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Education

SPECIAL SYMPOSIA

7th Symposium
“Educators and Programs about the Acropolis”
Special feature: Museum Kits
“Let’s Go to the Acropolis” & “A Greek Temple”
Center for the Acropolis Studies, Saturday 10, May, 2003

4th Elementary School of New Ionia in Volos

Middle & High School of Volissos in the island of Chios

The 7th Symposium was dedicated to the two educational museum kits “Let’s Go to the Acropolis” and “A Greek Temple”, and presented the great project of creating and supplying our ‘third generation’ of museum kits to about 160 institutions in Greece and 85 outside the country.

17 papers were given by 19 speakers who had used the two museum kits in their schools. The speakers represented 15 schools and one Public Mobile Library. One presentation was given by the representative of the Ministry of Culture and Education of Cyprus. All schools were public; 5 of them had primary and 11 had secondary levels of education.
8 reports originated from the provinces, - from Volos, Thessaloniki, Karditsa, Larissa, Poros, Sparta, Tripolis and the island of Chios. 3 schools came from the broader area of Attica, - from Lavrion, Avlona and Rafina, and 5 schools were from Athens, - from Egaleo, Kypseli, Peristeri and Haidari.

The presentations started with Mrs. A. Paraskeva, who introduced to us educational software with the title ”Like a tale….”, that had been compiled by the 5th grade of the 4th Public School of New Ionia in Volos. The story of the Acropolis of Athens was divided into thematic units - yesterday, today and tomorrow – and was composed like a tale with beginning, middle and end. The making of this CD-Rom gave the children the chance to deepen their knowledge about the Acropolis by exploiting the teaching materials provided for them at school and at the same time to make use of the new technology. It was produced during the course of a special program, in which the school was involved. The objective of the program was the pilot implementation of computer technology in 14 public schools of Greece.

After the discussion of the use of the new technology in school classes, we followed Mr. E. Dounias and the students of the 2nd Elementary School of Sparta on a fantastic tour of the Athenian Acropolis. Using the museum kit “Let’s Go to the Acropolis” and their own imagination, the students walked through the monuments on the Acropolis Rock and the South slope, stopping at several stations. Every monument came to life in the eyes of the youngsters through related questions.

Then Mrs. C. Panagiotou from the Middle School of Rafina put the spotlight on ancient Sparta, which was the focus of a project carried out by Stella, Artemis and Sophia, all students of the 1st grade. “Leo the Spartan, the best of his class, won as a prize a trip outside autocratic Sparta. He longed to pay a visit to the Acropolis with children of the same age that he knew, by means of a mysterious high tech communication system. And so it happened… His three friends, who were living in ancient Athens, started on their sightseeing tour on the fifteenth of August of the 4th century BC, their names were Stellas, Arti and Fosia…“ It turned out to be a very different sightseeing tour, written in a very resourceful way that will be remembered by the children of the Middle School of Rafina for a very long time along with the knowledge they gained about the Acropolis and its monuments.

The speeches continued with Mrs. E. Hatzidaki and “A fashion show in the 5th c. BC on the Acropolis Rock”, which was organized by the 2nd graders of the 19th Middle School of Athens. After working through the museum kits “Let’s Go to the Acropolis” and “Ancient Greek Dress”, the children put on a show containing two parts. In the first they presented to their fellow students a tour of the Acropolis with reference to its history as well as the statues and the votive offerings that adorned the great Rock. In the second part student-models appeared who were wearing the basic types of ancient greek dress. As each model presented his/her costume and the appropriate information was given by the “host of the show”, every child chose a monument from a slide show that would, in their view, go with the dress. The success of this display resulted that the 32 children of the 2nd grade Middle School took the entire 1st and 2nd grade levels of their school (170 children) on a tour of the Acropolis. The venture of leading these 170 children and tour-guiding them was taken over by the participants of the original show who had proven very knowledgeable.

Mr. I. Koutsouridis from the 9th Elementary School of Thessaloniki showed how interesting History lessons can be. Under the title “The great works in the era of Pericles” he developed a lesson plan geared towards the children of 5th grade, using the museum kit “Let’s Go to the Acropolis”. He also related ideas and suggestions for exploiting the kit not only in History lessons, but also in Art, Mathematics, Languages, Information Technology, English and Geography lessons.

