San Anton School comes top in Commonwealth competition

San Anton School has been successful in the Commonwealth Day competition with a presentation on the general theme of 'Building a Commonwealth of Freedom'.

A pioneer in the integration of computer technology within its curriculum, San Anton is now seeing its efforts in this field beginning to pay off.

Students from San Anton Grade 10 chose the subtheme of 'The Commonwealth - yesterday and today' for their Powerpoint presentation. Evelyn Pullicino, history teacher at the School, and Paul Pulis, IT co-ordinator, supervised the preparation and helped the students to polish their presentation skills.

The project was launched by the Department of Student Services within the Education Division and organised in collaboration with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the British High Commission, the Australian High Commission and the Malta High Commission in London.

Several prizes were offered, including a visit to London for the school placing first, and that is where this group of students from San Anton - Michael Stivala, Kristina Miggiani, Nicola Jaccarini and Michael Calleja - spent part of their Easter holidays.

It is such an event as this that helps to show how far San Anton has progressed in its educational aim of blending IT with the different subject areas. Students learn to use the myriad facilities a computer can offer to delve more deeply into a particular subject, consolidate the knowledge they have acquired and present information in the most effective way.

The skills, both manipulative and cognitive, that students need to attain IT proficiency are learned through carefully tailored programmes which the IT co-ordinator works out with the subject teacher.

Needs are identified, objectives set and a programme developed. Such an approach ensures that a student's motivation remains high and as a result success is more readily attainable. The reward, unfortunately, is not always a trip to London!