AVITAE August 2016

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A.V.I.T.A.E

SOCIAL MEDIA – LISTENING, LEARNING & SHARING by: AVITAE Cyprus Team

“Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Websites and applications dedicated to forums, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social curation, and wikis are among the different types of social media.”

WhatIs.com As social animals we have always been seeking ways of communication, in order to connect and strengthen our relationships. When distance creates an obstacle to this need, we keep inventing new creative means of eliminating this obstacle and enabling our contact.

This urge for communication is nothing new, neither is the continuous search for new methods of achieving it.

According to the ancient historian Hellanicus the first recorded hand written letter was by Queen Atossa of Persia, mother of Xerxes around 500 BC. The telegraph was invented in 1792, allowing messages to be delivered over long distances much faster than with a horse or a ship.

The introduction of the telephone in 1876 added a new dimension to the communications scene.

We had an important milestone in the history of communications in the 1960s as the earliest forms of the internet and the email were developed.

The first social media site was created in 1997 and the first blogging sites became popular by 1999.

From then on the popularity of social media increased exponentially and the same applied to the number of new sites appearing overnight.

While a few of these sites disappeared as fast as they had appeared, the rest became an

integral part of our lives!

Google+ : Google's social What exactly makes social networking project, designed media such a success story? to replicate the way people interact offline.

Conventional media - television, radio, newspapers, magaWikipedia: a free, open conzines - transmit information in tent online encyclopedia creaone direction. Users acquire ted through the collaborative the information the media offer, effort of a community of users. but their ability to share their own views on the subject is eitInstagram: an online mobile her very limited or nonexistent. photo-sharing, video-sharing, As we have already noted at the and social networking service very beginning of this article, that enables its users to take we are social animals and as pictures and videos, and shasuch we much prefer having two re them either publicly or pridirectional communication with vately on the app, as well as others. We favor the idea of through a variety of other sosharing our opinion, of exchan- cial networking platforms. ging thoughts and experiences.

This is exactly what makes the LinkedIn: a social networking social media so attractive. This site designed specifically for is the reason why they are here the business community. to stay!

Reddit: a social media and social news aggregation, web An infographic on the content rating and discussion evolution of Social Media website.

In 2008, the Conversation Pinterest: a social curation Prism (CP), an evolving info- website for sharing and categographic capturing the state of rizing images found online. social media, debuted. This visual tool, developed by Brian Solis, was organized by how important social networks are used by professional and everyday consumers.

Comparing the 2008 version 1.0 of the CP with the version 4.0 of 2013 gives us a clear idea of how fast the social meHere we were at the end of dia scene is changing and how the second year of AVITAE. It impressive these changes are. was about time to share with One can only try to imagine our teachers, our friends and how a 2016 version of the CP their parents the work that would look like! had been done during this seSome examples of popular cond year, the outcomes that Social Media had been produced and the photographic evidence of how Facebook : a free social netmuch fun the whole process working website that allows had been. registered users to create profiles, upload photos and video, We decided that, just like a send messages and keep in year ago, we would make sure touch. that as many people as possible Twitter: a free microblogging were going to have the opporservice that allows registered tunity to admire the efforts of members to broadcast short the AVITAE team. Therefore, posts called tweets.

AVITAE EXHIBITION 2016 we set our exhibition stand and posters in the main Hall of our school, where the registration procedure for all the students, current and new, would take place.

In addition to our project’s outcomes (the International Market Model, the cooking book, the newspapers and a beautiful collection of photographs from our meetings) our stand provided information about the Erasmus+ Programme, as a whole, through posters, leaflets and handbooks we had received from our National

Agency.

Furthermore, the three winners of the art competition we had run, entitled “AVITAE: The Market of the Past, the Present and the Future”, received their prizes from the headmistress.

Lastly, the exhibition provided us with the perfect opportunity to distribute the information regarding the upcoming Learning Activities Meeting we are going to host in our school, this coming October.

The exhibition lasted from June 15 to June 30.

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SOCIAL MEDIA PROS AND CONS

By Ilaria Nenna and Chiara Bartoli - Liceo classico N. Machiavelli (Italy) Nowadays, social media (SM) is a way to share photos, documents and events with others and, consequently, it is also utilised for the creation of new relations among those near and far. Social media plays an essential role in our life because of its power and because it could help us get to know more and more information. Thanks to this, we can become aware of many events and news across the globe and broaden our horizons. On the one hand, this tool is very important for us and improves our knowledge and way to communicate, on the other hand sometimes social media posts wrong news or manipulates it; thus opinions on news spread by social media should be examined in depth.

