Two teams from CyI’s Science and Technology in Archaeology Research Center (STARC) in collaboration with two public schools participated at the competition “Students in Research - MERA” («Μαθητές στην Έρευνα»), organized by the Research Promotion Foundation (RPF) in collaboration with the Centre for Educational Research and Evaluation (KEEA) of the Ministry of Education and Culture.

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Elena Christophorou in collaboration with Aradippou High School and Panayiotis Kyriakou with Kyriaki Yiakoupi in collaboration with Pyrga Elementary School won First and Second Honors prize respectively. Lykeio Aradippou was ranked 4th out of 42 high school project participations and Pyrga elementary school was ranked fifth out of 14 elementary school project participations.              

Aradippou High School participated in the competition with a project entitled “Digital Libraries as a pedagogical tool for teaching and learning Ancient Greek”. Five students along with their teachers, Eftychia Piponidou and Pavlos Pavlikkas used Archaia Kypriaki Grammateia Digital Corpus project (AKGDC) as a test case to research primarily whether digital libraries enhance and make Ancient Greek language teaching and learning more interesting in secondary education and whether it helps the students to learn and understand better Ancient Greek texts and civilization. For this purpose, the project team organised a number of activities in the school such as teaching in the classroom using Archaia Kypriaki Grammateia Digital Corpus, interviews with students and teachers, online questionnaires,etc.

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The Pyrga Elementary School’s project was entitled “Pyrga: A time capsule. Discovering the key to unlock it”. The main scope of this research was to enable the students to acquire and practice research skills through investigating the past of their own community, and of Cyprus in general, and by using it as a source of information. One of the objectives of the student’s research was to document selected buildings of their village. For this purpose, the ‘young researchers’ worked closely and under the guidance of their teachers Dimitra Evthimiadou, Efi Miliotou and deacon Kyprianos Kountouris as well as with CyI researchers Panayiotis Kyriakou and Kyriaki Yiakoupi, who represented the STARC research team and Meliz Kusadali who represented the Turkish Cypriot community of Pyrga.

This effort has resulted to a variety of 3D models, detailed plans and drawings and assessment of selected monuments (both interior and exterior) within the community of Pyrga that allows the detailed analysis and study of the architectonic components of each monument. During the research new questions emerged which needed further examination. Based on the research and the data that the students collected, STARC aims to proceed with geophysical measurements at the yard of the royal chapel and the church of Agia Marina, with the hope of revealing some of the ancient structures of the village as well as the old Turkish and Greek cemetery of the Pyrga community. Finally, STARC will expand this research further in order to develop pedagogical tool kits.
 
The award ceremony will take place on Thursday, 5 June 2014 at Strovolos Municipal Theatre at 18:00 – 20:00.

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