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A Virtual Intertextual Tour across Ancient Entrepeneurship

Reports about activities October 2014 – January 2015

AVITAE (A Virtual Intertextual Tour across Ancient Entrepreneurship) aims to blend the study of the classical world with the analysis of examples of ancient entrepreneurship: students are going to follow the footsteps of the first entrepreneurs, study the evolution of entrepreneurship through time and finally apply what they have learnt in theory into their own entrepreneurial ventures; Classical world, entrepreneurship, digitalization: this is the ambitious trilogy AVITAE relies on. http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/index_en.html www.etwinning.net

For more information visit our Twinspace: http://twinspace.etwinning.net/2441/welcome and webpage www.avitae.org

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Cyprus By Project Coordinator Olympia Orphanidou The announcement of the beginning of this new EU project, the first year of ERASMUS+ projects (2014-2020) was made at a full staff meeting in September by Olympia Orphanidou the co-ordinator for the Cypriot school. Many teachers expressed an interest in this new venture which would cross Europe from the north, Finland and Denmark to the west Spain (Canary Islands) central Europe with Slovakia, the east with Greece and south east Cyprus.The project was also announced to the students during break time meetings, ICT and foreign language lessons. After the first visit of the teachers to Finland in November we all started to prepare the dissemination of information about partners and the activities that would be innovative, creative and inspiring for our students.

On the 3rd December the National Agency IDEP for European Programmes Awards Annual Event took place in the Filoxenia Conference Centre in Nicosia, where members of the EU Erasmus+ club attended. The opening of the event was given by the Flute ensemble of our Music School “MariosTokas”, part of the Laniteio Lyceum.

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The Erasmus+ AVITAE Club was set up for students and teachers who would be the main student group to take part in the activities and mobility meetings of the project. As with all EU projects the first meeting with students in Copenhagen was a real stimulus and the five students who took part really expressed their enthusiasm when they returned. It was the first time they had presented their country to other European students and teachers. Our team in Denmark

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On their return the five students presented their experiences and activities to the EU Erasmus+ club members on the 18.2.2015and shared the material they had produced. They also did a tour of the twinspace, the website and FaceBook to show how the project was progressing. The competition for the logo and mascot was open to all the students and the winners of the international competition were shown. We were very pleased that the mascot designed by a Cypriot student was chosen. It will appear with the logo produced by Denmark in areas and products of interest. Mascotby Cyprus Logo by Denmark

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Italy By Project Coordinator Delia Tocchini In October the AVITAE PROJECT was announced to our AVITAE target-class (Class IB): what a surprise, what an excitement for these lucky, privileged students! Then, in November, following the Project Meeting in Finland, the AVITAE team presented the visit outcomes to the Headteacher and to the school staff. Agreements were made for the setup of the AVITAE corner both in the school and on the school website; decisions as regards local stakeholders to contact were taken and an agenda of urgent things to do was fixed (advertising AVITAE on local newspapers and TV, describing the project in local assemblies etc). In the same month class work started on the first activity (A03, “Our ancient entrepreneurs”….)

Students began the planning, mapping and task distribution. They talked with their history teacher and set about working on texts and pictures to find out about our ancient entrepreneurs. They even went to the Mint Museum in Lucca to ask for advice to the Director!

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Lots of discussions, doubts followed but also satisfaction. Camilla became a journalist of the school newspaper to interview the AVITAE European Coordinator (and her teacher of English) Delia Tocchini In the December issue of the school magazine, AVITAE was announced to all the students and the interview was released. The AVITAE Logo and Mascot Contest was launched too. Here are the pics of one logo and mascot prototype and of the interview:

At the beginning of January we found the wall to create our AVITAE corner but work is still in progress. No worries, though: we’ll be ready for the AVITAE Day to be held in May! A few days before departure to Denmark, the students worked hard to finalize their executive summary to take to Copenhagen; they even rehearsed on board the flight! At the start, it was difficult for them to learn to be pregnant and laconic at the same time but then they managed and off they went! In the end, all tasks were accomplished, the bags packed, the euros changed into Danish crowns , the ID popped in the wallet, the notes….The travelling adventure was about to start for the students too.

