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1. Description of Our Community
Strumica is the largest city in south-east Macedonia. The town is first mentioned in 2nd century BC with the Hellenic name Astraîon (Hellenic for 'starry')by Ptolemy and Pliny. It was later known as Tiveriopolis. It received its present name from the Slavic settlers of the Middle Ages. Strumica is the main agricultural center in the Republic of Macedonia. It has food industry, textile factories and a developed domestic and international trade network. We want to show the world that through the uniting and big dreams people are able to create something extraordinary and share it with others. We hope that people will become interested in visiting this region and getting to know more about our local community, its history and magnificent monuments culture tradition and architecture. We are a team from public high school 'Jane Sandanski' with more than 1500 students and 90 teachers and stuff. We have many national and international awards from competitions in different areas.
2. Summary of Our Project
We have chosen the category Local Culture, Music and Art Forms in order to show the world that there is a small but amusing country on the Balkan region which is worth to be talked about and because of its complexity it can never be forgotten. It’s a country with unique culture which shows us the development of our nation throughout the centuries. There were so many amazing crafts that were well-to-be-known, and now they’re slowly but for sure dying. We think that it is such a pity if they stay in a shadow of the new modern attractions, so we want to show them to the world and in that way everyone to get know them better and realize that they are unique and shining with their mysterious bright beauty. In order of that we want people to get a better view of them and a better view of our amazing country with a long historical biography and its culture. According to this fact we proudly present Local Culture or more concretely the old crafts in Macedonia in our project named Light up the Shadowed Crafts.
3. Our Computer and Internet Access
A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:more than 50%
B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:more than 6
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:more than 6
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
No problem with Internet.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
A) Incorporating and Combining our Ideas: Due to the composition of the team we had for making this project, we managed to make a symbiosis of our ideas and we translated all of our knowledge into a form through which we can influence the world and present our country as a small place, yet very rich with cultural and historical marks. B)Time Management: As each project this one also requires total dedication and commitment. First, we had a problem finding room for collective operations. But thanks to the understanding of the principal of our school, we provided a room where we had access to wireless-connection and we were free to concentrate on making our project. We also had a problem choosing a topic on which we will write and explore. In the beginning, we faced a problem that refers to less information about our old crafts. Most of the information we had are from old craftsmen who we contacted with. C) Problems on our way: This project requires previous experience including skills from different areas. Our team consists of four high school students with different profiles and therefore was not easy to coordinate with time. We prepared for two years in the field of informatics and gathered information from all areas. We can not precisely define how long it took us to complete this project, because to be competent to work on such a project, time is nothing, only dimension, which is unclear.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
We, capturing a part of our people’s creative minds, culture and traditions of our country, gave a proof that our country is small place on the Balkan, yet rich with unique hand-made treasure. For many people the word “craft” doesn’t mean anything significant but our crafts are real peace of art that are worth to be seen and talked about. Despite the vast layers of the past, Macedonia has a vibrant and interesting present. There are traces of rich culture, tradition and history at every step –colorful customs, hand-made jewelry and pots with characteristic shapes. With this project we hope that these amazing crafts won’t stay in shadow and the young generation will continue the tradition of our great grand-fathers.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
Through all this 'journey', we have learned a lot of things about our country. Its history as well. We have found out how much our forefathers were creative. We also learnt different and new skills from this project: we tried to find out the detailed history, the special characteristic, the behavior and the special spirit and attitude of the people in Macedonia. Trying to minimize the differences in our thoughts, we learnt how to understand each other, giving both ideas and suggestions. We learnt how important is to cooperate with your fellow and communicate all the time. This project helped us to figure out that the key to know our identity and our living place through our culture and tradition. We all know that nowadays the new generation is more into modern technology than old culture. But through this project we believe that the national feeling and spirit, national pride and estimation to this historical message of our antecedents will be easy developed. Through the photos of all these hand-made items, the photographic memory of the students will help a lot in their studying , which will be more exciting and interesting.
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