The European Parliament´s Information Office in Spain, together with the European Commission Representative Office in Spain, announces the nineteenth edition of Euroscola Competition.

The main topic of the contest will be the EUROPEAN YEAR OF CITIZENS 2013. This edition will be dedicated to the rights that come with EU citizenship, and to active citizenship as a real opportunity to contribute to the European building process, on which young people play a fundamental role.

The Competition will take place on an online educational interactive platform: www.euro-scola.com.

The Contest seeks to:

> Promote the use of the Internet and new technologies as educational tools.

> Bring young people closer to the EU by improving their knowledge about it.

> Foster the learning of European Languages as a fundamental way to unite Europe. To this end, the contest will be developed in three languages: Spanish, Catalan and English. Contestants will be able to play in the language of their choice.

It is essential that the participating students speak other European languages, since the winners attending the Euroscola Programme in Strasbourg will have to interact with contestants from other countries using English or French.

INSCRIPTIONS

Contestants can register online at www.euro-scola.com.

The competition is open to all Secondary, High School and Intermediate Vocational Training centres located within the Spanish territory.

Contestants must register as teams comprising 10 students (aged 15 to 18) and a leader, who will be a teacher. The same teacher can register as many teams as he/she can put together, and he/she will be in charge/accountable for all of them. However, only one team per school may compete for the final prize, based on the highest number of points scored.

Registration can be completed online via the Competition website from February 26th to April 15th.

COMPETITION

The competition will start on March 18th and will finish on May 13th.

• Competition stage:

This stage will take place between March 18th and April 26th.

It will comprise the following tasks:

- Creating an introductory comic and audio-visual material on the rights and benefits that come with being European and on the role of the European Parliament. This project will be graded via objective assessment (test).
-Completing a team project including planning, development, rollout and communication for the celebration of Europe Day on May 9. This project will be incorporated to a blog.

The activity can take place during the week of May 9, but no later than May 12.

May 9 team initiatives can take place inside or outside the school, i.e.: in a cultural centre or in a centre provided by their Autonomous Community, so that their initiatives enjoy greater exposure.

• Final stage:

This stage will take place between April 29th and May 13th.

Itwill comprise the following tasks:

- Creating of a blog detailing the initiative that was developed by each team. Teams can use any free of charge platform for the creation and hosting of blogs, such as: WordPress, Blogger, Livejournal, Xanga, Edublogs, or any other technological platform that a team may wish to use as directed by its leading teacher.

  - Designing a plan for the promotion and dissemination of their initiative.

   Depending on the activity selected, teams will need to devise a way    so that their initiative is known by as many people as possible    within their target audience: school, community or virtual.

  - Corresponding with Europe Direct centres in their area so that these provide their support and contribute to the initiative’s exposure. Teams will preciously inform these centres about their initiatives.

Contact information for all the Europe Direct centres located in Spain will be posted on the Euroscola website.

  - Carrying out the proposed initiative to celebrate Europe Day and providing evidence that it has been carried out

Blogs will be published between April 29 and May 8. Teams will post their blogs’ URL’s on Euroscola’s website.

No later than May 13 at 18:00, teams must post on their blogs a report on the execution of their proposed initiative. The report can include media mentions (school web or blog, school magazine, local paper or online press, etc.) about the initiative, as well as pictures or videos showing that the initiative actually took place.

Teams are advised to get in touch and work together with their school’s Technology teachers to select the platform to be used to develop and host their blog. Likewise, teams are encouraged to seek counsel from their Language and Art teachers so that the end result of their work is better.

All teams entering the competition must abide by the regulations governing the use of resources by minors, the right to privacy and copyright. The teachers leading the teams entering the competition are in charge of instructing the young team members on safe internet browsing techniques that are to be used at all times. They will also be responsible for securing the minors tutors or legal representatives’ consent, if necessary, for the publication of images, pictures or videos developed during their participation in the Euroscola 2013 competition.

The EUROSCOLA competition is an educational Project fostering "Education in Values". All projects and proposals must be the result of the students’ reflection and of their original and documented proposals. ‘Plagiarised/copied’ works or works with no quality at all or with such a poor quality that they are testament to a lack of review work by the team itself will be disqualified.

