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An ongoing 2 year project. Year 1 involved swapping culturally representative mascots; Glasgow sent a Scottish bear with a kilt and the Italian partner school sent a little doll called Raffaella. The escapades of each mascot were documented e.g., Hamish meeting friends in Italy, Raffaella going to the RSNO concert in Glasgow etc. PowerPoint presentations were creatively handled with stimulating sounds and songs. Year 2 has branched out into the environment, particularly the weather and the seasons.
The Nursery children have utilised a variety of ICT processes namely; webcams, email, PowerPoint presentations, mpeg files, scanners, digital photographs, digital video and DVD’s. We have also fully utilised the E Twinning portals in the second year of our project. This wide use of ICT has enabled the children to communicate in real time and be able to quickly receive feedback from their partner children and staff.
I believe we have had most benefit from the PowerPoint presentations as they have been very visual for our age groups of children and have included sounds and songs which are very stimulating for young children. The webcams have also been very useful as we have been able to send videos of the children singing songs and introducing themselves which is again a very visual and beneficial stimulus for young children.
The greatest gain for the children has been the awareness of another culture in great detail and the ability to analyse their own cultural differences and share these with our partner school. We are also especially proud of our group of children learning a new song in Italian and sharing this with our partner school in Italy. The children have been able to develop their ICT skills with the support of staff and the staff, in turn, have also developed their knowledge of another culture and language and have thoroughly enjoyed sharing their experiences with other schools in Glasgow.
We shared the details of our project as part of an Enterprise Award ceremony in the City Chambers Glasgow in May 2006 where we got a Platinum award and this year we have just received a further Diamond award for Enterprise as well. We also held an “Open Doors event” at our Nursery School in February 07 where other primaries and nurseries in Glasgow were invited to attend and hear about our E-Twinning project. Furthermore, we have also been asked to share our project with Edna Paterson, the Advisor for International Education in Glasgow at an In-Service event in June 07 to talk about how we’ve carried out our project over the last two years.
This has been a great boost to our Nursery School for both the staff and children and we have thoroughly enjoyed working with our partner school who have been very conscientious and have communicated extremely well with us throughout the length of our project.
“There is evidence of a good systematic progression of technology use in the project over the years. A well planned strategy where powerful digital tools have been introduced into the project as and when needed”
Visit the project’s public Twin Space to find out more.
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