Siemens honors best multimedia presentation from all across Europe – First place for team from Vitebsk in European Join Multimedia 2006 student competition

The winners in this year’s Join Multimedia student competition were honored at an awards ceremony in Munich this evening. First place in Age Group 2 (16-19) went to the student team from Art-Gymnasium 4 from Vitebsk in Belarus. The team’s school will now receive a prize of €1,000. The team members will receive a prize of €2,000 and also spend several exciting days at the Join Multimedia Camp in Munich. Four thousand four hundred and ninety four student teams from 37 European countries participated in Join Multimedia 2006, the competition’s tenth year.

Supported by their teachers, Tatiana Dargel and Andrei Dukhovnikov, the students from Vitebsk’s Art-Gymnasium 4 – Vitaly Borissenko, Ivan Klimko, Aliaksandr Krasitski, Mikhail Mudrahel and Ryhor Mudrahel – worked for four and a half months to produce their multimedia show.

Painter Marc Chagall and his birthplace of Vitebsk are the focus of the presentation created by the five students. Their show on the topic “People and places: Your region – An insider’s guide” is entitled “The City of the Great Master.” After a short introduction, users navigate using a panorama image. An extensive biography informs users about the life of Marc Chagall. The artist’s pictures are animated in an impressive fashion, lending a very lively feel to the presentation: houses grow from the ground like plants, and clouds move across the sky. A wide variety of information about the city completes this optically stunning and well-structured show.

Jury member Thomas Baumann PhD, Head of the subject area of e-learning and senior lecturer of Information and Communication at the University of Applied Sciences Zurich School of Education, summed his assessment up this way: “A beautiful, very accomplished presentation. The artistically animated images of Marc Chagall’s paintings are what make this outstanding, well-organized show really stand out. The form and content are a perfect fit for the topic.“

Some 220,000 secondary school students from 37 European countries have participated in Join Multimedia over the last ten years. Valuable support has been provided by nearly 23,000 teachers. Today’s award ceremony represents both the highpoint and the conclusion of the competition. With its Generation21 education program, Siemens will continue its strong commitment to schools and focus more intensively on fostering talented young people in the areas of technology and the natural sciences.

Further information on Join Multimedia and Generation21, Siemens’ worldwide program to promote the education and training of young people, is available at www.siemens.com/generation21/join_multimedia.