Silver award for San Andrea Senior School in International CyberFair Competition

San Andrea Senior School, L-Imselliet (l/o Mgarr) was recently presented - for the second time in a row - with the Silver Award in the International CyberFair Competition.

In this international school competition, students conduct research on a topic and then publish their findings on a Website. The competition brings together over 500,000 students from 2,500 schools in over 70 countries.

With the help of their teachers, 18 students from Grade 11 conducted their research about St John's Co-Cathedral (which falls under the CyberFair Category "Historical Landmarks"). The Website they created was called "The Conventual Church of St John: A Celebration of History, Religion and Architecture in the Co-Cathedral of St John."

Apart from the informative and pictorially illustrated Web pages, the site includes two video presentations (one showing a re-enactment of the Great Siege and the other showing the students on site analysing the Co-Cathedral with their teacher), a 360-degrees digital photo of the interior of the cathedral and an animated power-point presentation.

The address of the site is: http://www.sanandrea.edu.mt/st_john.htm while that of the school is http://www.sanandrea.edu.mt

The project was again co-ordinated by Stephen Briffa, the Humanities co-ordinator and History teacher. He was helped by: Cynthia Degiorgio (Environmental Studies and Art teacher), Nicky Bonello (Religious Studies teacher), Anne Xuereb (ICT manager/teacher, who was responsible for the technological aspects of the project), Gilbert Fenech (Art teacher and overall technical designer of the Web pages) and Lina Farrugia (librarian, who provided valuable books to the students and helped them in their research).

Obviously, the project would not have been completed without the students' dedication, as well as the support and encouragement of headmaster Evan Debrincat.

Of great satisfaction were the comments of the judges. For Cheryl Juarez from the Miami Museum of Science in South Miami, Florida, it was "an exemplary project". She said: "You have done an outstanding job of bringing your corner of the world to my home. I understand that you earned a silver award last year, and I hope this year will be award-winning, as well... I work with university faculty teachers and classroom teachers, and would love to show them your site in my workshops and classes. You have demonstrated a great grasp of photos, text, colours, fonts, and video. This balance of aesthetics and meaningful content is something quite rare - even in commercially developed sites..."

Stephen MacKinnon from the Athens District High School in Athens, Ontario, Canada said: "This was a well-done site. It has a professional appearance and it looked like the students worked hard to do a thorough job... The video was quite effective."

The best comments came from Judy Gardner from Lebanon High School in Lebanon, Pennsylvania: "Thank you for introducing me to your island of Malta. Your project is evident that even a small island can be very rich in history. The opening screen with the beautiful picture of the inside of the cathedral is truly magnificent. It certainly sets the tone for the rest of your project. I am very impressed with the completeness of your project. In fact, I could not find any area of the evaluation rubric, which was not outstanding. Thank you for sharing your little part of the world with me! Congratulations on an excellent project!" According to Yilong from Ping Yi Secondary School in Singapore, the San Andrea project was an "excellent piece of work and effort!"

The Maltese school's participation in CyberFair was an excellent opportunity to analyse a particular topic by integrating the Humanities subjects together and also with ICT (Information Communications Technology). The students also had ample opportunity to use the Internet to enhance their learning.

By critically evaluating the art and architecture of the co-cathedral and researching the historical and religious aspects of it, the students learnt various analytic and writing skills. Moreover, this project fitted perfectly in the Environmental Studies Curriculum.

The students learned how to critically analyse architectural primary sources, research and consult various history books, as well as analysing primary sources on site. They also learned how to summarise and also use Internet for their research. The students also practised teamwork and peer tutoring.

Apart from learning how to actually create Web pages, the students had ample opportunity to appreciate their nation's rich cultural heritage.

San Andrea Senior School also participated in CyberFair in 1997, in 1999 (placing among the top ten for the Website about the Order of St John: http://www.sanandrea.edu. mt/old/knights, in 2000 and in 2001 (when it was given awarded the silver award for the Website about the megalithic temples: http://www.sanandrea.edu.mt/temples)