Pupils' IT and environmental awareness

A year-long ICTip project at St Anne Primary School at Marsascala, entitled 'The Environment around us', served not only to increase the schoolchildren's environmental awareness of the local area but also to increase the use of IT in their classrooms and make them realise how useful it is for their schoolwork and everyday life.

The project reached its climax with a two-day exhibition held last May opened by Marsascala mayor Mario Calleja and the parish priest, Fr Martin Micallef, in the school hall in which the schoolchildren, ranging from the Kinder years to the Year 7 pupils, demonstrated how they see the local area's environment by means of finger paintings, booklets, charts, banners, flashcards, drawings, and 3D models made from recycled material.

The children used various Internet search engines to conduct research, used various computer software programmes to produce the material, and used e-mail to communicate with other schoolchildren to obtain information about other villages to compare with their own.

A PowerPoint presentation was also shown during the exhibition highlighting various activities with an environmental theme that were organised during the school year.

Although this was mainly an ICT project carried out in collaboration with the Education Division's ICT technology department, it was decided from the start to adopt a multi-curricular approach, encompassing Sciences, Arts, languages and crafts.

The administration dedicated the teachers' first professional development session to the project in order for the staff to decide on the objectives and approaches to adopt, and the ICT teacher in charge, Joanne Spiteri, worked closely with the school teachers in order to co-ordinate the different work carried out in the classrooms throughout the scholastic year.