A week on freedom and democracy your students will enjoy.
All you do is put up QR codes.
Five competition days for the 17 November anniversary, for secondary schools in Czechia and Slovakia. In their breaks, students hunt for QR codes around the school, take quizzes on their phones, watch archive footage and earn points for themselves and their class.
- Free for schools
- No student names or sign-up
- Non-partisan content
Download the QR codes in the teacher portal
Register or sign in – the Print kit tab has the PDF with 15 A5 posters and step-by-step instructions. Print them and put them up by Friday 6 November.
Key dates
- Fri 6 Nov 2026
- Put up the QR codes in the afternoon.
- Mon 9 – Fri 13 Nov 2026
- Competition days. Activities are available every day from 6:00 to 22:00 (Central European Time).
- Mon 16 Nov 2026
- Results announced in the app.
- 17 Nov
- Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Day.
Breaks become a game across the whole building
15 QR codes
Students look for them around the school during breaks. The codes stay in the same place all week.
A phone is all it takes
They scan a code with the camera and the app opens in the browser. Nothing to download, no registration.
New content every morning
At 6:00 the content behind the codes changes: quizzes on modern history and how society works, memes, videos and archive footage, tips for podcasts, books and films, and challenges to discuss with classmates.
Points for the student, the class and the school
Every completed activity adds points to the student, their class and their school, and counts towards the Czechia × Slovakia comparison.
Three steps and you are done
Put up the 15 QR codes on Friday 6 November in the afternoon.
You will find them in the envelope together with the guide and the competition rules. Add the posters as you like.
Place them where students spend their breaks.
Corridors, the canteen, break areas, notice boards. Spread them evenly across the floors.
Tell your students.
One sentence in class or on the notice board is enough.
That's all. The content changes by itself and the organisers evaluate the competition — you do not need to supervise or score anything.
Try the app as your students see it
This is Eolin on a student's phone. Look around the home screen and play six sample activities – points, bonuses and leaderboards change just as they do in a campaign.
A simulation: the schools, classes, nicknames and points are made up. Nothing is saved or sent, and the sample activities are not from a real campaign.
Next activity: the right arrow, or swipe left.
Home screenA non-partisan competition run by non-profits
Pauza na Samet (in Czechia) and Pauza na Nežnú (in Slovakia) are the two national versions of one competition: a non-formal education initiative for secondary schools for the anniversary of 17 November. It brings freedom, democracy and modern history to students where they spend their time — on their phones, during breaks — in a way they enjoy.
The content is non-partisan: it promotes no political party and wants students to form their own views. The form is made for secondary school students — tongue-in-cheek, but always with respect for the subject.
The competition is organised by Club Alpbach Czechia & Slovakia, z. s., with Díky, že můžem, z. s. as co-organiser, in cooperation with Memory of Nations (Paměť národa). It runs on the Eolin platform, operated by Arwell Works s.r.o.
Contest rules (Czech text) →Students play without a name, e-mail address or age. Data is stored in the European Union, and the competition data is deleted or irreversibly anonymised by 12 January 2027 at the latest.
Data in plain words →Prizes
Prizes go to the best individuals, separately in Czechia and in Slovakia. Classes and schools do not win prizes; their leaderboards are for interest only.
Czechia · Individuals
- 1st place: a wild card in the selection for a European Forum Alpbach scholarship (worth over €3,000) – straight to the last round, the final interview – and a full Cross-Border Dialogue scholarship worth €400. Both can be used from the age of 18.
- 2nd–8th place: a full Cross-Border Dialogue scholarship worth €400, to be used from the age of 18.
- 9th–18th place: the book Písničkou ke svobodě by Díky, že můžem.
Slovakia · Individuals
- 1st place: a wild card in the selection for a European Forum Alpbach scholarship (worth over €3,000) – straight to the last round, the final interview – and a full Cross-Border Dialogue scholarship worth €400. Both can be used from the age of 18.
- 2nd–4th place: a full Cross-Border Dialogue scholarship worth €400, to be used from the age of 18.
