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In the Danish city of Århus three school classes have been tracking local architecture, and now they can share exciting stories with other children. The experiment has turned out a success and its results are now offered as teaching material.
The Norwegian co-produced short film 'Peter og ulven' ('Peter and the Wolf') was awarded Oscar in 2008. The Norwegian production company Storm Studio which is co-producer of the film 'Peter og ulven', has also produced the animation film 'Slipp Jimmy fri' ('Free Jimmy') that was awarded the main prize at the animation festival in Annecy.
Pupils from four schools in Nuuk took part in a major FIRST LEGO League (FLL) robot race in November last year. It was the second time that FLL final was held in Greenland and the tournament was organised by the Administration for children's and culture issues in Nuuk, in co-operation with the society Inutek.
If you are a Norwegian pupil and for a shorter or longer time are living abroad you can receive education based on Norwegian curricula and textbooks via Internet. Globalskolen ('The Global School') is a distance education in the framework of Norsk Nettskole ('The Norwegian Net School').
Arts Council Norway has granted support to the dance and theatre company Dancing Youth for establishing a new centre for hip hop and break dance in the district of Grønland in Oslo.
The report to the Storting ’Tingenes tale’ (’The Language of Things’) from the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research goes in for the task of stimulating the research and promotional activities in the five university museums in Norway. One of the measures is the opening of a digital university museum.
Pupils of Norwegian junior high schools have shot six films about privacy protection. These short films constitute one part of the educational campaign ’Du bestemmer’ (’You decide’), dedicated to privacy protection and run by the Norwegian Ministry of Government Administration and Reforms.
On the International Day of Children’s Literature, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir presented the Icelandic writer Kristín Steinsdóttir with the prize Sögusteinn 2008. She was awarded the IBBY children’s literature prize Sögusteinn that amounts to 500 000 Icelandic krónur for her authorship of children’s books.
48 mill. DKK granted by the Danish Government will create equal opportunities for all the children and young people to enjoy culture. The money will be used for buying book packages for exposed children and establishing new community centres in exposed residential areas, and the work is coordinated the Danish Library and Media Agency.
The Network for Children and Culture has recently published its new action plan for 2008 – 2009. The title of the action plan is ‘Children’s culture is developing’. It promotes the vision of all the children being able to meet culture, of all the cultural institutions participating in the process and all the forms of art being involved.
By means of the project ’The Zest for Reading – Lost in Translation?’ (’ Leselyst - Lost in translation?’), the Association !read (!les) would like to encourage positive meetings between young people with a multicultural background and literature.
Storycrafting is a narrative method when a new fairy tale or a story is being created by a narrator and another person. The method is most often used with children. A child or a group of children tell a story, and the adult writes it down and reads it so that the narrator can correct possible mistakes.
The life of young people becomes more and more virtual. The Internet is the medium youngsters use most; with it they spend many hours a day. What does the virtual life of children and young people look like and how much time do they use for it? We hope that the project ’A different life’, financed by the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, will help us to find answers to all these questions.
The Heritage Agency of Denmark would like to chart the scope and quality of the educational services provided by all the state museums in Denmark. This survey should bring into focus the potential of the museums as knowledge centres and educational environments.
In order to preserve their main audience – children - the Danish libraries should adopt a new way of thinking. This is the key message in the report on children and libraries published by the Danish Library Agency.
Valhalla, NIFIN - Nordic Institute in Finland, P.O. Box 231, FIN-00171 Helsinki,
www.nifin.helsinki.fi
Valhalla, NIFIN - Nordic Institute in Finland, P.O. Box 231, FIN-00171 Helsinki,
www.nifin.helsinki.fi