A kindergarten teacher with 27 years of experience has channelled her creative lessons into the online and digital world to help her tiny students learn by doing instead of reading off a blackboard.

“Education skills change over the years and using a computer, digital camera and the internet are 21st century skills that children must have,” 52-year-old Miriam Schembri said.

With her help, her four-year-old students have documented the lifecycle of caterpillars digitally after examining them closely in the school garden under a microscope. They also built an igloo made out of plastic water bottles stapled together and a snowman made up of frozen water balloons.

“Children need to be creative – it’s very important for them. They need to touch things and learn that snow is cold, for example,” she explained.

Schembri, who teaches at St Thomas More College Fgura primary school, used her love of learning to write short stories for the children about different topics.

“These promote a love of literacy but also teach them about the subject,” she explained.

These short stories were built up using photos taken by the children, drawings and videos and uploaded onto a website, allowing parents to see what their children were up to.

Her project, http://tellmestory.wikispaces.com , won her first place in the Microsoft Innovative Teacher Award and won her a trip to Moscow, Russia where she met teachers who had also used technology in their classrooms.

“It was an honour for me to win – I did the project for the children and not to win,” she said.

Describing her project as “simple”, Schembri also got a few ideas of her own from other projects that were exhibited in Moscow.

She started out by taking various ICT courses and was very involved in e-twinning with other European schools.

Schembri also jokingly pointed out that she probably was the oldest teacher at the education forum but had words of encouragement to people who, unlike her students, were not familiar with the digital world.

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t know a piece of software inside out – there is no need to be terrified of it,” she said.

Ultimately, children did not need to be taught about how to use technology but had to be guided how to use it as a tool for their development, she said. “We have to give them thinking skills for the future so that they will be able to learn especially since one does not have a job forever,” she said.