Successful Maltese National Conference and Awards

This year’s National eTwinning Conference and Awards for Malta were held on Friday 25th May. The first part of the conference consisted of a number of workshops. During the workshops, ICT tools that could be used for eTwinning projects were introduced and participants had the opportunity to practise their use. The tools presented were Stop Motion Animation, Digital Video Editing, Digital Story Telling and the use of Wikis. All of these hold great potential for use in an educational setting since they are very easy to use and do not require extensive training. Participation was very encouraging and included many teachers, heads of schools, NSS Coordinators from Finland, Iceland and France and Ministry of Education and Education Division authorities.

The workshops were followed by a presentation by George Glass, Head teacher of Cauldeen Primary School in Inverness, Scotland during which he demonstrated the work that teachers in his school have been able to do within eTwinning. His school has three ongoing projects with different schools in Malta. Mr. Frans Borg, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment addressed the participants and showed the Ministry’s support for teachers who were willing to adopt new technologies and who showed the dedication to their work, he emphasised that teachers have the power to influence the lives of the children entrusted to them.

The event included the presentation of eTwinning Quality Labels. The 6 finalists made short presentations of their projects to share their experiences about the work that they were doing in the nominated projects. Following this came the most expected event of the evening, the presentation of the eTwinning awards.

A big thank you goes to the Maltese NSS for a perfectly co-ordinated conference which left all the participants greatly motivated to continue or start working in eTwinning.