Fun games in Getting Closer

Title: Getting closer

Educational stage: Primary Education

Subject: Interdisciplinary

The distance separating students at C.E.I.P. La Rosa- Camino Viejo school (El Paso, Canary Islands) and those at Ohkolan koulu school (Sari Auramo, Finland) is huge, so they decided to get together in a European city located on an imaginary line between both cities. And like any other trip that is planned, financing and other things are needed.

The coordinators of this project-voyage have organised the students into mixed Spanish-Finnish nationality groups, and have suggested a contest where the objective is to make all European members in the same team meet. The winning team will be the first to meet. In order to do so - and having agreed on the means of transport to be used - students from each country have covered a part of the distance between them.

As it usually happens in adventure trips, they are full of anecdotes; they have overcome them by passing very difficult tests, which have been recorded onto the blog: they have searched for the most suitable route, they have used a coordinate system by locating points on the map, they have explored the cities they have passed, they have paid attention to the weather, they have had to get local currency...Each test passed and its difficulty have generated credit to buy the petrol needed for the next stage of the trip.

Although the trip was long and lasted a whole academic year, the groups have remained stable all throughout the trip and have collaborated efficiently. With the help of communication tools (chat, email, videoconference...), they have paid attention to the needs and progress of each stage; observation instruments have allowed them to capture air-recognition images and peculiarities of geographical areas; and recording devices have allowed them to store the most relevant and compromising information.

Lastly, we had news about the arrival of the winners; students looked for and recognised each other, they walked towards one another...to be as close as possible, to touch each other, but...who put that screen in the middle?  To be continued