P y h ä j o e n K u u l u m i s e t – 17. 1 . 2 0 15 sivu 5

When the teachers first told us about the AVITAE project, we thought we would have never been chosen for such a huge challenge. On October 5th, when we discovered we were one of the seven schools taking part into it, the surprise on our face was beyond desc-ription and we couldn’t stop smiling.

AVITAE, “A Virtual Intertextu-al Tour across Ancient Entrep-reneurship”, aims to increase our awareness of our common European roots, focusing on the birth and development of the European entrepreneurial spirit.

Thanks to the European Uni-on that gave us this opportu-nity, everyone in our class is

really excited and happy to be in the program, especially be-cause of the meeting of many other students and of all the travelling. In fact the partici-pating schools are situated all over Europe: Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Slovakia and Spain. One of the best as-pects of the project is that we will be sharing peer to peer our

different cultures and lifestyles, getting to learn more about our common roots. All of us will work side by side, acquiring a more direct knowledge of our partners’ enterprise culture, and we will join many activities, such as producing texts, short films, virtual maps and trying to build our own business in the final year.

Confident that’s going to be a great experience, we’re real-ly looking forward to the first exchange, in January, which will give us the opportunity to per-sonally introduce ourselves to each others in Denmark.

Class IB, Liceo Classico N.Machiavelli, AVITAE Coor-dinating School, ITALY.

The project coordinator Delia Tocchini is from the city of Luc-ca, in the region of Tuscany, in Italy. Her school is called I.S.I.N Machiavelli. As the coordinator it is her task to tell everyone how to handle different tasks and work with stakeholders. She also gives advice, tasks and reminds everyone of the dead-

lines of the tasks. In addition, the coordinator encourages other teachers and builds their confidence. She also has to sol-ve all kinds of problems. She is the “boss” of the group.

The teachers hope that the project will help the students gain confidence and become more open-minded, tolerant

and kind. It is important that we learn how to solve problems, be flexible and accept diversity.

Delia Tocchini also explains the concept of peer-to-peer education. It means that stu-dents teach each other new things that they themselves have learned from other stu-dents from other countries.

This way not only those stu-dents who went abroad for a meeting learn new things from other countries.

Tocchini says she herself has already learned leadership, which is an important skill for a project coordinator. “I’ve also learned patience, tolerance and perseverance.”

According to her, an ideal student for an AVITAE project meeting is curious, bold and tolerant. The most important thing, however, is to be your-self.

Here we’ve got our pre-sentation about the Finnish school of Pyhajoki, made on the basis of our Finnish part-ners’ answers.

A typical school day in Fin-land starts at 8:30 with a morning round-up; after, the seventyfive minutes lessons follow. During the class, after teacher’s explanation, students do exercises on their own regarding the is-sue which has been taught by the professor. Besides paper and books, they also use Ipads in order to take

notes and read schoolbooks in a digital version. At last, with them, they can play videogames during break (lucky them!).

Their school offers many types of other activities: newspaper making and layout, student-produced fairs once per year, study-trips abroad sponsored with the money collected with fairs, football tournaments and other kind of sport com-petitions and of course, last but not least, ERASMUS+.

Did you know that they

produce the only newspa-per in the whole town? It is completely made by stu-dents except for printing and delivering. According to them, it isn’t just funny, but first of all is very useful: wri-ting gives credit and trains them for a likely job career. New “journalists” , at the beginning of their career, are helped by their expert seni-or partners.

A very important event that the school offers is the “school prom”. For this event, participants wear old,

traditional clothes and pre-pare a dance choreography (guess what? It gives cre-dit!).

However, speaking about AVITAE project, our Europe-an friends can’t wait to get internationally, new friends and learn things from ot-her cultures, just like we do! We’re sure that it will be an awesome experience!

The team of the Italian School

A.V.I.T.A.EA Virtual Intertextual Tour Across

Ancient EntrepreneurshipAN INTERVIEW WITH PROJECT

COORDINATOR DELIA TOCCHINI

WHAT IS AVITAE?

The following articles are presentations of participating schools,written by students from the other schools.

P y h ä j o e n K u u l u m i s e t – 17. 1 . 2 0 15sivu 6

A modern high school with a media profile.