The next presentation was given by two teachers, Mrs. A. Lekka and Mr. T. Alexiou. They introduced a program of school activities that was designed for the Environmental Education. It was organised in Middle and High School of Volissos-Chios in the academic year 2001-2002, under the title “I know my History: from Ancient to Byzantine Times, from folklore to modern people.” The program aimed at the approach and combination of cognitive branches, alternative teaching of Languages and History with hands-on material, the planning and production of teaching material by the students as well as the possible contribution to enhancing their collective memory. It was organized within the thematic units: Ancient World, Byzantine World, Recent Times/ Folklore. These consisted of smaller thematic modules: Let’s Go to the Acropolis, The City of Athens and its Political System, The Byzantine Painter, among others. The program contained activities on the basis of school books, research work in the library and in workshops, with the assistance of the two museum kits.

“The museum kit in a school for imprisoned students, a unique experience” was the title of the next speech that was also a unique experience for the audience of the Symposium. Mrs. M. Vlachou from the Annexed Middle School of Avlonas conveyed to us the peculiarities of the prison school as well as the students – detainees who pursued the subject voluntarily and mostly were foreigners. The indifference of these students towards the Acropolis at first –since they might never have been able to see it up close - changed into an interest in learning and creation only when they were shown the museum kit “Let’s Go to the Acropolis” in class. Greek students of the 3rd grade Middle School made drawings and wrote texts about the Acropolis, while one Albanian student of the same grade built a model of the Rock and the Parthenon from clay.

Mrs. C. Papadopoulou, a museum pedagogue from the Department of Museum Education in Public Schools of the Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus, talked about the successful use of seven museum kits with the theme “A Greek Temple” by about 1500 students in 37 public schools all over the country. They were used mainly in History lessons, but also during Greek and Art classes. They were correlated with subjects such as “ Worship” and “Temples” in the Archaic and Classical periods, taking a closer look at the orders of the temples. The students created columns from clay, painted reconstructions of ancient temples and invented fantastic stories in which they traveled to the ancient temples and visited them either with a time machine or in their dreams. They made up similar stories by personifying the columns or the depictions on the pediments.

From Cyprus we went back to the center of Athens, this time with Mrs. O. Kosma and 20 6th graders from the 29th Elementary School of Athens, who started to discover the “new” ancient temples, the neoclassical buildings in the center of the capital only after studying the museum kit “A Greek Temple”. At the Benaki Museum and the Museum of the City of Athens the exhibited interior decoration of athenian neoclassical mansions helped the children understand athenian neoclassicism to the point where they were able to “build“ their own neoclassic building in class. Afterwards they descended to the center of Athens to see those buildings up close, and to “capture” them by taking pictures of them. “It was the nicest walk in the world”. After that the children studied in detail the anthology and their history book to choose the most appropriate text to go with each photograph.

The following paper was held by Mrs. S. Lourida, who together with the students of the 1st and 2nd Elementary School took us all the way to the island of Poros. The museum kit “A Greek Temple” helped the children to familiarize themselves with the features of classical architecture, to the point where they could recognize and appreciate the architectural elements of their local buildings. After they had studied in class the shapes and the details that make up each order, they visited the museum of Poros, where they saw a display of all the architectural parts. At the end of the program the children strolled through the city of Poros and could now more easily detect the classical forms of architecture within the modern buildings of their town.

The children of almost 80 elementary schools of the prefecture of Karditsa, together with Mrs. M. Theologi and the Mobile Library of the Local Association of Municipalities and Communities of the Prefecture of Karditsa, went on a trip to ancient Greece with the museum kits. The combination of the three museum kits “Let’s Go to the Acropolis”, “Ancient Greek Dress” and “The Twelve Olympian Gods” made a big impression on the little students, who started to discover the “hidden meaning” of antiquity. From then on the children kept asking for books about ancient Greece and waited impatiently for the next visit of the Mobile Library, which became a pleasure for them.

