The eTwinning project "Comparing and Contrasting a Maltese Ecosystem with an Italian Ecosystem" that Dun Guzepp Zammit Brighella Boys' Junior Lyceum, Hamrun, entered into with an Italian secondary school, has won the secondary schools category in a national competition among all teachers who worked on an eTwinning project.
The project started off when Josephine Ebejer Grech, a Biology teacher at the Hamrun school, found an interesting proposal on the eTwinning Website submitted by Pia Avolio de Martino, an Italian Biology teacher from the "C. Urbani Muggiò" Secondary School of the Istituto Comprensivo Casati in Milan, Italy.
The Maltese students who volunteered to work in this project were André 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.
The project involved the students going out on field trips to study a woodland at Buskett. The fieldwork in Malta used to take place on Sundays so as not to miss other important school lessons. Parents accompanied the students and this helped a lot in the process.
The students measured an area to be studied and sampled it using the quadrat method, chose the most common species found and studied them in more detail. The students took photos, looked up information, measured trees, plants, and filled in handouts that were jointly prepared by the Italian and the Maltese teachers, so that the information gathered could be compared and contrasted.
Due to their age the students found it difficult to compare the ecosystems, but they managed, thanks to much research.
The project involved a lot of ICT including filming, editing, uploading and sending information through e-mails and Websites. The project began with the Maltese and Italian students introducing themselves by sending e-mails to each other and preparing PowerPoint presentations to introduce their respective countries. Videos were taken during the fieldworks so that the Italian and Maltese students could get better idea of what their overseas counterparts were doing.
The students prepared PowerPoint summaries also filmed video clips of themselves explaining the species that they studied and sent them to each other, and when the work was finalised, they used Micosoft Publisher to create a brochure to send to their overseas colleagues.
The Maltese students' Website on the project is: http://my.twinspace.etwinning.net/ecosystem?l=en They also set up two blogs: one for all their information, and photos: http://malteseecosystem.blogspot.com , and another for the video clips: http://hamrunlyceum.multiply.com