It is also true that to be a manager of a social media tool is a promising new job: one has to continuously improve the social media website in order to have a lot of visitors. So, these professionals study a great deal

to make their social media life become more and more appealing and complete. Therefore, on the bright side, social media creates new jobs! However, the risky side of the business seems to dominate the foreground: everyone can post what they want, and everyone can access what has been posted. So, we should pay attention to what we really want the others to know, because sometimes we lose the possibility to be free without fully realizing it. At this time social media does not have real limits: it is in every place, every home and every school.

The vast majority of people use social media and often become addicted to it. As an Italian film states, “our smartphones and social media have turned into the black box of our life”; in them are kept all our secrets and there we can find all details about us and others. And this is rarely a good thing: sometimes we should just write a letter or read a “paper” newspaper; we

should remember that many years ago people did live without social media and such “obsolete” actions as writing a letter or reading a paper were the only way to be connected.

Probably at that time people were freer and less shallow, with much leisure time to devote to their interpersonal skills.

Yet, it would be wrong to be too negative and pessimistic about the present. Social media exists and we cannot ignore it. It is useless and a wee bit silly to look back to the past; we ought to live at this time in the best way we can, appreciate what we have and use the tool as wisely as possible in order to safeguard our freedom and right to privacy.

Italian Avitae Day 2016

By Noemi Biagini and Bianca Vannucci . Liceo classico N. Machiavelli (Italy)

Two hundred students, six schools, one great concordant spirit united to celebrate the European Union Day on 9th May. As a consequence, in Lucca every international project carried out by the local schools had the opportunity to be shown and illustrated to visitors (mainly, teachers students from all the schools in town, and some citizens and stakeholders).

As students of the Liceo Classico N.Machiavelli, we had the chance to share with our peers a lot of unforgettable experiences and the products which we realised all together during our Avitae trips.

The Erasmus class set up a stand entirely dedicated to our tour in ancient entrepreneurship. Each one of the teams had to complete a different task which involved: printing pictures representing the best moments we had had abroad,

making a video summing up how our creativity developed thanks to Avitae, drawing some original posters and displaying our creations.

Five students from our class were chosen to present the activities that took place during the meetings: Camilla talked about the “Index Session” carried out in the modern and efficient Ørestad Gymnasium in Copenhagen, Ilda illustrated how ancient and current entrepreneurship perfectly mixed during the teamwork hosted in the 2nd Geniko Lykeio of Arta, Chiara described how the students managed to bring back to life ancient recipes in the advanced structures of the Slovakian Hotelová Akadémia through their spirit of cooperation; Stefano narrated how successful our board game called “Trade off” had been in IES Canarias Cabrera Pinto in Tenerife.

The crowd was enthusiastic and fascinated by our project as well as the way in which it is conducted by the international team made of our teachers and by us the students - so culturally different yet so united and passionate in our work.

Moreover, there are many other projects that our school presented on this special day, such as the European Youth Parliament and the Models United Nations. Both of them are focused on political and social cooperation and were exposed in this unique occasion by Cecilia and Mishel for EYP and by Noemi and Bianca for MUN. It was absolutely the perfect day to share the mentality that the European Union strives to spread among young people without renouncing our national identity.

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TENERIFE AVITAE DAY, JUNE 2016

This second year of our project has been very challenging for the Tenerife team.

We have hosted all of our partners in this adventure and it has been really awesome, and, just a short time after such a wonderful and unforgettable experience, while we were still excited, we celebrated our AVITAE day with another remarkable event for our students: a Skype conversation with our program fellows in Finland.

Students of 3º ESO and 4º ESO sang the chorus of a very famous song that talks about the Canary Islands, about living in an archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, about loving music and life...

After that, students started to talk about their summer holidays and their plans.

Some Finnish students said they will be coming with their families to the Canary Islands, so they took advantage of this digital encounter to ask for details of nice places to visit and also to clear up some doubts they had about the weather, the food and many other things.

All the teams had worked on the topic of Universal Market: ancient markets, future markets trying to show their vision of the changes between

both as time goes by, not only in their physical aspect, but also in the way sellers and buyers get in contact and the way people connect. As the results were so astonishing, we decided to share them. Therefore, we took all the "Universal Market" models which our students had made using a wide range of techniques (from recycling objects and materials to creating new things using a 3D printer) and we joined them with the absolutely wonderful posters that the Danish and Greek teams had brought for the meeting in Tenerife, and we prepared an exhibition for the whole high school.

