P y h ä j o e n K u u l u m i s e t – 2 6 . 9 . 2 0 15
sivu 5
A.V.I.T.A.E
Avitae day = innovation day Ideas and visions fill the conversations around the tables in room 400 at Ørestad Gymnasium. We are four teachers from Faarevejle secondary school who are attending this special and innovative schoolday. While discussing their ideas, the students work in a practical and creative way and this combination makes room 400 buzz with activity and energy. On our way home we discussed the day and the input we got from the AVITAE-project and decided to establish international contacts, so our kids have to communicate in a foreign language in order to participate actively. Lise, teacher at Faarevejle Secondary school. At Oerestad Gymnasium we had our Avitae day March 26. The idea behind the day was to disseminate what we
had done with students until now. Focus for Denmark had been to teach teachers and students of the project the innovative method ”Design to Improve Life” in which you get to think out of the box, cooperate in groups, be creative in forming ideas, defining problems, give and receive feedback, present your solution and be specific in analysing target groups and background knowledge. We created a workshop in which a first year class from our school, teachers both from our school and from a secondary school participated and worked intensively with innovation in a historic context all day. With knowlegde from various historic periods the students had worked with in their history class, they had to think new solutions. One solution was Another was to create an to reuse old trains to make app with various features for cheap homes for students in grandparents and grandchilthe center of Copenhagen. den getting to know each
other better through activities and story telling. As one student said at the end of the workshop, ”It was a
fun and educational day. We used the innovative part of ourselves, we defined problems and found solutions to our chosen problem. Beyond that we also learned the importance of working together in our groups”, Nicolai 1e
as assistent teachers of the workshop. Now the AVITAE students had to experience the method from the inside. Ask Urheim from the project said, ”To be an assistent teacher was as much to teach as to learn yourself. Didactic and knowledge became one, and it became very clear to One of the purposes of me that both were needed.” the workshop was to use history in a modern con- After the workshop we had text and make the students a reception for students, experience one way to use teachers and parents where their newly gained historic we told about what we had knowlegde. One student done in the project. We also put it like this, ”I really think had an exhibition of protoit was a successful day. First- types from both the visit in ly because we were able to Copenhagen and the workwork and think in innovative shop earlier that day. ways. Secondly because we could choose which historic Claus and Charlotte, Denperiod we wanted to work mark with, we chose the Middel Ages”, Katja 1e
Since the students of the AVITAE project had tried out the method several times, four of them acted