The Ørestad Gymnasi-um is located in Ørestad, nearby the capital of Den-mark. It specializes in study programmes within natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities. The biggest difference between the Øre-stad Gymnasium and other high schools in Denmark is that the school is very open and the school building is only 7-8 years old.

Studies are free and take three years. Students have compulsory subjects but they choose their own stu-dy programme too. The compulsory subjects are Danish, English, 2nd foreign language - French, German, Spanish or Chinese, history, math, religion etc. Students

choose to their compulsory artistic subject: either visual arts, drama, media or music. The three-year- programme consists of a basic program-me (first six months) and a specialized study program-me (the rest 2,5 years) The-re are thirteen specialized study programmes at the Ørestad Gymnasium. The Study programmes focus on media, languages, journalism and physical education. Stu-dents can choose for examp-le a Natural Science study programme (Biotechnology, Science or Health), a Langu-age study programme (Me-dia+, Journalism, Tv-jour-nalism or China) or a Social Science study programme (Innovation, Globalisation Studies, Culture and Religi-on or Psychology) During the first school year - until

December - you can change your study programme. But after the first year it would be too difficult to change.

Students are in the same class during all three yea-rs but some subjects are taught across classes. The school’s aim is testing new ways of teaching. They use a lot of modern technology. Students haven’t got books, they bring their own laptops to school every day. Many of the classes use iPads too. All teaching materials are digital in first-year classes.

A regular school day starts at 8am and ends at 4pm. In one school day there are max. four different subjects. One lesson is 100 minutes long. Between each lesson there are short breaks. The longest break is lunch break, it is 40 minutes long.

In the whole school there are 1200 students - about 20 to 32 per class. It va-ries how long it takes the students to get the school . Some can get to the school in less than ten minutes, some need to use the train and other public transports and it can take 45 minutes.

During the school year stu-dents have classic vacations. The Christmas break is three weeks long, summer vacati-on is six to seven weeks long, the fall break and the easter break are one week long. Also Fridays often are free.

By Raija Piilola, Timo Suni and Riikka Kangas, Finland.

If you are a Spanish tee-nager, you can pursue your ambitions at a public (free of charge), private or a mixed type of school. Our friends from ....... Tenerife attend the first type. Most of them continue at a university, be-cause without a degree they would end up as cleaners, waiters, or shop assistants, which are pretty tough jobs for graduates, who have to drill their brains with Spa-nish, Maths, Biology, Physics and Chemistry, Geography, English, P.E, Technology, and some optional subjects: French/ Italian, Music/Clas-sical Studies/ Arts, Religion/Alternative.

Their secondary education starts when they are twelve and it lasts for 4 years, but they still can continue in the bachelor s degree where they deal with Greek, Latin, Art History, for Humanities, Electronics, Technology, Drawing (for Technologies), Biology, Chemistry, Maths for Sciences. Students can

also opt for psychology, economics, ICT, Italian, French… They can enjoy these subjects for 2 years and if they succesfully finish this stage, the gates to a university study, vocational courses, or the first serious job opportunities are widely open.

As to the ordinary school days, the students are not allowed to use the popular technological devices and if they want to find some information, they can use just school computers with free internet access. But the computers are quite old, so you definitely need a great load of patience if you want to work on them. Perhaps, it is better when you visit the school library and check the old books. If hunger knocks on the door, they can have a snack, but they have lunches at home after finishing the classes.

There are 92 teachers who show the life-paths to their pupils, so it is not suprising

that for every subject there is a different teacher. Many of them teach languages, because the language offer is quite wide: Spanish, Eng-lish (B2 level), Italian (B1), French (B1) and even Latin and Greek. They evaluate students with marks that range from 1 to 10 and if you are given a 5 and then onwards, you have passed.

Those who are fed up with learning and doing home-work love the school holi-days: more than two weeks

at Christmas time, one week during the carnival season in February, one week at Easter and of course the long Sum-mer holidays.

The school, founded in 1848, is a living museum, mixing the omnipresent his-tory with the living present embodied in various activi-ties which the students take part in: CLIL program where some subjects are taught in English, BACHIBAC project (French and Spanish Bacca-laureate), international lego

robotics contest (for more info: https://fllcuriosity.wor-dpress.com), exchanges to Florence, Brussels, France, and other countries (USA just for those whose parents have well paid jobs).

