Every year in April-May, the Albanian schools use to celebrate the Olympism through the Olympic Week, with the joy of efforts to participate and showing the Olympic Values of Friendship, Respect, and Excellence, as part of the “Olympic Education in School” project.
This year, locked in quarantine since the beginning of March, the Olympic Academy adjusted the calendar of it’s activities for 2020 due to postponement of the Olympic Games and COVID-19 pandemic. So, the Albanian Olympic Academy ( AOA ) firstly started the online training sessions through Zoom platform with the participation of Olympic Education Coordinators, Network Coordinator, and physical education teachers from all over Albania, launching the project “Olympic education at home – in terms of Covid-19”, and an awareness message, by the President of AOA Prof. Agron Cuka addressed to all teachers and students, the importance of living with positivity and the Olympic Values at home during quarantine.
For the realization of the above project, we implement following activities:
Project 1
a. Each school prepared video summaries of the Olympic Days and Olympic Weeks activities, realized over the years. These historical videos were useful to bring out memories, to revive the moments of joy by participating and experiencing the Olympic Values and Principles. This initiative was so useful as actually we have a rich archive of these historical videos.
b. Living with Olympic Values at home in quarantine conditions, students shot out attractive videos with creativity, various physical activities and work out, which have been transmitting the messages to stay at home, to stay healthy, and to apply in everyday life the values of friendship, respect, solidarity.
Project 2
AOA launched the organization of the “Olympic Competition” through the website and social media of Albanian NOC.
Students worked from home with creativity about the “Symbols and Olympic Values” thematic. Up to 2 weeks, about 35 albums and about 300 photos have been published, while the 3 most beautiful photos selected by an expert, got voted and received awards.
This project showed the great commitment of schools, physical education teachers, and students, while we received in an increased number of new followers in our social medias, with very indicative numbers. In one week more NOC page of Facebook got 942 new followers.
Project 3
The Olympic Quiz Online was realized on May 20, in the form of a Quiz Game. The purpose was to entertain students by testing their knowledge of the Olympic Movement and Olympic Education. 40 schools were registered with two students, 1 girl and 1 boy, aiming to promote gender equality, and only two winners were announced , one girl and one boy at the end of the game. The results showed the seriousness that Quiz was taken, as the first places had very high accuracy with 56 correct questions out of 59.
All the above projects show the commitment of physical Education teachers and students all over Albania, who were living the COVID time locked down with the Olympic Values.
