We finished our Class Survey and we were the first (!!) in our group. Now we are waiting for the Class Surveys from the schools in other countries. You may see what we got from the Zarqa Pioneet Center in Jordan.
The Center was organizes in 1996 by the king Hussein to help
gifted and talented children to improve their skills. There are 50
students at school, 9 – 10 students in every class. They have 75
computers in the center (ACER, Great Wall, APD). Students' favorite
subjects are Maths and Physics.
They like playing table tennis and football, and computer/video
games (Cars, Counter Strike). Their favorite websites are Facebook and
YouTube.
Teenagers enjoy listening to Selena Gomez, Avrel Lavigne, Justin Bieber.
They like such national dishes as mansaf, maqlubah, mlokheia.
What is the Pioneer Center?
(from Khuzama's message)
The Pioneer Center is a place where a student goes to after
school for 3 hours, 3 times every week , to enrich his/her knowledge in
math, physics, music, drawing, computer, English, French, sport and
science. Here we have boys and girls. There's a computer for every
teacher, and enough computers for students. There are few students in
every class, max is 14, min can be 1 or 2, cuz we take only gifted and
talented students. In the CCM1 project there are 8 students (4 boys and 4
girls).
Zarqa
The city Zarqa is situated not far from the capital Amman. Its name
means 'the blue one'.The area of Zarqa is 20 sq mi (60 km2); the
population – 395,227. The main industries are food production,
phosphates production and medical equipment production.
Zarqa is a developing city. It is connected by the Hejaz railway
with Amman in the south and with Syria in the north. A new railway is
currently under construction to connect Amman with Zarqa. Zarqa lies on
the international Amman-Baghdad highway and the international highway
that connects Saudi Arabia with Syria.
There are three universities in Zarqa: Hashemite University,
Al-Balqa` Applied University Zarqa College and Zarqa Private University.
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Zarqa is Jordan's industrial centre, located in the Zarqa River basin, is home to over 50% of Jordanian factories.
The first settlement in the city was in 1902 by Chechen immigrants
who were displaced from the wars between the Ottoman and Russian
Empires. They settled along the Zarqa River. At that time a station on
the Hejaz railway was built in the new settlement, this railway station
turned Zarqa into an important hub. On April 10, 1905 the Ottoman
governor issued a decree that allowed the Chechen immigrants to own
lands which they settled on. The population then quickly grew in size.
On November 18, 1928 the new Jordanian government issued a decree to
establish the first municipal council for Zarqa.
(from Wikipedia)
After the Transjordan Frontier Force was formed in
1926, military bases were constructed in the city by the British army,
and the city later became known as the "military city". The headquarters
of Jordan's Arab Legion was in Zarqa.