School name:  Yester Primary School, Gifford Teacher name:  Michael Purves Project name:  A Healthy Passport Twinned with:  Kuvansin koulu (Finland)

Project Description:

A Healthy Passport is an ICT based project between Yester Primary School’s P5 class, based in the village of Gifford, East Lothian and Kuvansin koulu Primary School’s year 6 class in the village of Kuvansi, near to Varkaus in Finland. The project uses a blog to exchange information about the cultures and lifestyles of the children in the two countries, Finland and Scotland.

The list of topics to exchange information about includes: Self, Family, Where I live, Pets, Lifestyle, A typical day at school, Food and Nutrition, Exercise, Sports and Hobbies, Weather, Care of the Environment and Friends around the World.

The main objectives of the project have been to

			Increase the children’s abilities of becoming “Effective Communicators”, through their general communication with each other,
			Allow the two sets of pupils to become more “Responsible Citizens” by taking on board the importance of what is appropriate when publishing their comments to the blog,
			Allow the children to become “Successful Learners” by learning the processes of how to blog, how to make a podcast successfully, how to make a post look good on the screen etc, and
			Allow the children in both classes to become more “Confident Individuals” as they see that their work has real value and is appreciated by each other and others externally, and with the two schools.

Results and Benefits of the project

The biggest gain for the pupils in both schools has been the enormous amount that each class has found out about the other country. It is difficult to imagine that many Scottish children might know lots about Finland, or that children in a Finnish primary school near to the Russian border might know lots about Scotland, but we feel that both sets of children have learned so much about the other class, and country.

In addition, the children in Jyrki’s class have had valuable experience of reading and speaking English, as we sent the Finns booklets about Scotland and Jyrki’s school sent us some books about Finland, which has helped the children here find out even more. Some of the Scottish children have learned Finnish words and phrases by asking the pupils in Jyrki’s class how to say various things, which has been great fun for us!

The staff have benefited, as Jyrki has been very keen to find out how to blog, how to resize photos, how to podcast and of course he has learned lots about the education system here in Scotland. I have learned even more out about Finland, and have learned lots of new skills related to blogging, such as how to personalise a blog very highly, how to make podcasts in a number of different ways.

The expertise that I have gained about eTwinning in general has been very valuable too, as I have attended a National Conference and I plan to help other schools in my authority make links via the eTwinning portal through my role as an International Masterclasser.

Overall Quality

Without a doubt, the best part of the project has been the motivation of the children to keep driving it on. Their enthusiasm for the whole project has been very refreshing. Many talk about trying to persuade their parents to take them on holiday to Finland, which has been very satisfying for me to hear.

We led a school assembly at the local church at Christmas about how the Finns celebrate Christmas, and there, it was wonderful to hear the comments from parents about how the children were so enthusiastic about their project on Finland! Jyrki has told me that he is delighted with how his pupils have progressed in English thanks to using the blog as a learning tool.

Take a look at the Healthy Passport blog