Transnational Meeting in Athens, 8th - 11th June 2022
The pandemic changed our plans - we’d been due to meet in our link school in Grevena, but flight availability and cost resulted in Mrs Billington and Mr Johnson making a flying visit for meetings in Athens in June 2022.
We began the visit by meeting to discuss the positive impact that the project had had both for the children who took part in the visits and for those at home who had learnt from their peers and had the the chance to use the new technologies that staff had experienced during the trips. We also recorded the excitement that children had had taking part in the digital aspects of the project from their home school such as creating e-books and Christmas cards to send between the countries.
We then had the opportunity to visit the Acropolis Hill and the remains of the Parthenon Temple on its summit. We learnt about Athena, the ancient patron goddess of the city and the temple that was built to worship her.
The following day, we had a workshop explaining the process of a 'Teachable Machine'. We saw how we could demonstrate the future possibilities of this technology in school and discussed the way in which its applied to advertising and other sectors that already affect us.
We then visited the Archaeological Museum of Athens and the site of the first modern Olympic Games, held in 1896.
Finally, we visited a digital art exhibition, held in one of Athen's parks, in order to explore how digital technologies have affected the creation of art and media. We finished the two days with lots of ideas to share with the children and lots of first-hand knowledge of the city to share in future learning projects back at school!
