Sunday 27 May 2007

We are the Winners of the 2007 National eTwinning Awards

Josephine Ebejer Grech wins first prize during the National eTwinning Conference held last Friday 25th May 2007.

Josephine Ebejer Grech, from “Dun Guzepp Zammit Brighella” Boys’ Junior Lyceum Hamrun, is the winner of the secondary schools category etwinning projects. This competition was open to all those teachers who have worked on an etwinning project. The winning project is “Comparing and Contrasting a Maltese Ecosystem with an Italian Ecosystem”.

This project started off when Josephine found Pia’s proposal on the twin finder of the etwinning web site. Pia Avolio de Martino is an Italian Biology teacher at “I. C. Casati” – Secondary School C.URBANI Muggiò (Milan) – Italy. Josephine was interested in working on such a project which involved studying a Maltese ecosystem and comparing and contrasting it with an Italian ecosystem. So together, they registered the project on the etwinning portal.

First, the Maltese students introduced themselves with the Italian students by sending emails to each other. This was the first step that involved ICT. Later on, the students prepared power point presentations about the Maltese Islands and Italy (Milan) and sent them over to each other to introduce their countries to each other.

The project itself started when the students used to go out on fieldworks to study the ecosystems. The Maltese ecosystem chosen was a woodland at Buskett. The fieldworks in Malta used to be organized on Sundays as not to miss other important lessons from school. The students were asked to attend with their parents and these helped a lot in the process.

First we measured an area to be studied. Then we sampled the area using quadrat method. We ended up with a list of 66 species. Then, we chose the most common ones and deceided to study them in more detail. The students took photos, looked up information, measured trees, plants, and filled in many handouts that were prepared by both the Italian and the Maltese teachers. These handouts were used by the Italian students as well, so that when comparing and contrasting, the information would be available. Videos were also taken during the fieldworks so that the Italian students get better idea of what the Maltese students were studying.

The Maltese students prepared summarized information about the species that they studied. They presented this information as power point presentation and sent it over to Italy. The Italian students did the same. The Maltese also filmed video clips of themselves explaining to the Italians the information about each species. A lot of ICT was involved here: filming, editing, uploading and sending through emails and through web sites. The Maltese students created 2 blogs and the etwinning web site as well. First they used to upload all their information, and photos on a blog http://malteseecosystem.blogspot.com, and later on they created another blog on which they could upload their video clips as well. This is http://hamrunlyceum.multiply.com.

Then, they had to compare and contrast the ecosystems, and this was very difficult at their ages. But with lots of research, they managed. When the work was finalized, the students used “Micosoft Publisher” to create a brochure. They sent this brochure to the Italian students as well.

The Maltese students who voluntarily chose to work in this project are Andre Portelli, Matthew Mintoff, Paul Vella, Joseph Bellizzi, Andrew Portelli, Neville Micallef, Nico Caruana, Christian Borg, Steve Mifsud, Kurt Bugeja, Dion Gauci, Ryan Saliba, Joshua Vella, and Ryan Darmanin.