During the eTwinning National Conference and Awards, held at the Mediterranean Conference Centre in Valletta, teachers and students from all over Malta visited our stand and attended workshops for Primary and for Secondary Schools. Three daily workshops were held during weekdays, whilst other workshops were held as needed during the weekend opening hours, according to attendance. Visiting teachers were also able to talk to the attending eTwinning NSS who explained about the eTwinning Action in Malta and distributed information packs, including leaflets and the latest edition of the eTwinning book.
During the week of our National eTwinning Conference held in conjunction with Embed 2011, eTwinning organized daily workshops for students from different schools and of different age groups.
Three groups of up to 15 students visited the eTwinning stand daily. The eTwinning National Support Service staff, Jeannette Cardona and Amanda Debattista, showed the students at their workshop how they can use a free web 2.0 tool, which could be part of thier school project work and can be also embedded in the eTwinning TwinSpace or other online spaces.
The tool presented to the primary pupils was Smilebox. This is a free downloadable programme in which photos can be inserted to create a number of digital material like photobooks, scrapbooks, slideshows, collages… All the features of this programme were explained and the pupils were given folders with photos to create their own Scrapbook or Collage. All the creations were then emailed by the pupils to the National Support Service and they enjoyed seeing each other’s work projected on the large screen.
The secondary students had a go at using ToonDoo to create comic strips. This free online application allows you to create comic strips and then collect them in books. The students were shown how the tools work and then were allowed to choose a theme and work on a comic they were intersted in. All comic strips were sent to the National Support Service to view on the projected screen.
Below are some samples of the work done by different pupils:
Children of all ages love comics – cartoon character strips, which usually tell a story, often humouros, and sometimes with a hidden message or two. Comic strips are often found in newspapers and magazines, and more recently, online. They can be a a way for teachers to convey a message to their students a bit differently, and in turn students can be encouraged to express their thoughts and emotions more freely. Web 2.0 technology offers teachers and students the possiblity to create online, embeddable comic strips and books easily and effectively. One such comic-creation platform is ToonDoo, which can be found on http://www.toondoo.com…
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