In that exhibition, we added the work carried out by students of international teams during the sessions held in the Tenerife meeting. They followed the indications of Claus, our Danish specialist in Innovation and Creative thinking, which resulted in an incredible outcome. The things we can do!! Thanks, Claus, for showing us the way.

We have worked hard and we deserve to enjoy the summer!!

SOCIAL NETWORKS

by Pablo Rodríguez Zerpa and Andrea Pérez Pavón

Could teenagers survive without social networks? They have, beyond any doubt, become important tools in our society in the last few years, especially among teenagers, but they are also widely used by adults.

We come across lots of social networks created for different purposes. For example, if you want to find a job, then you should look for LinkedIn, or maybe you feel like keeping in contact with someone really far away, in which case you might create an account in Skype, a media created for video calling. Many of these programs or apps or websites serve a purpose, but there are several which function only as a communication tool… Here we find a change in the paradigm; what’s actually impressive about social networks is that they have transformed our traditional ‘face to face’ communication into a ‘face to screen’.

For instance, in our country, Spain, almost every single person has a Whatsapp account and uses it every day - adults and teenagers alike. We

love creating groups for friends, for schoolmates, for family, for the people in our health club, for the next AVITAE group travelling to Cyprus… Whatever the reason, we may create a group for it. But why do people like it so much? Maybe because it’s easy to use and it allows people to communicate in a quick and free way. It also permits you to send photos, jokes, voice messages, and it has such an interactive design.

Another example of the success of social media in Spain is Instagram. Posting photographs and short videos and sharing them with the people you want feels great. It is probably one of the most relevant networks in our society among teenagers.

The last app we are going to talk about is Snapchat.

It is really fast, just like the other networks we have already talked about: take a picture, write something on it or add some stickers and send it to whoever you want. And you don’t need to worry too much, because it will be deleted from your profile after 24 hours.

Easy and simple.

No doubt those apps have succeeded for their easy access, intuitive design and the important fact that they’re free! They are so easy to use and so attractive that they are sometimes considered even addictive. Now the paradox appears, we have created a tool to share information, to communicate, and yet, many claim that this very tool is the one responsible for killing communication itself. Well, it’s true that social networks may entail negative consequences such as harming our personal relationships, reducing our concentration, or provoking stress and anxiety. However, these side effects are not direct results of social media, but the misuse or the overuse of them. Something we all may be aware of to prevent future problems.

Social networks are useful; it is completely understandable that teenagers want to be in touch with their friends and share their experiences. However, social network comes accompanied with two main and easy to solve problems, which

are dependence and the risk to bably see new ones in no time, privacy, fortunately, both can let’s just not forget real life! be solved or even prevented with proper education and common sense.

We feel social networks are here to stay, and we will pro-

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SOCIAL MEDIA AND STUDENTS ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE An amazing Internet tool that has developed and grown over the years is the social media network. There are many different social media networks available for students to join, such as Twitter and Instagram.

Most of them have a strong grasp on the lives of students in universities and colleges worldwide. One in particular which is popular to see students in class using is Facebook. It has generated over 845 million users and the majority of the users are in the age range of students that could be in college and university. The number of students conversing per hour and per day are staggering.

Students are checking up on their friends' statuses, photos that are posted, comments that are posted. However, there is a time and a place for doing these things, and in class or during lectures is not the time.

Many surveys have been conducted and research done to prove that social media networks are the reason for the downfall of students' grade and educational performance.

Twitter and Facebook distract students when they need to review a lecture, write a paper, or study for exams and tests. It is proven that students cannot focus solely on one task, i.e., pay attention to the teacher in class; they always need to do something else at the same time. However, this learning behaviour makes it impossible for the brain of students to absorb information and retain it. There are children who spend 7 to 11 hours a day on social media networks and entertainment programs, and that means for the majority of the day they are staring at a screen; no wonder why their grades are dropping.

Students as well as teachers need to realize the potential that social media networks have and need to harness it and use it in a positive way that is productive educationally for both parties. Having the perfect balance between a social media network and homework can be achieved through self-

discipline and suitable scheduling. It is time for students to realize all the negative impacts social media can cause. Students need to start making big decisions and start changing their habits and becoming less distracted by social media networks. w w

Year 2 AVITAE day: Greece

17 June 2016 was a great day indeed. It being the last day of school exams was a good reason to celebrate. We thought that such a day was just the right time to present this year’s AVITAE outcomes so we included that in the festivities.

