Most of the activities were prepared a year ago because normally the meeting would have been realized in 2020. The Covid-19 didn’t allow us to have the meeting physically, so we decided to realize it virtually in April 2021. The questions raised in this case was “how to transfer all the activities on the computer screens or mobiles and how to engage participants to have an active role”. So the preparation for the virtual meeting started 3 months before the meeting with the participation of 11 students and 4 teachers. We decided not to include only two of the activities(Mindfulness and charity march) since the meeting would last only 3 days and would be difficult to realize especially the charity march!
The activities that were designed from the beginning were “the Olympic games” and “Museum Gymkhana”. The Olympic Games originally were designed as physical activities separating students into groups. In the virtual meeting we thought to talk about the history of the games and then to offer some mind games to the participants to play individually.
Regarding the “Museum Gymkhana” activity we had initially scheduled a visit to the Museum of Eleftherna, a new museum which contains all the findings of ancient Minoan city called Eleftherna. There, the students would have done a group work , answering to some questions immediately after the guided tour in the museum. Unfortunately this couldn’t be done virtually so we changed our plans and focused on the Museum-residence of Eleftherios Venizelos using mainly the material from the Foundation of Eleftherios Venizelos.
We made our preparation meetings during the weekends using the web platform so as all participants will get used with it! We designed the schedule , we assigned 2-3 students to each activity and also find 3 presenters-coordinator, one for each day. We also had the choice of an alternative platform just in case it was needed.
We provided laptops and headset to the presenters so as they have good connection and communication with the participants.
Our students had the idea of preparing a video that will include images from all the meetings since that was the last one and it would be nice to close reminding everyone the unique moments of this project. The video was named “Erasmus is moments”.
Of course as always happens the meeting’s last event would be that of the closing ceremony. Beyond our preparation for this, we asked from the other country participants to prepare some happenings (songs, dances) so as to make this ceremony unforgettable for everyone!