Erasmus+ project "Digital Tools to Support Inclusion and Empower Sustainability (DIPS)" in Monterotondo, Italy

Monday, 18.03.2024

On Sunday we arrived in Rome, Italy and from there we took a train for maybe 1 hour to a small town near Rome called Monterotondo. On monday the host families brought us to the school, where the local students prepared an amazing welcome for us. We met there also students from Greece and Spain, that were part of a different project, but because the theme was the same for them and for us, the Italians decided that we will do this together. And it was nice to meet students from other countries as well.

The local students prepared for us a concert and we were surprised to hear they also learned to play and performed for us the Finnish national anthem. After that there was another surprise, a AI robot gave us a welcome speech and then we had a short lesson on how to operate it and how it works which was cool to try to play with. Next we did some ice breakers and played some games to get to know each other better and after that we started the introduction to the project.

Monterotondo is a small town of maybe 40.000 people and used to belong to the Orsini family, a very powerful and rich family in old time Italy. Originally it was an agricultural area with a summer house where the family spent time when they wanted a break from the busy time in Rome. Already the first day in Italy was just as expected. We were welcomed by pasta, pizza and our families kept on feeding us delicious food for the whole week. We even tried making our own pasta by hand. It was a lot of fun and it also tasted amazing.

The project we will be working here on is coding and developing a game on the topic of sustainability based on our code. We were excited to learn a little bit of coding and had some very fruitful brainstorming sessions on what the game should be about.

Tuesday, 19.03.2024

Today was an exciting day - we are going to Rome. We knew that the Italians would organize for us a day in Rome, but we got a big surprise; we will go to Rome twice. So this was the first trip of the two.

After around 45 minutes on the train we arrived in Rome. Our tour started at the Vatican and we were so lucky that when we arrived there, Saint Peter’s square was almost empty and there was almost no line at all. We went inside the St. Peter's Basilica, saw Michelangelo's “Pieta” and were absolutely blown away by the beauty of the cathedral. We learned that the area in front of Vatican used to be full of old gothic streets but Mussolliny wanted to have instead huge bulevards to make Rome look representative in accordance with the style and ideas of facism and so he gave an order to destroy the small streets and built a huge boulevard that makes you see the St.Peter’s from a big distance.

From there we walked to the Castel St. Angelo. It was initially commissioned by the Roman Emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum for himself and his family. The popes later used the building as a fortress and castle, and it is now a museum. The structure was once the tallest building in Rome.

The tour continued through many beautiful roman streets to the Piazza Navona. It is built on the site of the 1st century AD Stadium of Domitian and follows the form of the open space of the stadium in an elongated oval. The ancient Romans went there to watch the agones ("games"), and hence it was known as "Circus Agonalis" ("competition arena"). It is believed that over time the name changed to in avone to navone and eventually to navona. In the 17th century it became a showcase for Baroque design, with work by Bernini and Borromini among others. The Fountain Of Four Rivers stands in front of the Church of Sant'Agnese in Agone.

We also had time for a break and had some small snacks and later time for lunch. And after lunch came the thing we were looking for the most - Pantheon. It is one of the best-preserved of all Ancient Roman buildings, in large part because it has been in continuous use throughout its history. Since the 7th century, it has been a church dedicated to St. Mary and the Martyrs, known as "Santa Maria Rotonda".  Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon's dome is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43 meters.

We walked that day almost 18 kilometers across Rome and felt tired, but it was worth it. So much amazing history and always more to see. The Italian students prepared for us also a digital guide to the sights so we could learn more about them using the interactive guide with our smartphone app. It is great to see how technology makes things easier.

Wednesday, 20.03.2024

After yesterday’s amazing trip to Rome, today we had a plan to stay at the school and work on the project. It is not easy to learn coding, even if we were using a simple drag-and-drop coding platform. It did take us a lot of time to make a small progress but we feel we have learned some basics of coding and maybe we can do this ourselves in the future. Next to the coding part of the project, we also had a soap-making workshop. We went to the chemistry lab and made soap ourselves so we have a nice memory this week (except the thousands of pictures).

In the afternoon we got a tour of the Monterotondo city, its history and then we went to the Orsini castle. The city is not too big but the old part is magical and we cannot get enough of the narrow old streets and houses with small balconies. It breathes history everywhere we turn. The Orsini castle is now a municipality office house, but was a great house of the family that was one of the richest families in the medieval and renaissance times in Rome. They supported art and artists and also the castle in Monterotondo had an amazing collection of art and artifacts from the old times.

After the tour we had an evening with our families, went to eat some pizza, bowling and spent some nice time together in the Italian style.

Thursday, 21.03.2024

Today was another day we went to Rome. With so much to see there, it would not have been possible to do in one day, so we were very glad.

We started the tour at the Colosseum. It is the largest ancient amphitheater ever built, and is still the largest standing amphitheater in the world, despite its age. Construction began under the Emperor Vespasian in 72 AD. The whole sight was amazing and then we walked to a Forum Romanum, which is surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings and originally it was a marketplace.

From there our tour continued via Piazza del Campidoglio, which is a square designed by Michelangelo in the 16th century to a The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is a memorial to all soldiers that fell in the war for Italy. It was originally commissioned by Mussolliny and he also had his annual speeches from there to the crowd of his supporters.

Probably the highlight of the trip was an exhibition we went to called Domus Romane. Under the Palazzo Valentini is a hidden gem, namely the remains of two Roman houses including their baths. During an augmented reality tour, the excavations come to life with animations and virtual reconstructions. It was an amazing experience when in front of our eyes using the virtual reality and augmented reality the whole antic house came to life with its decorations, every detail in color as it was built in ancient Rome. It was a very immersive experience and left us almost speechless.

We ended the tour at the Fontana di Trevi, another Michelangelo’s creation and one of the peak attractions of Rome and we also saw the Spanish Steps. Then it was time to go back to Monterotondo for another afternoon with our new friends and their families.

Friday, 22.03.2024

The whole week went by so fast and this was our last day. The morning we spent working on the final project, which was the sustainable game we coded ourselves in international teams with the italian, greek and spanish students. When it was done, the teachers were a committee of judges and gave points to our games for topic, execution and message. So the whole project presentation was made into a competition model.

We all did a great job considering we all were coding beginners and had limited time to create the games. We learned some basics of coding and we were thinking about sustainable topics and how to connect the two topics together. We also practiced working in the international team and project management (also time management) when we had to divide the roles and make sure our work was done on time and well. We had some obstacles on the way we had to deal with but this is what happens in every project and we are now better prepared for the real life situations that can face us in the future.

At the end of the presentation the Italians prepared a surprise lunch for us with delicious italian style sandwiches.

The whole week was an amazing experience. We learned so much about Italian culture and the history of Italy, Rome and Monterotondo. We got to eat and also prepare ourselves Italian food and made some friends for life. We learned to code and use some other digital tools, played with the AI robot and saw how digitalization can improve and help in everyday life.

Projects like this are very important and we cannot wait for the next trip and new friends.