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Greece By Project Coordinator Ourania Karantzeni

As soon as we got the results for being granted our Erasmus project (early October), we started working for its materialization. First of all we informed the school Headteacher and the staff giving details on the topic, the countries involved, the philosophy behind it and what had already been done by preparing the application and being in contact with the partner schools. The school staff signed the minutes of our meeting in which they assigned to me (Ourania Karantzeni, teacher of English) and to Apostolos Terzoglou (ICT teacher) the implementation of the project. Then we passed the word on to our students trying to explain what a European project means for the school and them. We wanted them to realize the new dimensions that are created for a school when it takes part in a multi lateral European programme, the benefits it would bring to them individually and to the school community. Parallelly, we started contacting the national agency (IKY) to get prepared with the paperwork for the project. The workload was immense as we had to take care of many things including taking out a school bank account, which proved not to be an easy task and it took a lot of time and energy. On 15th Oct I attended a meeting in Athens, organized by the N.A., where they gave us instructions of how to proceed with the project, what it is expected from us and some details on financial matters. At the same time, given the fact that the results were delayed for more than a month, we had to get ready for the first Transnational Project Meeting in Pyhäjoen Lukio, Finland. This meant that we had to prepare our presentations for this meeting. Namely, being Education Managers we had to find texts that referred to entrepreneurship in the very early years of European history, make suggestions for activities; propose topics for study and research. In order to get my material and get ready for this I contacted some stakeholders, disseminating this way AVITAE. So, while in Athens, I contacted the National Library, the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece, The Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In Arta we visited the Municipal Library, searched the net and bought books and we borrowed books and articles from a colleague’s private collection as well as the school library. All the bibliography used was included in the presentations we showed in Finland. These also were comprised of a presentation of our school, a rough budget for the future meeting in Arta and suggested places to visit during it. I have to add that, in Greece, preparing for trips abroad means a lot of paper work which had to be prepared on time to get permission to leave.

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Volume on the 90 years of the Greek Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Immediately when we got back, we informed the staff and students of the outcomes of the Finland meeting. Next, we selected the 5 students who would travel to Denmark for the first educational meeting in Ørestad Gymnasium. We formed the whole group of the AVITAE students and started working on the projects we had arranged for this meeting. Students were given study material, and were assigned tasks to prepare. To facilitate our communication we created a facebook page for the Greek AVITAE teachers/students.

Avitae Logo and mascot competition contest

We also launched the AVITAE Logo and Avitus mascot competition which was announced in the morning assembly and advertised by posters. We started creating our AVITAE corner by placing there the first memorabilia and leaflets related to the project and we elaborated the school website by adding a description of the project in it. In the meanwhile, the Agreement for the project was sent by the N.A. and we had to sign after we had read the sections and appendixes. We have to mention at this point that the Finland trip was made on our own (teachers’) resources but for the Denmark trip the first part of the budget had been deposited so we were remunerated and financed for the next trip.

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Avitae Corner

Greek students started communicating with the Danish students through a new facebook page, filled in matching forms and worked on the interviews they had to give and take for the first AVITAE newspaper. They also finished their project on the History of entrepreneurship in Greece and prepared a 10 min presentation of it. They also worked on a presentation of their school, made from their own point of view. In the meantime, they answered a quiz on entrepreneurship but unfortunately not in the twinspace environment so the answers were not possible to be assessed. The teachers also answered an evaluation questionnaire about the Finland meeting. We also send to Spain all the dissemination actions we had made and we added to the ones already mentioned above, a meeting with the Mayor and an impromptu presentation I made addressing primary and secondary school teachers attending another N.A. meeting in Ioannina ( the biggest town of our prefecture). Before we left for the Denmark trip we met with the students’ parents to give them factual information and answer their questions concerning our expedition.

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Spain By Project Coordinator Mª Dolores Rodríguez September We had started our classes at the school and we didn't know yet if the project had been accepted. October Then, we knew it. It was a big surprise because we had almost lost our hopes. Suddenly, we had a lot of things to do:

talk to the headmaster and the rest of the staff.

present the project to the students.

decide how to select the students that were going to participate in the project.

hurry up to prepare our first meeting in Finland. November Three teachers of our school went to Finland. It was the first time that teachers from all the school involved in the project met. There we had to:

talk about the budget and the reports we had to prepare.

take general decisions about the development of the project.

decide the tasks for next meeting.

explain the rest the responsibilities that each country had in the project.

decide the dates for the next two meetings (Denmark and Greece).

decide the social networks we were going to use (facebook, web page,

etwinning...)

When we came back home we announced the logo and mascot design competition

to all the school and students started to prepare the presentations of our school and of

our history for Denmark.

December Our students continued working in the tasks for Denmark. We chose our logo and mascot design winners and they received their prizes at the Christmas party.