All teams are reminded to always quote their sources when publishing proposals including surveys, reports, pictures or videos.

SCORES

The weight of the proposed activities on the final score will be determined as follows:

• The knowledge displayed by teams of the rights and benefits that come with being European and of the role of the European Parliament will be graded according to their performance in an objective knowledge assessment (final test): 50% of final score.

• The development of a blog on their Europe Day-May 9 celebration initiative (including planning, development, rollout and communication, as well as a final initiative execution report endorsed by the teacher leading the team): 50% of final score.

The Jury will rate blogs according to the:

• Originality of the initiative: 5 marks
• Quality of the blog and its contents: 5 marks
• Inclusion of European Union values in the blog: 5 marks
• Execution and exposure of the initiative: 5 marks

The Euroscola winners and the three top teams in each Autonomous Community will be announced on the Competition website on competition end.

PRIZES

The competition winners will take part in the Euroscola Programme at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and they will receive a grant to help with travel costs. The amount of the grant will be determined based on the distance between the city where the school is located and the city of Strasbourg.

Participating in the Euroscola Programme is a unique, unforgettable experience that gives students the opportunity to experience the European integration endeavour first-hand. The winners of the Competition in Spain will be able to experience, together with winning teams from other EU countries, what it feels like to become a Member of the European Parliament for a day at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Students will get to know the work that is done at the European Parliament first-hand by debating topics of interest for young people, engaging in negotiations with participants from other countries, and finally voting and reaching agreements on hot issues for Europe. The Euroscola Programme gives students the chance to interact and exchange views using a second language. These young students get to also represent their school and their region, in a knowledge sharing exercise that illustrates the diversity of the peoples of Europe and fosters cultural exchange.

Contestants will address the Parliament and speak in Parliament Commission meetings to debate and vote resolutions on pressing issues; they will practice foreign languages and will share their ideas with young people from other EU countries. Teachers will also be given a chance to meet up with colleagues from other countries and share classroom practices and educational information.

Further information on the Euroscola Programme is available on the Euroscola section of the European Parliament website:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/euroscola/view/en/index.html

There will be one finalist from each Autonomous Community. The top 9 teams from all the finalists will be the winners, regardless of their competing in Spanish or Catalan. Each winner team must come from a different Autonomous Community.

Having regard for foreign languages, there will also be a prize for the team with the highest score among those competing in English, regardless of whether a team of the same Autonomous Community has won the competition in Spanish or Catalan

Besides team members, each winning team may invite up to 14 additional students and 1 teacher from their school to participate in the programme. So that a new school can get to know the European Parliament with every new edition of the Euroscola, only those schools that have not won the competition in the 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 editions may compete for the final prize. However, the aforementioned schools may compete for the prizes given out by each Autonomous Community or partner institutions, as these deem appropriate.

The European Parliament′s Information Office in Spain will provide contact details for all winning teams to the European Parliament Office in Strasbourg. The relevant party in Strasbourg will correspond with the teams to make the appropriate arrangements for the participation of the winning teams in the Euroscola Programme.

The trip and the participation in the Euroscola Programme in Strasbourg will take place during the 2013/2014 academic year, or else during the second term of 2014, should such extension be requested by a large number of participants.

The European Parliament reserves the right to cancel or modify the terms of participation in the Euroscola programme in case of force majeure.

The European Parliament′s Information Office in Spain invites multiple national andregional organizations with interests in the topic of the contest to promote the Contest and contribute additional prizes. These prizes reach the teams through the appropriate Autonomous Community. Likewise, the students and teachers of the top three teams of each Autonomous Community, and the best English language team, will receive a European Parliament Diploma.

An email address will be made available for teams on the competition website to make enquiries and report technical issues, provided these are made with sufficient time that a solution can be found that has no impact on equal competition terms for all teams.

Once published, the list of winners and runner-up teams will be final.

Registration in Euroscola 2013 implies acceptance of these rules.

IPAD FOR

TEACHERS

All the teachers leading teams completing the final stage of Euroscola will enter a raffle to win an iPad. According to the regulations in effect, a notary public will oversee the raffle is done appropriately and legally.
Rules