Letter from the famous Paleontologist Dougal Dixon to our students

The famous Paleontologist Dougal Dixon is considered the founder of  Speculative Biology and Evolution and is the author of number of books including the World Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Creatures, After Man, Man After Man and The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution.

Especially this last book, “The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution”, was a source of inspiration for the movie we created to answer the question:

How would life on Earth be if the giant meteorite had not struck us 64 million years ago?

I contacted Mr. Dougal Dixon sending him our movie and I got the following letter in response:

Dear Anestis Vovos,
Thank you so much for your complimentary comments about my book THE NEW DINOSAURS. I am so glad that your students got so much out of it – especially as it is nearly thirty years since I wrote it.
I loved your film. Especially the part where my creations were brought to life as actual models. When I saw that first shot of the Sandle I knew that I was about to watch something special. I particularly liked the cuddly Monocorn, and the Lank with a spoon for its head. It all looks fantastic, and you all must have had a lot of fun making them. All sorts of different techniques and materials too – clay, cloth, paper…
Well done to all of you. I hope that you continue to be inspired.

Yours sincerely,
Dougal Dixon

Congratulations to all the students that participated! Their efforts did not go unnoticed!

A movie answering our question!

In continuation of our activity “F.I.N.D.ing answers!” we explored the following question:

How would life on Earth be if the giant meteorite had not struck us 64 million years ago?

It turned out that our question was quite difficult to answer! Even scientists who have dealt with the subject do not agree on a commonly accepted answer. We discovered that there are three different answers supported by the scientific community.

Scenario 1: The dinosaurs are spared by the meteorite collision but eventually disappear due to other causes such as the decrease of global temperature or the competition from mammals, for which dinosaur eggs are an easy and rich food source. In this case though the disappearance of the dinosaurs would happen quite later. This would lead to a delay to human evolution and culture development. For this reason we have chosen to present in our film a world very similar to ancient Greece.

Scenario 2: Dinosaurs evolve! Their form and characteristics are changed to adapt to the new conditions on the planet. In this case study our source of inspiration was the amazing book “The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution” by Dougal Dixon. The evolved dinosaurs that “dino-students” present in our movie are inspired by this book.

Scenario 3: Proponents of this case, base their assumption to the fact that dinosaurs already prevailed for millions of years without major evolutionary changes up to the fall of the meteorite. Thus, in their opinion, if the meteorite did not hit the Earth then probably dinosaurs would continue to exist while maintaining approximately the same forms.

We studied our findings, we discussed how we could present them, we wrote the script for the movie, we constructed our evolved dinosaurs, we decided the  casting of the roles and then we shot our movie! You can see it here:

ERASMUS+ FIND Project: Making robots

As part of our involvement to the ERASMUS+ FIND Project our students of G2 (3rd Grade) and D1 (4th Grade) constructed their own robots. They used materials that would otherwise end up in the trash like used plastic bottles, cartons, lids, old buttons and more. Each robot was accompanied by a leaflet with lots of fantastic information like its name, when it was built, who and why made it, what features does it have and how it can be helpful.

Their creations were amazing! Some robots had features like lights and some even moved as depicted in the video below:

Finally our young engineers presented their creations to their schoolmates from other classes:

Our aim was to promote to our students the philosophy of STEAM and bring them closer to modern technology. We also engaged them in an activity that helped them envision themselves as designers and creators of the future.

G2 Robots

D1 Robots