EU director lauds student's website on school projects

A website created by a Maltese university student is being held up as a "model" for other countries to follow by the education director of the European Commission. The website is dedicated to projects run jointly by Maltese and European schools under the EU's Comenius educational programme.

"Kindly allow me to commend the excellent and informative contribution of Malta through the website which has been produced by Mr Marvin Spiteri at the Faculty of Education, University of Malta," wrote David Coyne, director of education at the commission's Directorate-General for Education and Culture.

"I have taken the liberty of spreading the information regarding the website to other national contact points in Europe, as a model for dissemination of the Socrates and Comenius actions," he wrote in a letter to the members of the Socrates committee in Malta.

"...We look forward to having more initiatives from your country to mobility in Europe."

Mr Spiteri is in his final year of studying to become a science teacher. He created the comprehenisve and colourful website as part of his B.Ed (Hons.) dissertation being supervised by Dr Joseph Mifsud, who heads Malta's Socrates Coordinating Committee.

Socrates is the umbrella for Comenius and several other EU-funded educational programmes. Comenius enables schools from different European countries to form partnerships aimed at enhancing the quality of education, reinforcing the European dimension of education and encouraging the learning of languages.

Students and teachers exchange information via internet and visit each other's schools to learn from each other, communicate in each other's languages and experience each other's culture.

Mr Spiteri said the aim of the website, which was finalised recently, was to collect as much information as possible from schools about the Comenius projects they are involved in.

"This will help all participants to exhibit their work and view work done by other schools. It will help improve the quality of Comenius programmes," he said.

According to his research, Malta is the first country to promote this concept.

The vast and lively site includes articles, photos, publications, PowerPoint presentations, documents and links to other websites.

There are descriptions of projects and participating schools, examples of children's work and links to school websites in both Malta and Europe.

A section entitled recent updates provides information from seminars, reports and statements related to Comenius, as well as articles by individual teachers and project coordinators.

There is also a section on taking part in Comenius: how to find partner schools, tap funds, organise a project, as well as the rules, statistics, main projects, experiences of schools... in short a mine of information for schools wishing to get on the Comenius train to Europe.

Forty Maltese schools have so far been featured out of roughly a hundred currently taking part in Comenius projects, so Mr Spiteri, who will continue to update the site after he finishes his degree, is searching for more information.

He said the response to the site has so far been excellent, with some five new users entering daily and a number of heads and Comenius coordinators in schools expressing their approval via e-mail.

Mr Spiteri obtained the data by visiting schools and their websites and noted that some Comenius project coordinators were "really innovative and work hard" while a number of teachers were very keen to use information and communication technology in their classrooms.

"In order to have successful Comenius projects it is very important that ICT is used. This will help better communication and efficient work," he said.

He now intends to upgrade the site. Among his plans are a manual for parents and children on how to use the site, a section dedicated to parents and another to children, featuring educational games.

He will also be including video clips of children at work on projects and start up a chat line to enable children from different schools to communicate more easily.

www.comeniusprojects.com