If you want to become a doctor, or an engineer, you really need to work hard and especially in the last year students fight for the best possible marks. If you suc-cessfully pass all those diffi-cult, but interesting subjects (some of them taught bilin-gually), you have a reason to celebrate and take part in a graduation party where you can appear in your newest suite, or dress and then dan-ce all night long.

Sounds interesting? For us definitely yes and we are looking forward to seeing this school and meeting our Spanish friends there.

Slovak students Michal, Sara, Lenka

A.V.I.T.A.E

P y h ä j o e n K u u l u m i s e t – 17. 1 . 2 0 15 sivu 7

Our task for the first editi-on of the AVITAE newspaper was to interview the Slova-kian students about their education system and their school. Here is what they told us:

To begin with, their com-pulsory school attendan-ce, by law, is for 10 years. In Slovakia, generally, the school year begins on 2nd September and ends in the end of June. But in their school the year ends in the beginning of June because then they have compulsory summer practice in different hotels or restaurants.

The school functions as follows: first lesson starts at 7:45am and every period lasts 45 minutes. In average they have seven periods per day, but sometimes less (5) or more (10).

The subjects which they have are: some special like Economy, Technology of serving, Administration and Correspondence, Hotel and Gastronomy management, Accounting, Marketing, Law, Technology of preparing dishes and of course Math, Geography, Informatics, History, PE, Ecology and lastly Slovak, English, French and German. As extra they

have a Travel and Tourism business program. Between the lessons both teachers and students change class-rooms and it depends on a schedule system that their principalship makes for them. In some subjects they wear uniforms but normally not. They usually spend 1 or 2 hours per day doing ho-mework but this is individual.

In order to pass a class, they must pass all their sub-jects (minimum mark 5) and they also take a final leaving exam in their last year of studies. If they don’t pass it, they won’t take a certifi-cate. However, their school provides them with a much better chance to get a job rather than they would have without the certificate. They

are treated as specialists skilled in a certain branch of business. If they want to study in a university after finishing their school, they should have the necessary grades on their report card, the graduation exam and then the number of points they get by the entrance exams.

Their school is equipped with 3 computer labs, a ca-feteria, a gym, kitchens for the cooking lesson and spe-cialized classes for Techno-logy of serving. However, these facilities are not avai-lable after school. Despite having internet connection, they are not all able to have access to it as the signal is weak. There are no free me-als, but they can buy their

lunches for a discounted price.

As regards transportation, most of the students get to school by public transport-buses or trams. But students who live away from Bratisla-va come by train.

Asking them about extra curriculum activities, they take part in Bartender, Som-melier, Coffee and Carving competitions and in Danu-bius Gastro which is an in-ternational competition for preparing special meals. In fact, last year they won the 1st prize. They also run a charity twice a year, fund-raising campaigns and a Cof-fee Cup competition. Trips are organized to different regions of Slovakia, Vienna, Prague and excursions to hotels and spas. In summer, their school offers them practice abroad, usually Ita-ly, Greece and Japan.

There aren’t any awards or scholarships for the best students.

The relationship between students and teachers de-pends on the teachers, but mostly they get on well. Despite a few minorities in school, there are rare pheno-mena of bullying or violence. In cases of misbehaviour, the

cooperation of parents with teachers and the help of the school psychologists usu-ally solve the problems....If not students are sent to the headmistress.

Considering the educatio-nal system, the majority of students are not satisfied. They would like to change the whole system as it does not take them as individuals. They claim that they should choose subjects that they want to learn and are more interested in. Finally, if they had the chance to go to a school in a foreign country, they would choose Den-mark because their school is for free and their educa-tional system is one of the best in Europe. But for many students the USA is also an option. They have many students who study in the Czech Republic or Austria.

This school sounds very interesting. So we are really looking forward to getting there to meet the people and get our own idea of how things work.

From the team of the Greek school, Stavros Kolios, Iliana Georgou, Alexantra Oikono-mou

N. Machiavelli High School is located in the centre of the city of Lucca, Italy. The school is named after Ma-chiavelli who was an Italian historian, politician, diplo-mat and philosopher.