What teachers ask us
Pauza na Samet (in Czechia) and Pauza na Nežnú (in Slovakia) are non-formal civic education for the anniversary of 17 November. They bring freedom, democracy and modern history to students where they spend their time — on their phones, during breaks — in a way they enjoy.
The content is non-partisan: it promotes no political party and wants students to form their own views.
Just a mobile phone with a camera — iPhone or Android. Nothing is downloaded or installed: after scanning a QR code the app opens in the browser, and nobody registers.
On the first scan a student chooses their school, year and class. The choice cannot be changed later, so it is worth getting it right. They enter no name and no e-mail — the app generates a nickname for them.
The profile is stored in the browser where it was created. Ask students to keep playing on the same phone and browser and not to use private mode: if they clear the browser's data, the profile and its points may be lost and cannot be restored.
Before the campaign: put up the 15 QR codes on Friday 6 November in the afternoon and tell your classes about the campaign — one sentence in class or on the notice board is enough.
During the campaign, just encourage your students. The content changes by itself and the organisers evaluate the competition — you do not need to supervise or score anything.
After the campaign: once the results are announced on 16 November, the school may need to find a winner in the class and confirm the prize handover to the organiser.
We are sending envelopes with the 15 QR codes, the guide and the competition rules to about 500 schools in Czechia and 100 schools in Slovakia.
Friday 6 November 2026, afternoon: put up the QR codes.
Monday 9 November 2026, 6:00: the competition starts. On every competition day until Friday, play runs from 6:00 to 22:00 (Central European Time) and there are new activities behind the codes each morning; overnight there is a break. An activity started before 22:00 can be finished until 22:10.
Friday 13 November 2026, 22:10: the competition ends.
Monday 16 November 2026: results announced in the app.
By 12 January 2027 at the latest: the competition data is deleted or irreversibly anonymised.
The QR codes are already printed: you will find the 15 codes in your school's envelope together with the guide and the competition rules.
Put them up on Friday 6 November in the afternoon, so that they are in place when the competition starts at 6:00 on Monday 9 November. Place them where students spend their breaks — corridors, the canteen, break areas, notice boards — spread evenly across the floors. Add the posters as you like.
Leave the codes in the same place for the whole competition week. The content behind them changes by itself, every morning at 6:00.
Each of the 15 posters has a different QR code, and the codes are the same in every school, so you only need to replace that one: download the kit again in the teacher portal, print just the page with the missing code and put it up in the same place.
Register as a teacher and download the kit with the QR codes to print. A school without the envelope does the same.
The game runs on phones, mostly at break. Whether and when students may use a phone at school is set by your school's own rules. In Czechia, a school may restrict or ban phones in its school rules (since 1 January 2026); there is no nationwide ban.
In Slovakia, the law has restricted phones for the lower years of eight-year gymnázia, as at basic schools, since 1 January 2025: those pupils can play at school only when a teacher allows it in a lesson for teaching. At other secondary schools the school rules decide.
Students can also complete the challenges in the app outside school; the QR activities are unlocked by scanning the posters at school.
Once you have registered and your school e-mail is verified, you will find a campaign preview with sample activities as students will see them, and the school activation with the QR print kit to download.
During the campaign you can follow live how your school plays: the participation rate, the number of active students, the school's points and ranking, and participation by class for classes where at least 10 students play. The Today at school overview shows today's figures and offers a ready-made message for the class chat.
You will not see individual students or their nicknames.
No. The campaign has no teaching materials, and you have nothing to prepare or teach in class.
Everything students need is in the app itself, each activity with the sources it draws on.
Every answer and every completed activity is saved on the server straight away, not on the phone. What a student has completed is not lost if the internet drops or the browser is closed.
An interrupted quiz cannot be restarted from the beginning. When the student scans the same QR code again on the same day, the quiz continues where it stopped: answered questions count, and if the time for the open question ran out in the meantime, it counts as a wrong answer with no points. The quiz's points are credited once the student has answered every question — an unfinished quiz earns nothing. An activity in progress has to be finished on the same day, by 22:10 at the latest.
