MCAST students participate in Socrates project

MCAST students within the Institute of Information and Communication Technology participated in the "Competition for the Design of Website for Socrates Project."

This project forms part of the Specialised Animated Interactive Learning (SAIL) programme. It aims to develop classroom research strategies and a research mentality through the use of ICT and to encourage students to take responsibility for their own work.

SAIL received financial support from the European Commission under the Socrates Minerva Action. The Minerva Action programme promotes the use of new technologies in education and online distance learning. This is the first Minerva project to be co-ordinated by Malta.

This Socrates project involved the design of the official Website for Metiseducation. The Website will be the portal for the schools that use the software package and other ancillary sites. The three award winners will be guaranteed exposure of their work since it will be used for other projects that are already in the pipeline.

The consortium behind SAIL is varied since there are partners from the academic world and the commercial world who have managed to work extremely well together in spite of their different specialisations.

The Maltese partners are Metiseducation (the co-ordinating institution), the Department of Primary Education, the Teachers' Resource Centre at the University of Malta and Audio Visual Centre Ltd.

The foreign partners are Haagse Hogeschool from The Hague, two software production companies from the UK and Germany and an incentive and marketing company from Rimini.

This project is subject to the continuous evaluation of Equal Partners Foundation and has received sponsorship support by Island Hotels Ltd, Deloitte and Touche and Apple Macintosh Computers.

Metiseducation and MCAST are working together to facilitate students' entry into a competitive job market and to ensure that students acknowledge their own skills and feel confident about their own products. The first three winners will receive cash, book vouchers from Bookplus and a voucher from BDS Ltd, who are local agents for Apple Macintosh computers.

The MCAST students who participated in the project are Antonio Persiano, Mark Schembri, Mark Borg, Christienne Pulis, Christopher Stephenson, Clive Ciappara, Gerald Schembri and Neil Farrugia.