Dobrogean “Spiru Haret” (Tulcea, Romania) and Manavgat IMKB Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi (Antalya, Turkey), were happily surprised and enjoyed Greek hospitality as they experienced a welcome event organized by the whole school community. Parents offered typical Greek cuisine treats while a number of Greek students performed traditional dance and eventually invited the willing guests in the performance.

Teaching and learning activities

International groups was the working formula, thus during their weekly stay, 31 foreign students worked in mixed groups together with 10 students of the Greek delegation. With great enthusiasm, they participated in 4 interactive workshops on the following subjects.

Day 1 —> Story Telling Workshop by Vasiliki Maltasoglou, the Balkans Beyond Borders organiasation

All 40 students explored the magical world of making their own stories tackling topics from their contemporaneity. They discovered what makes a good story, how to deliver the message of their idea, follow the story line and how to build their hero.

Their involvement was very fruitful and they worked perfectly in multinational groups creating their own stories and presenting them.

10 stories were produced and uncountable inspiration!

In the evening, the WISA group appreciated a special program of short films related to the content of the workshop. The screening took place at the Municipal Art Gallery of Larisa with selected films from Balkans Beyond Borders Short Film Festival

Day 2 —> Filmmaking workshop by Kostas Vagias, the Balkans Beyond Borders organization

All 40 students explored all preparation process before they go to film their own film and how to visualize the story by discovering some technical aspects of filmmaking. The students visualized their stories in paper and they presented their ideas to their fellows explaining the reason of choosing specific camera angles and shooting types.

Through the workshop, students had the opportunity to imagine, create, think more critically and deeply in their reality and cooperate.

Day 3 —> Multimodal texts workshop, A learning scenario about literature with ICT, by Zeta Tsigka

A group of 22 students met the sense of hyper-literary literature and a project-based learning approach. The aim of the activities given were students to realize that

  • the reader in digital media is a co-producer of meaning, and that
  • the use of digital texts is not static and permanent anymore.
  • fluidity and the reader's active interaction are required.

Participants, split in international groups, worked upon abstracts from the well-known Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupery. Sharing in class the atmosphere of creativity and tenderness of the book, they transformed the regular text into hypertext expressing the influence of the original text to them. In the end, students presented their work and reflected on the power of multimedia and interactivity. The scenario is based on «Υπερκείμενο και Λογοτεχνία. Οι απρόβλεπτες διαδρομές του Μικρού Πρίγκιπα» by Ανδρέας Γαλανός, from Proteas repository.

Day 3 and 4 -> Hands on the internet of things workshop, Design and implement an IoT application, by Rizos Chaliampalias                           

A group of 18 students worked in a project-based and collaborative learning educational approach, the objectives were

  • to connect the real world and prior experience with UMI technologies,
  • • to explore the possibilities of developing new applications using IoT with the aim to improve everyday life
  • • to recognize the role of the IoT in future life (pros and cons)
  • • to envision a future professional career in IoT (and UMI in general) areas

Students had lecturing and presentations in the beginning and then worked in international groups. They used videos, discussion, searching in the Internet, edited in a selected platform. They experienced arguments’ formulation and opinions’ exchange, problem solving and hands on activities. Full of energy and contentment, the groups presented their functioning device.

Day 4 -> Wikipedia workshop, by Manos Kefalas

A group of 22 students learnt how Wikipedia, a resource they often use, is developed. They had information about the fundamental idea of the digital, free encyclopedia, written collaboratively by the people who use it. The type of website –wiki- is designed to make collaboration easy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction) and participants of the workshop acquired knowledge about  

  • the Open Resources
  • democratic attitude on the Internet
  • Wikipedia editing forms
  • basic rules for attributors

Students were willing to collect information about 3 Greek traditional dance from books and the web. Highly energetic, they also performed 2 dances, took pictures and video to enrich their articles.

Cultural events

The coordinator of the WISA 1st Transnational Meeting organized several educational visits and tours in the weekly program. The guest teachers and students became more acquainted to the Greek civilization and comprehend the local culture of Thessaly through:

  • evening experiential activity using pieces of Art, at the Municipal Art Gallery of Larisa, by Valentini Margaritopoulou, Antonis Morras, Christos Tsokanos
    Art Gallery
  • evening educational project about the historical newspaper “Eleftheria”, at the Cultural Museum of Larissa, by Ms Statira and Ms Stergioula
    Eleftheria
  • evening guided tour at Diachroniko Museum and the historical center of Larissa, by Giorgos Tsilofytis
    Diachroniko
  • evening cultural visit to Ampelakia, the historical village of the Muncipality of Tempi
    Tempi
  • daily cultural trip to Meteora, the UNESCO cultural heritage monument
    Meteora

During the cultural activities, teachers and students of the partner schools had the chance to exchange lots of information about each other cultures, history and contemporary life. They discovered many differences and more than expected similarities.

All participant students took numbers of photos during the cultural events, to submit at a photo contest and a WISA photo album, which is planned as a post mobility activity.

The guest delegations left Greece with great memories, knowledge and experience. The feedback from Greek students was also very warm and enthusiastic.

All members of the WISA project are expecting the next Transnational Meeting with great joy. YES, we make new bonds between the EU J