To be honest, due to the exams’ long period we didn’t have enough time to prepare an extravagant day. We decided we could instead share with the rest of the school, students and teachers our experiences of the two years of AVITAE. We gathered in the groups that we had formed when we visited the partner countries, we prepared small presentations of our visits there, selected some typical photos, decided on some highlights and there we were.

We took turns to present

our power points, each group focusing on the central project we had had to prepare for each visit: the ancient / contemporary / future market, the recipes book, entrepreneurship in ancient times etc.

We all realized that we had had beautiful experiences, some nice impressions and memories which we would like to share.

What we wished we had had time to do was to make more detailed presentations of the other schools’ projects. We believe that everybody would have benefited from that hugely. Unfortunately we were very short on time. We promised we would be prepared for that next year.

We loved it when we circulated around the copies of the AVITAE newspaper, explaining to our teachers and school mates what we had had to do

to prepare for the articles we wrote. We were extra proud for the issues featuring pictures with our happy faces on them!

We also added the stuff we brought back from Tenerife in the little window we have for our AVITAE corner. Now it gives the impression of a little ancient market.

Finally, although it was very hot, we all went outside, in the school yard. We lay down and we tried to form the acronym AVITAE with our bodies. I’m not sure how readable this proved out to be or if somebody who hadn’t known about our intentions could tell what we were trying to do. The truth is that we had great fun.

We laughed a lot and, correct me if I’m wrong, this is what celebrations are for.

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Socialising through media instagram as a social media connecting the AVITAE project

By Frederikke Johansen and Molly Tatnell What is instagram?

“Instagram is a fun and quirky way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo with your mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform the image into a memory to keep around forever. We're building Instagram to allow you to experience moments in your friends' lives through pictures as they happen. We imagine a world more connected through photos”.

(Source: Instagram FAQ) Why have we chosen Instagram?

We have chosen Instagram because we needed a media to connect through that was not Facebook. The problem with Facebook is that there are a lot of people involved in the project that had chosen specifically not to have Facebook.

Therefore, we needed a media to work with, that many of the participants already had, and hopefully the people who did not have an account would get one.

In the AVITAE project we are 7 countries with around 30 participants each. It sums up to be a pretty large group of people. Besides the meetings

that we have in each country, we do not have much communication across the countries, which is a problem since we are an international project. We do have social platforms online on which we can communicate, but none of the ones that we have been using so far have been very successful.

So when our teachers asked us to find a way in which the participants could get to know each other better, we had to think differently.

After an hour of multiple ideas, we came to think that of all the social medias we had been using so far, we had never tried out Instagram. We started thinking of how we could involve everyone using Instagram.

The final idea was to use Instagram as a kind of diary to get the participants of the project to get to know the other countries better. We created some guidelines, which are as follow: Each country has ownership of the official AVITAE project Instagram account for one week. In the five school days that they have the ownership of the account they have to post one picture every day that shows something from their

everyday lives as students in their country. Each picture has to have a description that explains it, and when the week has passed, the Instagram account is passed on to the next country.

gelotti (Italy) says; “Thanks for this brilliant idea. We now have the chance to understand how school works and how education is conceived in other countries, which can not only serve as useful information, but can also help us to get inspired and Juliana Glahn (Denmark) make progress.” was the one to come up with the idea of using Instagram as Juliana Glahn also added that AVITAE’s social media platform. she is an active follower of the She was inspired by other net- AVITAE profile, and she enjoys works that appeal to young getting to know more about adults. She discussed the idea the other countries’ typical with the other Danish students week at school, and to see how with the purpose of getting the her friends from the other parstudents more involved in the ticipating countries are doing. project, and even to reach further out to people not involved Because of the positive accepin the project at all. tance, the OfficialAvitaeProject account has had from the parNow the AVITAE Instagram ticipants, we hope to make it profile has been active for a stay as a part of the AVITAE few weeks before the summer project, and that the profile will vacation started. Five countries help us students become even have so far had the ownership closer and more knowledgeabof the profile for one week le about each other’s countries each, and a lot of pictures have and cultures. been posted already. Juliana Glahn says; “Many people have received the profile with open arms, and it works surprisingly well.” And this is the same answer we have gotten from students from some of the other countries as well. Camilla An-

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AVITAE in our hearts, our minds and our tummies The AVITAE day

By Anna Sofie Hvass & Simone Sejdenfaden The clock struck 8 a.m. and by then the students in the AVITAE club had already begun cutting out the flags of the AVITAE countries, and putting up artworks from the trip to Tenerife. During the next hour the students of the AVITAE club prepared special dishes characterizing each country represented in the AVITEA Project Danish strawberry tart, Finnish rhubarb crumble, Italian olive tapenade on bread and various other delicious dishes representing the different countries.