N. Machiavelli is the oldest school in Lucca and one of the most ancient in the who-le of Italy. Its building is of the Renaissance period. In 1819, it was called ‘Real Collegio’ and it was opera-ted both as a university and a high-school. In fact, the school hosts a museum in its premises.

At the N. Machiavelli High School there are about 300 pupils and 30 teachers. There are also 700 students studying in a different buil-ding and following different

fields of study. The school does not participate in any regional or national sports championships, but once a year a school tourna-ment takes place where all the classes get to compete against each other in a varie-ty of sports.

The school year starts around the 10th of Sep-tember every year and the ends round the 9th of June. The dates vary slightly each year. There are several bank holidays such as the 1st of November, celebrating the « All Hallows Day », the Christmas Holidays lasting from the 23rd of December until the 7th of January, as well as, the Easter Holidays in March and April. Howe-ver, there are also national

celebrations such as April 25th, Liberation Day, May 1st, Worker’s Day, and the June 2nd, Republic Day.

At N. Machiavelli a spe-cific schedule is followed for the first two years and in the third year there is a small change. During the first two years school starts at 8 o’clock in the morning and ends at 12 o’clock or at 1, depending on the day. In year three, school ends at 1 o’clock or at 2 o’clock, again depending on the day.

A typical school day at N. Machiavelli begins at 8 o’ clock in the morning. Stu-dents are taught for four, five, or even six periods, based on the day’s schedu-le. At the school you will not find a canteen, but some

vending machines where snacks and drinks can be purchased the breaks. Bre-aks are typically very short, thus students do not really get a chance to chill out with their friend.

Italian English, Latin and Ancient Greek are the lan-guages taught in the school. As far as a student’s indivi-dual choice of subjects is concerned, a student gets to choose at the age of 13 which kind of career they would like to follow, so that they can attend a school which offers the relevant subjects.

There is no formal uniform at the school but the dress code requires that the stu-dents are appropriately dressed. Furthermore, the

use of any electronic devi-ces, such as mobile phones, is prohibited, unless teach-ers ask for them to be used as part of a project. If a stu-dent is caught using a mo-bile phone during a lesson, teachers have the right to keep the device.

Apart from a project orga-nized by the European Youth Parliament, students atten-ding the school do not have many opportunities to inte-ract and work with foreign students. Therefore, they are really looking forward to being a part of AVITAE and getting to know their peers from around Europe!

From the tema of Cyprus school.

A.V.I.T.A.E

P y h ä j o e n K u u l u m i s e t – 17. 1 . 2 0 15sivu 8

The Greek school sys-tem consists of three edu-cational levels, whereof primary school (Dimoti-ko) and lower secondary school(Gymnasio) are com-pulsory. Upper secondary education is not compul-sory, and the students can choose between two types of schools, the Eniaio Lykeio or a Technical school.

The third educational level is divided into the univer-sity sector and the higher technological sector. Ad-missions to these are based on the scores of the exams taken in the third year of Ly-keio.

The 2nd Geniko Lykeio of Arta, also known as 2ο Γενικό Λύκειο Άρτας, is a high school with approx. 300 students and an avera-ge of 25 students per class. The school is located in the city Arta in the northwes-tern part of Greece. The fa-cilities include a large school yard for the students to spend their free time or eat snacks in the 6 breaks du-

ring the day. The students attend classes five days a week from 8:10-13:45. They have seven lessons a day of 45 minutes each. In their second and third year, they get to specialize more on different subjects, which will determine whether they go in a scientific or humanistic direction.

The school is quite tra-ditional when it comes to learning methods. Most of the classes are taught through a lecture given by the teacher, whereafter dis-cussion may follow from the students’ side. Although the students feel very close to their teachers, they are still to address the teachers in a polite plural form. This may seem old fashioned to some of us in the Nordic countries, but the students at the 2nd Geniko Lykeio of Arta stress that the student-teacher relationship is built on respectful friendship. The students respect each other and through this they earn the respect of their te-

achers as well. Most of the homework is supposed to be learned by heart, as the tests during the 1st term are spread out at random, and any written assignments are graded.

