San Andrea School in Comenius Denmark meeting

Students and teachers from San Andrea Senior School, l-Imselliet, l/o Mgarr, travelled to Aarhus, Denmark, a couple of months ago to join Danish, Swedish, English and Finnish participants in a Comenius educational project - this year's theme was pollution.

Students Ian Fenech Conti, Jeankarl Bondin and the winners of the Stephen Hawking Science and Technology Project, Claire Cassar and Matija Pecotic, were accompanied by Mr Paul P. Borg and Ms Christine Naudi, teachers of Physics and Biology to Denmark for the project, which is now in its second year.

San Andrea Senior School is the co-ordinating institution of the project which aims to exchange ideas and raise awareness about the problem of pollution among youngsters - it also monitors what steps are being taken abroad to reduce it and understand the best ways to solve the problems pollution creates.

This year sound pollution and the economic and cultural effects of pollution were investigated, building on the first year which looked into the natural environmental aspects of pollution - namely, water and air pollution.

The Maltese students interacted with their foreign counterparts and compared and discussed ideas as well as attending lectures and conducting experiments in Danish school laboratories. They discovered what today's technology in other countries can do to meet this problem, the negative effect of human activity on the environment.

In Denmark, the participants also visited sites, such as a waste treatment plant, which deal with pollution - Denmark is a leading country with regard to the treatment of domestic and other waste. This was particularly interesting to teachers as it coincides with the recent introduction of a waste management programme at San Andrea School.

The week in Denmark was excellently organised by Anders Andersen of the Aarhus school, Stjaerskolen, and included educational visits to the surrounding forests, rivers and lakes, and to coastal regions to inspect Virtue racks and lichenographic aspects of pollution.

One particularly interesting activity was a visit to Den Gamble By, the world's first open air museum of urban history and culture, which covers the social history of Denmark of the last 500 years.

The Comenius activity was integrated with the annual Stephen Hawking Science and Technology project organised at San Andrea Senior School. Grade 11 students were encouraged to research a science topic of their choice and present their results to their peers. The students were encouraged not to limit themselves with what they have learnt in the classroom and grasp the idea of acquired knowledge and its application.

The Maltese students delivered Power Point presentations, on their return, on their and the foreign participants' projects and the Comenius pollution project will continue this year.

The project aims to be instrumental in creating awareness about pollution and polluting factors affecting society, monitoring pollution and ways to combat polluting agents in order to live in a safer world.