Mobility in North Macedonia
STUDENTS ON THE ERASMUS+ EXCHANGE IN NORTH MACEDONIA
It is the second year for our school of the Erasmus+ project titled Approaching Social and Civics’ EU Key Competences. The main aim is to deal with the safe and responsible use of technology and social media. Last year our students learned a lot, they are more aware of the meaningful use of social media, about addictions that may be caused by the new technologies, and we also discussed the on-line abuse. This year we want to upgrade the project by mostly concentrating on the traps lurking on the internet. As the internet, social media and other applications are a necessity in the nowadays world, we are also going to deal with their positive aspects.
Last January our school hosted teachers and students from Poland, Turkey, South Macedonia and Poland, five of our students later went to an exchange in Poland.
In this school year, from 7th to 13th October, six students travelled to North Macedonia, to the town of Kadavarci, where they again met the members of our partner schools. The theme of the meeting was “Excessive use of the internet”. Students together with two teachers got to know North Macedonia. We visited the capital city of Skopje, saw their museums and we had the chance to admire the natural beauties of Lake Ohrid. We improved our knowledge of English and learned that we can understand some Macedonian, too. We danced the ora and discovered the music of all the partner countries, introduced the history of Slovenian music, as the 1st November is the international music day, which was also one of the themes of this mobility. We also learned about the Macedonia school system, attended classes, and learned something more about the excessive use of social media on the workshops, that’s why on our trip back home we swapped the mobile phones with books. We found out that Macedonian people are very polite and hospitable, also their food was delicious. We increased our friendships and we unfortunately had to part with tears in our eyes. We hope to meet again soon.
The project is moving on, we continue with updating our websites, making presentations for the students and we are also preparing for the final mobility in Romania in the start of April.
We crave for more similar projects that help us grow, show us that our education system is not as bad as we often hear it to be. Our students were praised as being open, flexible and smart young people who are fluent in foreign languages.
Our visit to North Macedonia made us realize that we need to be proud of our nation, our Slovenian music and our national identity all the while respecting other nations and their costumes.
Slovene Erasmus+ team