Almost every dish was either prepared or brought home from the country of origin by different students and teachers in the AVITAE club. Recipes from the cookbook were used for preparing the dishes, making sure the food became as authentic as possible. The room became filled with delicious aromas, tempting the club members while they finished preparations for when the students and teachers of the entire school would come.

The first guests, in the shape of other students, came by at around 9 o’clock to try some of the delicious, and to some, new food and to hear about the project. They asked about the innovative art and those who had been in Spain told them all about it and the adventure it had been to produce and show them to other students.

The food was given plenty of attention too, especially the rhubarb crumble was a hit. During the next forty minutes old students, who were once a part of the project, came by to greet their AVITAE friends, and teachers from all over the school also showed up and they too were very interested and excited to hear about all the things AVITAE is. Even our principal Allan took a quick break to see if everything was turning out well for the AVITAE group and to take a look at our newspapers.

gone to Tenerife along with the students who were in their final year of school received their certificates of participation. The school’s stamp was brought forth to validate the diplomas, signifying the completion of yet another successful trip and sending off the final year students in the best way possible - with the memories of their past trips and work reawakened by not only the wonderful dishes of the participating countries, but also the stories they had been sharing with other students of the school.

Overall it was a most successful and enjoyable day. A day where the AVITAE project was truly experienced by everyone who showed up - including both the new and the old club members -, through the three most important functions of the human body - the heart, the mind and the tummy. All fueling the After a while of indulging and creative and innovative entrepspeaking about the project, reneurship, trademarking the it was time for the diploma project. ceremony. Students who had

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A.V.I.T.A.E

Social media makes a difference by: Oona Jauhiainen and Katja Keskitalo Social media is a place where you can find amazing pictures and phenomena waiting for you. Social media impacts us in many ways, but the impact is not always strictly black or white. Everyone has heard that if you put a picture online, it stays there. If you make a dumb meme about your friend, teacher, neighbour or anyone, it could stay as an inside joke, or it could go viral, but just as well people can share their arts, knowledge and just about anything.

Nobody is saying that you shouldn’t post anything on Facebook. On the contrary, sharing is a very powerful way to get attention, not only for you but for bigger things. Sharing addresses, making campaigns, creating new hashtags… For example, Suomen Lukiolaisten Liitto, also known as The Union of Upper Secondary School Students in Finland, created a hashtag #kutsumua, literally translated #callme, which is against bullying and name-calling. In other words, teenagers took a simple selfie with a paper, where was written some mean trait or nickname crossed over and in bigger letters a new, better trait. In other words, somebody could cross over

“weird” and write “unique” and they could also share something about their past. It was a brutal way of showing how common bullying is and how it destroys one’s self-esteem.

smartphones and social media accounts, despite age limits.

Parents don’t have the power or don’t know how to control their children, so social media is basically like the Wild West; there are some rules, but peopIn 2013 Finland was the last le think of them as some kind of Nordic country where same-sex guidelines instead of law. marriage was not allowed, but not for long. Tahdon2013 was When you are using social an initiative which made the go- media, you should know for vernment recognize this prob- sure what you are posting. Solem. Over 160 000 people sig- cial media and the world can ned it in only a few days, when change a practical joke to soin fact initiatives need only 50 mething that you didn’t hope 000 signatures. In 2017 we will for. The best rule is to not post be able to marry whoever we anything that you would like want to, as long as our partner to remove some day, because is on board with us. To sum up, unfortunately that can be imsocial media is not only for sel- possible. fies and who gets the greatest number of likes. It’s an easier In the end the impact of social way to make a change and media is boundless. Social mespread the word. dia has taken a place in homes, schools and workplaces. You But what makes social media can’t avoid the impacts and so powerful? Well, obviously consequences. In fact, every everyone has access to it and one of us gives power to social almost everybody is using some media. That is why it’s our reskind of social media. Facebook, ponsibility to make it safe for Twitter, Instagram, Blogger, everyone.

MySpace… the list is endless.

