Eilert Sundt upper secondary school Eilert Sundt upper secondary school is located in the town of Farsund in the southernmost part of Norway. The school has about 300 students, aged 16-19. By tradition we are a school preparing students for a university career, but we also provide vocational education in our computer and sales & services classes. Our school premises consist of an old and a new part. The old one is from 1905, designed in the “art nouveau”-style, when it was built after the town burned down. The new part was finished in 1999, and it has been awarded prizes for innovative architecture. A special metaphor is the staircase leading through the school, from the 3rd floor to ground level, often called “The Spanish Stairs”. It has a function as a passage, frequently used by local people as an “indoor” alley. Our assembly hall is the “agora”, often used for concerts, meetings and other activities. This confirms one of the main ideas of the school: to be totally open and playing a vital and important role in the local community of Farsund. If you press here, you can visit some of the photos of our school. The school is an important centre for culture and education, and we are very proud of our choir and music students. ICT has during the last 20 years been important at our school, as a means of providing better education for the individual student. We believe that the use of ICT is one way of introducing more varied methodology into the learning prosess for the individual student. We also have a strong international profile, and we take part in many projects. Among these is a student exchange program with our partner school Gymnasium Carolinum in Germany. This year we are also cooperating with the Norwegian embassy in Germany and Gymnasium Carolinum in planning the celebration of the 100 year anniversary of Norway’s independence in 1905. Another of our international projects is the cooperation with our partner school in Latvia, Jelgava State Gymnasium, where music and the exchange of the school choirs is the main focus. We also have a student and teacher exchange program that involves our sales & services and computer classes with a Finnish school, Seinäjoki Service Sector College. In this project the students work in real businesses and get valuable experience in each country. Avedøre Gymnasium in Copenhagen, Denmark is another of our international partner schools. We also were the coordinatior school of a project with in Comenius program, finished in 2002. For the last 3 years we have been an ENIS-school. The school also provides education for adults, using videoconferencing and Internet-based learning resources. Our resource centre administrates this, and the centre is important for us because it also plays an important role towards local society, organisations and businesses. Agder University College in Kristiansand has a decentralized department of its Teacher training College at our school. We are very concerned about quality development and increasing the outcome for the individual student at our school, and we take part in several projects trying to achieve this, national as well as international (see above). The significance of student participation and responsibility as major factors to optimise the learning process is crucial for us. Therefore, we try hard to make our student council work as good as possible. Also, it is a major challenge to be able to create a meaningful learning environment for our students with special needs. Our goal is that they as far as possible can be integrated in the ordinary classes. Other important projects are: preventing dropouts, dialogue based quality development and “Learning networks” (involves use of ICT). If you would like to get in touch with us, you could mail our principal, Arvid Frøsland, or contact our “webmaster” (press the webmaster icon in the upper right corner of our main page). You could also use regular mail. Our address, telephone number and other particulars are found at the bottom of our main page.