The game profile is stored in the browser where it was created, so after an outage students simply carry on with the same phone and browser. It may be lost if the browser's data is cleared, in private mode, or in another browser or on another device.
If an outage substantially affects the competition, the organiser may reasonably adjust its dates or evaluation, always equally for everyone. For technical problems, contact the organisers.
Students earn points for the activities behind the QR codes (quizzes, reading, polls), for challenges, for inviting other students and for daily, streak and class goals. Every point is credited to them and automatically added to their class, school and country.
In quizzes the speed of a correct answer counts too. Each question has 20 seconds, and a wrong answer earns no points.
Class goal: when at least 12 students from the same class complete at least one activity on one competition day, everyone from that class who played that day gets 200 extra points. Daily targets (6 and 8 completed activities in a day) and playing on several competition days in a row bring further extra points.
Individuals are ranked by their total points, a class by the total points of all its members. The standings at 22:10 on Friday 13 November 2026 decide. On equal points, whoever reached their final score first ranks higher.
Prizes are awarded separately in Czechia and in Slovakia. The school leaderboard and the Czechia × Slovakia comparison are for interest only — schools do not win prizes.
During the competition the leaderboards are public and the running ranking can be followed right in the app. For students they publicly show only the nickname and points, and in the final results also the school; only signed-in participants of the campaign see the class next to a nickname, in the app. For classes they show the class name and the school.
After the competition, the winners' nicknames are removed from the results by 12 January 2027 at the latest, and the archive keeps only the ranking of classes and schools with at least 10 players.
Prizes go to the best individuals, separately in Czechia and in Slovakia. You will find the list in the Prizes section on this page and in the app: the organiser will publish it by 6:00 on 9 November 2026 at the latest and will not make the prizes worse during the competition.
The organiser announces the results on Monday 16 November 2026 by publishing the winners' nickname and school. It does not find out the winners' names: it contacts the school's leadership and hands the prize to the school. The school finds the winner in the class; the winner proves that the winning game profile is theirs by showing it on their own device. The school then confirms the handover to the organiser.
If a winner cannot be found within 14 days of the announcement, or the school shows no interest in the prize, the prize lapses and is not passed to the next in line.
Students play without a name, e-mail, phone number or age — none of these is stored. The game profile stores the school, year and class, the generated nickname, game activity and points, any invitation the student came through, and the confirmation that they have read the rules. The data is stored in the European Union.
Research polls are voluntary. By the end of the competition day at the latest, the answers are separated from the profile, the school and the class.
Only students who voluntarily join the ambassador programme give an e-mail address — from 15 in Czechia and from 16 in Slovakia.
The competition data will be deleted or irreversibly anonymised by 12 January 2027 at the latest. Only anonymous aggregate statistics remain.
Club Alpbach Czechia & Slovakia, z. s. and Arwell Works s.r.o., the operator of the Eolin platform, are jointly responsible for the competition data. The association Díky, že můžem has no access to personal data. The Eolin platform's legal documents are in the Legal information section.
Everyone plays only for themselves and with one profile. The rules forbid creating several profiles, using automated scripts, exploiting bugs in the app, giving a false school or class, sharing correct quiz answers (for example in a group chat) and creating fake invitations.
The organiser may remove points gained unfairly or disqualify a participant — a whole class or school only if a substantial part of its playing members demonstrably took part in the breach. A person always decides on a disqualification, and it can be challenged with the organiser within 7 days.
You do not need to supervise or check anything yourself.
No. Taking part is voluntary and free for students. Secondary school students in Czechia and Slovakia can play: the Czech version is called Pauza na Samet, the Slovak one Pauza na Nežnú, and together they form one joint competition.
Send questions about the campaign and the competition to the organisers. Questions about data protection can also go to the operator of the Eolin platform.
Contact
- Questions about the campaign and the competitionpauzanasamet@clubalpbach.cz
- Data protectionprivacy@arwell.works