Social media has taken root in today’s world and it has taken a place in everybody’s life. In the future, social media is going to take an even bigger place in our lives. Even children have

The Avitae Day was a success

by Sanna Halunen What is better than a school day spent listening to students sharing their memories and feelings about amazing trips around the Europe? This was what the students of junior high school and secondary school of Pyhäjoki got to do on a sunny day in June. The people of the town had also been invited to take part in the Avitae Day.

ries. During the Avitae Day in Pyhäjoki the students got to hear about all the trips made from the upper secondary school of Pyhäjoki in the past year. Two of those were Avitae trips, to Bratislava and to Tenerife. Some of the students have also visited Russia and Barcelona and those trips were also mentioned during the day.

The Avitae Day united younger and older students to learn about the Avitae project, which makes students collaborate with total strangers from foreign count-

Bratislava was the first destination of the school year.

From Pyhäjoki there were five students and one teacher taking part in the project.

On the Bratislava-stop eve-

rybody got to hear about the beautiful sights in Bratislava and amazing experiences that will be forever remembered.

Especially the school made a big impact on the Finns; it was a high school but also a vocational school, where students learned to, for example, cook.

This is also why the theme of the trip was food.

The rest of the trips were all made in the spring. Five students and two teachers visited Tenerife in the end of April. They stayed in San Cristóbal de La Laguna for one week. Though Tenerife is

an island near Africa, it is part of Spain and part of Europe.

Still it is the most southern point of Europe. For Finnish students the climate and nature are different and very intriguing.

Avitae Day was a success, and in the end the school had a Skype-connection straight to Tenerife. We heard the Spanish students sing a traditional Canarian song and had a wonderful chat with them about all kinds of things such as our schools, the weather and holiday plans. The Day

was a way to give everyone a glimpse of different culture and of the deepest meaning of the whole project: new experiences and friendship.

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Social media

By Ema Bujnakova, Slovakia Last week I read an interesting article about the pros and cons of social media. There is no doubt that social media has a huge influence on young people. I must say that it doesn’t only affect young people, but people of all ages - my mother spends more time on social media than I do.

Why does she spend so much time there? Because she is connected with people important to her job. This is really a great feature of social media, bringing people together that are interested in the same things as you are.

Thanks to my mother, I have explored Twitter lately and was surprised at how interesting it can be. Of course I use Facebook, YouTube and Instagram too, but Twitter is something new for me. I have discovered such amazing resources for recipes there. It is easy, just write the hashtag with the food you want to explore and there are

thousands of tweets with information. It is also easy to follow interesting people, react to their posts and connect with them.

We all know Facebook and its power. I used to spend hours and hours on Facebook, posting, but most of all chatting with friends. It is very useful to go to Facebook when you need to connect with people and reach them very quickly.

On the other hand, I spent so much time on Facebook chatting instead of going out with friends. One day I decided to reduce it and it was great. Now I prefer real meetings with friends and talking to them and it really is better.

I have also learnt that it is very important to think about what I am going to post or comment.

It can be beneficial or dangerous when applying for a job. Did you know that companies check your internet activity?

Social networking is nice, but

we need to have a set time to spend on it. There is a danger that you are so involved in reading different posts that you forget to live your own life. There is also a big danger of cyberbullying especially for children.

Social media exists and we need to learn how to behave and how to use it to be beneficial and not harmful for us.

AVITAE DAY Hotelova akademia, Slovakia

We decided to organize the AVITAE day on the last day of school in June. It was our task to decide what we would do.

We are a team of students who participated in the exchange visits. It was our last year of participating in the project, because next year we will leave our school and will have to prepare for the final exams.

We decided to prepare a presentation about AVITAE project and invite all teachers and students to visit our classroom.

To make it nice and interesting, we also prepared some sweets and a coffee corner for the teachers, where they had an opportunity to talk to the AVITAE participants and read the AVITAE newspapers.

Students and teachers visited out classroom and learnt about our visit to Denmark, Greece, and Tenerife and also about the

visit of all project partners in our school in October.

Most interesting and exciting part was talking about staying in the host families and getting in touch with other cultures and ways of life. We presented also our twinspace and the webpage of the project. It was so nice to see the students eager to talk to us and listen to our stories.

There is no doubt that they would like to participate in such a project next year.

AVITAE project was the most valuable experience that we had during our studies. We learnt not only about innovation and entrepreneurship, but also about our partner countries. We had an opportunity to learn how different and how similar we are, we were able to collaborate and create things together in international teams and it was really amazing.

Made by Jeremia Toppari from Finland.