LTTA – North Macedonia

The third LTTA Mobility of Erasmus+ Project: „Hybrid and Innovative digital aware Class (HI-Class)“ -2020-1-IT02-KA226-SCH-095699 took place from 19 to 23 Sep,2022, in Strumica, North Macedonia.

The topic of mobility :”Debate our future”

Monday 19.09.2022

The guests arrived previous day, and they were hosted in families. We opened the mobility in the presentation hall of the school. After the speech of the coordinator and introduction of each team, participants took guided tour of the school and the yard.  Then we started working part of the mobility. Macedonian students organized some ice- breaking games, in order to get to know each other, after what we began with official program.

We introduced the participants with the concept of debate, different types of debate and we concluded the principles which are going to be implemented next days. This is not going to be simple debate, but innovative type with inclusion of student researcher, who is attending the class online “from home”.

After the lunch in a local lounge bar, students were divided in teams in order to try the debate process. In a meanwhile teachers had meeting where were established conditions how to include “online” students, how to form teams, way of communication, grading of teams,  summary of results. It was concluded that each student from the team is going to be “researcher” once during the debate and the success of the team will depend only on his work, because students on the class have no other source of information.

After the activities in the school, all the participants went to visit the center of the town and to get familiar to the surroundings. Students organized Treasure Hunt game in the town, in order guests to discover the most important spots and monuments in the town.

Tuesday 20.09.2022

For the second day of the mobility it was planned to have a trip to our capital Skopje. Skopje is a mixture of different cultures and participants could see this by its different monuments. The agenda was filled with visit of Mother Theresa Museum, St Dimitrie church, Daut Pashin Amam,  the center of the city full of sculptures. Afterwards participants visited Old Bazar, walking through the oldest Stone Bridge, and other close monuments. At Old Bazar the participants had a chance to buy some souvenirs and drink coffe in a traditional ambient.  Also, the next visiting point was the Museum of Modern Art. After that, the group continued to East Gate Mall, which is newest and biggest mall in the South East Balkan. Students had time to socialize and get to know better, during this trip.

Wednesday 21.09.2022

This working day started with ice-break games, guided by our students. After this, students were divided into four teams, each of five students with mixed structures from each country.

This day was planned to have two debates for each team on the social topics previously carefully selected by the teachers, which are attractive to students, but also very actual nowadays. One student of each team was researcher (online student) and he was sending info on the needed topic. Teachers were supervisors of cooperation and coordination of this student with his/her team. They evaluated the material: links, facts that researcher was sending to the team saved in a file on the drive. The jury  also evaluated his/her work, apart from the debating students in the classroom.

After the lunch and second debate activity, students were invited to visit EU House (local center where young people socialize and have activities guided by EU projects). Here students had workshops connected to debate process. In the afternoon students had time with host families.

Thursday 22.09.2022

As usually, the working day began with ice break activities. Afterwards, the other two debates took place, and the final debate between two best teams was on topic : religion.  The teachers who were in the jury of the debates, concluded that students got improved during these past days and started to think critically, and argue with arguments and facts. Actually,

all the participants and teachers were very satisfied with the results they got, based on points given for each debating team. This methodology showed that students in the school may cooperate with online students in a new way, in order to work on the task together.

After the lunch break, all the participants were invited to visit local museum of Strumica, which is full of artifacts about history of Strumica since the ancient time. Teachers had official meeting with the principal in the evening.

Friday 23.09.2022

After the ice breaking games, the results were announced from the previous days and the winning team in debate was chosen, also the best student in debate.  Then, the final ceremony was organized, certificates for participants were given with closing words of this mobility. Group photos were taken for each team, the winning team and the whole group of this mobility, with guests and hosts.

The lunch followed in the close launch bar, where students chatted and exchanged farewell words and hugs, with tears in their eyes.

Later in the afternoon, teachers were invited to be part of a local TV show “Country I want to live in”, together with students, and talked about the project, the experience, difference-similarity and their impressions from the mobility.

Link of the TV show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR2jLDAMpaEz4h-iScvAyrtV5DdQSHvddFffNj-oNHZ_F2iSWhWOo6gKqmc&v=K1LCct9FZ4Y&feature=youtu.be

Some of the teachers had more time and were invited to visit Smolare waterfalls and see the natural beauty of the local seaside.

Coordinator	Principal
Sofija Tosheva	Nevenka Stojanova