The school has a compu-ter room, since the students don’t bring computers to school or use other electro-nic devices like Smart Boards during their lessons. If extra things such as CD players or laptops are needed, the te-achers will bring these them-selves. The students have admitted that they are so-metimes distracted by social media during the lessons, though, since the school offers free wifi. But they will get in trouble if they ever get caught in the act!

The students are not offe-red a lot of extracurricular activities, but the school does have sports teams who are doing pretty well. They participate in games against other schools in and out of town. The teams have won a lot of regional champion-

ships, in fact they even won the national championship once. Apart from sports, they also participate in na-tional math, physics and ast-ronomy competitions - even European ones, like Euros-cola.

Exams are taken after eve-ry spring term, to determi-ne whether or not you may advance to the next year. The students themselves describe the school as “very difficult”, especially when it comes to the final exams, the entrance ticket to the good universities, which are ta-ken in May/June of the final year in Lykeio. The students in the Lykeio are graded on a scale from 1-20, with 9.5 and above being the passing score.

Many of the students feel that the school system is too demanding on them, and this, along with adopting technology in their everyday lessons and modernizing the facilities at school, are some of the things the students at the 2nd Geniko Lykeio of

Arta would like to change. From a Dane’s perspecti-

ve, the 2nd Geniko Lykeio of Arta seems like a well-functioning and harmonious school, judging by the qua-lity of the teaching, which for the size of the town is considered “distinguished” by the students. We especi-ally enjoy that they express such a joy for spending time together and sharing with each other. It is in some ways very different from our own school, especially in regard to the parties, of which they only have one a year in con-nection to the carnival, and alcohol is absolutely out of the question. But all in all we find the school to be very in-teresting and we are looking forward to visiting in 2015!

By Emma Borch and Bianca Rasmussen at Ørestad Gym-nasium, Denmark

Laniteio Lykeo is the lar-gest Public High School in Cyprus, with over 900 stu-dents, and 140 teachers, the second oldest on the island, established in 1819. It hosts two special schools, the Limassol Music and the Limassol Sports Schools. There are 6 independent buildings with laboratories, an interesting library, five well-equipped computer rooms, a huge Assembly Hall, and comfortable clas-ses. Sports facilities include a gym, several basketball and volleyball courts, a real size stadium and 3 canteens.

The school has participa-ted in many European and International Programmes: LLP Comenius, Young Re-porters for the Environment, UNESCO, eTwinning Pro-

jects, Bilateral Environmen-tal Projects with Greece.

As well as school trips and visits to European countries, sports activities are abun-dant too. Students usually do quite well, last year the school’s boys Volleyball Team won the National Championship and came 6th in the International Champi-onship in Portugal. Congra-tulations boys!

What is it like to be a stu-dent? There is a school uni-form, about 25 students in each class, starting at 7:30 am and finishing at 13:35 pm, and some homework “of course”. In addition, in the afternoon most students attend English private les-sons to get prepared for the GCEs, as many of them aim to attend English Universi-

ties. Others also have Maths lessons, play a musical instrument or practise other hobbies. No doubt, hanging out with friends is very po-pular. So life is quite busy!

In grade 1 of High school students have 15 compul-sory subjects including 3 different languages. In gra-des 2 and 3 apart from the compulsory subjects, Greek, Maths, Religion and History, they can choose 2 Foreign Languages and 3 or 4 Com-pulsory courses, as majors.

A school day can be qui-te tiring so, students have 3 breaks to relax. The first break lasts for 15 minutes, the second one for 25 and the third one for 10 minutes.

The final exams, “the Pan-Cyprian exams” allow stu-dents to enter the Univer-

sities in Cyprus and Greece.How about special events,

festivals and holidays? There are plenty of events. Many of the Laniteio students are in the The Limassol Student Band too. The school year lasts from September to June. Both at Christmas and Easter they have 2 weeks off, and summer holidays last for 3 months! Not too bad! Well deserved holidays!

If you want to know more about this school, you can visit its webpage, http://lyk-laniteio-lem.schools.ac.cy/

Written by 3º ESO A stu-dents in IES Canarias Cabre-ra Pinto. Tenerife

A.V.I.T.A.E