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Finally, all the students that wanted to participate in the project showed us the works they had done and the best ones were selected to travel to Denmark and Greece. It was a very difficult task for us, the teachers, because we knew that all the students had worked hard for this. January Students finished their works and got feedback, then they practiced their presentations several times before leaving Tenerife (they practiced even in the plane!) We made the final preparations for the trip, and... Denmark, there we go.

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Denmark By Project Coordinator Charlotte Straby Tranberg October AVITAE project was discussed with the management of the school and participating teachers were found. The Meeting in Finland was prepared: 1) presentation of the didactic idea behind Ørestad Gymnasium 2) presentation of “Design to Improve Life” – our method of working with innovation 3) a draft of the program of the meeting in Copenhagen in January. November: November 2 – 7: Claus Witfelt and Charlotte Straby Tranberg participated in the first teachers’ meeting in Pyhäjoki, Finland. During the meeting the three presentations from above were presented and Claus Witfelt had a workshop on ICT – Students: The Avitae-project was presented to students during meetings and a information letter – the group of students participating was found. The competition of logo and mascot was announced and worked on during our Monday meetings with the group of participating students. The program of the visit to Copenhagen was prepared and uploaded to the six partners December December 3: The students were interviewed online by Finish students for the article about each school, which was to be published in Issue 1. December 4: The group of students had a day workshop in the method “Design to Improve Life” where they were introduced to some of the techniques and where they had to work with the techniques themselves. Greek students were interviewed by some of the Danish students using Facebook and “shared documents” from google. For the article on each school for issue 1. The students were involved in planning the visit in Copenhagen at our Monday meetings

January

January 5: The Avitae project and the upcoming meeting in Copenhagen jan. 25 – 31 was presented for all staff during a meeting

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January 7: Work shop for students in “Design to Improve Life” – new techniques were presented and the students had to work with various historic periods in Denmark for the meeting in Copenhagen. January 14: An excursion to “National Museum of Denmark” in order to create video presentations of the various historic periods in Denmark and for preparing guided tours around the museum during the visit to Copenhagen Monday meetings were used by teachers and students to prepare the visit in Copenhagen January 25 – 31 the visit in Copenhagen took place. We had a wonderful week with a lot of work. Focus was on “Design to Improve Life”, first step in Branding, to explore the Vikings, FabLabs, Copenhagen. Didactic: How to teach digitally, visible teaching, innovation, and to spend time with other young people around Europe.

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Finland By Project Coordinator Hanne Saarikoski October

We presented the project to the students and the staff

We did all the preparations for the teachers' meeting at our school November We hosted teachers from all the schools participating in the project. We talked about the general goals of the project, decided the tasks for next meeting, decided the dates for the next two meetings, decided we would have a logo and mascot competition and also decided what kind of articles would be in the first newspaper. We also started planning the 3D models for Greece.

December We worked hard on the tasks for Denmark and the first newspapers contents. We used an application in English to choose five students to go to Copenhagen. The students chose were Eve Leppälä, Iida Korpela. Elias Hirvikoski, Saku Jalonen and Matias Koskela. Iida Korpela won the logo competition of our school with the logo below.

January Students in Finland finished the work on history they had to prepare and the first newspaper was published with articles about the participating schools. The we went to Copenhagen and learned a lot about branding and innovation.

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Slovakia By Project Coordinator Kornelia Lohynova October AVITAE project was presented during the meeting of all school staff. Teachers were invited to take part in activities of the project. AVITAE project was presented also to the students. November: Preparing for the Project Meeting in Finland. Team of teachers for AVITAE was set. After project meeting in Finland the team of teachers presented the outcomes to the Headmaster and to the school staff during the regular meeting. Logo and mascot competition was announced and students began to design a logo of the project and a mascot.

AVITAE wall was created to inform students and teachers about the activities of the project. December All students of the school had a chance to vote for the best logo and mascot. The winners of logo and mascot competitions were announced and rewarded. Here are 3 winning logos and one mascot.

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We presented AVITAE project during “School Open Day” to the visitors, students, municipality and guests.

An AVITAE team of the students was set and began to work on the first activity „Our ancient

entrepreneurs“. Important was to divide tasks and form teams of the students. They worked

together on the shared documents.

January

We presented AVITAE project for public during a big event in a large shopping centre where

all schools in Bratislava region presented themselves

Teams of the students finished their work on the first project activity and presented time-line with the executive summary to other students to get feedback. One team of the students prepared video about our school that was supposed to be presented in Copenhagen too. 5 students going to Denmark prepared their presentations, communicated with host families and got ready for Copenhagen.