In 2017, students of our school, Erkko high school, were asked to join the EU's project called Technology For All. For us, the project began with a theme week in December, also in 2017, when students and teachers from Turkey, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Poland traveled to Finland. Before the week started, we all were introduced to our own guests – pretty much all of us and our families were host families for the arriving foreigners, so we got to know a little about them in advance.

Most of the guests arrived on Sunday, 10th of December, but the actual theme week started on Monday. By that, I mean that on Sunday we didn't have any shared activities, so in practice, everyone just got to know their own guest a little better by taking them home.

 

Monday, 11 December

This day was mostly about introducing our guests to our school and Orimattila in general. All students – both Finnish and others – held their own presentations about their country, city, school and skills in robotics. After lunch, we took our guests on a trip to see, for example, Orimattila's church.

 

Tuesday, 12 December

Our second day was spent in a city called Lahti, which is near Orimattila. First, we visited the local polytechnic LAMK, where we heard a little about studying robotics and we also got acquainted with the robots they use in their school. On our way to the next location, which was the skiing museum, we all had some fun together by playing snowball fight – which, in the end, was prohibited to minimize the possibility of accidents.

 

Wednesday, 13 December & Thursday, 14 December

On Wednesday all the teachers and students were divided into two groups. Depending on which group you were in, you either started with robotics or programming, and then on Thursday, we made a switch so that everyone got to try both robotics and programming. These two theme days consisted of programming with Arduino, building and using different kinds of robots (VEX IQ) and most importantly getting to know each other and other cultures.

Usually, our project days only lasted from 9 am to 3 pm, but on Wednesday we also spent the evening in a camping center in Mallusjoki. We went to the sauna and the bravest ones also ran, laid and rolled in the snow. That must have been quite an experience for the foreigners, too.

 

Friday, 15 December

This was the last day of this project week and because of that, we made a trip to Finland's capital city Helsinki. We drove around Helsinki with our bus and stopped by to see some tourist attractions we have there: the Sibelius Monument for example. Before driving back to Orimattila, we dropped our guests at the airport and told our goodbyes – at least for now.

 

Anette Jeremejew, Eveliina Lohikainen, Jessika Jalkanen (Finland)