Adress:
Rua José Martins Garcia
9950-302 Madalena do Pico, Portugal
Tel. +351292622750
Our school is located in the island of Pico, in the archipelago of the Azores, a Portuguese outermost region. It is a general education school established in an underpreviledged social and economic rural area. We are responsible for all the general education in the municipality of Madalena, from Kindergarten until the end of secondary education. As an inclusive school we also have classes of mentally handicapped students, as well as vocational courses to those who, somehow, do not want to proceed to higher educational courses. We have a total of about 850 students ranging from the age of 4 until the age of 18, and around 120 teachers. The school is composed of several buildings, a main building in the town of Madalena and 5 other primary school or kindergarten buidings in the rural villages of the municipality. The school is highly motivated to develop this project. In fact our school is surrounded by a rich environmental and cultural territory. The Landscape of the Pico Island Vineyard Culture has been a UNESCO's World Heritage Site since 2004 and our teachers and students have, since then, established a very strong connection with this Cultural Landscape. Besides the cultural features of our landscape, our island also comprises several environmental sites regarding the protection of habitats and species, of endemic plants as well as species of birds, mammals (an endemic bat) and marine environments and species as well, all under the umbrella of different European environmental programmes - nature reserves, RAMSAR sites, for example. Pico island is also the most recent island of the Azores Archipelago, thus making it look like a "Swiss cheese", when we consider the huge number of caves that have been discovered. One of those caves has also been classified as a Natural Monument. Therefore, the relationship of our educational community with the local environment is of utmost importance to make us take a step forward leading a project like this from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, managing to connect different parts of the European Continent into a great network of different peoples and landscapes, connecting the dots. The key people in charge of this project in our school are a group of 4 teachers from diverse areas of education - arts, history, science and foreign languages - under the coordination of the contact person given above. We also count on the support of other teachers who support the digital part of the projects that the school frequenly develops.