Kindergarten assistant wins European eTwinning award

A Maltese kindergarten assistant at the St Thomas More College in Fgura has won the eTwinning Annual European Award in the 4-11 years category with the project “Colours of Life”.

Marianne Schembri was partnered by Ewa Kuzak, from Poland.

An experienced eTwinner and an ambassador for eTwinning in Malta, Ms Schembri has participated in many projects since the launch of eTwinning five years ago and this is not the first time she has made it to the finals.

Last year, she was a runner-up with the project, “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” in the maths and science category.

“Colours of Life” is a story written by children, centering on the importance of colour in life.

The learning objectives of the project were for the children to acquire observation skills and learn all about colours in a more innovative way.

They created a series of collaborative drawings on the Interactive Whiteboard with the use of Web 2.0 tools and had their very first taste of online learning through the use of Elluminate Video Conferencing.

Ms Schembri also won the Collaborative Video Competition launched on the eTwinning portal last November.

eTwinners, together with their project partners, were asked to produce a three-minute video of their students.

Another winning project, not started by Malta but with a Maltese partner –.Maria Antoinette Magro of San Gorg Preca College, Ħamrun Primary GP, was “Schoolovision 2009”.

Schoolovision is a musical project experience which takes its cue from the Eurovision song contest.

The project made use of a variety of digital resources to make a song contest between 28 countries, where each country had to vote the best song for Europe. Flashmeeting was used to make live conferencing among all 28 countries at the same time.

Schoolovision won the Creative Digital Media Award sponsored by eSkills. Many countries, including Malta, also awarded this project a National eTwinning award. It was also awarded the Global Junior Challenge 2009 award and the eLearning award 2009 for the Best Cross Border Cooperation in Europe.

eTwinning is the Community for Schools in Europe. Teachers from all participating countries can register and use the eTwinning online tools (the Portal and the Desktop) to find each other, meet virtually, exchange ideas and practice examples.