The next report was given by Mrs. A. Hatziparasidou and Mrs. Z. Papadimitriou from the Experimental Middle School of Tripolis, who had experienced working with the two museum kits “Let’s Go to the Acropolis” and “A Greek Temple” with the 1st grade children. Assisted by the latter kit, the students created pictures that had ‘the ancient temple’ as their subject and were shown in an exhibition at the end of the year. That way the students approached a difficult topic like ancient architecture in an unconventional way, understood the functions of an ancient temple as well as how the evolution of architecture relates to economical and social circumstances. Before their visit to the Acropolis the students were separated into groups and studied the monuments using the museum kit “Let’s Go to the Acropolis”, and during their tour passed the necessary information on to their fellow students.

The “Program about Ancient Greek Temples” was introduced by Mrs. A. Zabouni from the 5th Middle School of Haidari. It was an optional class, and took place after school hours, but still 40 students of the 1st and 2nd grades participated. After working through the museum kit “A Greek Temple” the children went on to diverse construction activities, bringing their imagination into play while also discovering and cultivating their skills. They fabricated facades of temples, crown tiles, reliefs from the Parthenon Frieze, built from wood the simple and the complex crane, a sledge for transporting stone and a stone-carrying wagon. Using styrofoam they put their theory into action about how the stone cutter abstracted the marble, while working with wood they understood the types of clamps for horizontal joints between the stoneblocks.

In the sense that museum kits are another form of book, they should have their place in libraries. The ensuing speeches demonstrate the perfect way to use the museum kits as it evolved in four school libraries.

The person in charge of the school library of the 6th High School of Egaleo, Mrs. D. Karassavoglou, showed the potential of a museum kit when used in the library of a school. The presence of the museum kit in the library became known to students and teachers through small posters pinned to the bulletin board in school and via announcements in class. The presentation of the Rock was connected with the museum kit about the frieze, and had the title “Shall we go to the Acropolis to see the Frieze?” Accounts were given about the Parthenon and events connected to the Acropolis Rock, cross-referring to the arts of literature, painting, photography etc.
Thus History lessons stopped being boring for the children; instead they were given further incentive to come into contact with art, and found out that the Rock and the monuments on it are not just “ancient” things, but rather they are a piece of modern day history. The library of the 6th High School of Egaleo was also a very good example of how lending the museum kits to other schools should be handled, in order to contribute to the cooperation between teachers with common problems and common goals, and to further the organization of events that liven up the educational process.

The museum kit “Let’s Go to the Acropolis” provided the context for Mrs. G. Stellaki from the 14th High School of Peristeri to deal with the topic of evaluation during teaching. She had prepared a questionnaire on the use of this museum kit in order for the results to be “judged” and to find ways of more extensive cooperation between students, teachers and museums. The students completed the questionnaire with great enthusiasm finding this touch with alternative teaching methods interesting, since the museum kit offered an alternative method and thus could change school routine in the hands of a gifted teacher. Moreover, the same museum kit gave Mrs. Stellaki the opportunity to “guide” 30 teachers of the Peristeri area through the material and its use in a school library. There was discussion on how the content of the museum kit could be used for a most thorough and creative lesson within a group oriented and subject related approach.

The discourses about school libraries continued with Mrs. P. Mylona. Last year the students of the 7th High School at Larissa asked themselves, “Shall we go to the Acropolis?” when challenged with getting to know the museum kit. This year, without further questioning, they went about getting ready for the trip as if they travelled to the ancient world on a yearly basis. The students went on a fantastic itinerary on the Sacred Rock closely paying attention to the pictures provided by the museum kit regarding space and time, thus understanding the significance of chronology in history. The presentation of the museum kit was combined with a visit to the Acropolis, accompanied by student projects and became loan material for many primary and secondary level schools of the prefecture. The existence of the museum kit in school made the library an information center, into the “center of action” of the school.

The reports ended with Mrs. M. Bereti from the 1st Middle School of Lavrion. The borrowing of the museum kit “Let’s Go to the Acropolis” gave the pretext for the library to design and organize an exhibition about “The Acropolis, 6000 years of History”, which consisted of 25 panels with photography and texts. The exhibition aimed at a thorough acquaintance of the Acropolis and its monuments by the students, the teachers and all the citizens of Lavrion, as well as their increased awareness of topics like the protection of cultural heritage, briefing the teachers about the powerful effect of enriching lessons by using the museum kits, and the cultivation of the students’ inquisitive spirit and critical judgement. The exhibition was a great success; about half the student population of Lavrion came to see it.

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