European Success

 ISSUE DATE: THURSDAY 19 JANUARY 2006

EUROPEAN SUCCESS FOR INVERNESS PRIMARY SCHOOL

An Inverness school has won a top European award for its e-twinning project with a school in Malta. The prize for Cauldeen Primary School for their "Talking Through Time" project is an all expenses paid ICT Camp visit to Lanzarote, Canary Isles, between 27-30 April for eight pupils and two teachers.

Cauldeen collaborated with Dun Salv Portellie Primary School in Gozo, Malta, to exchange information electronically on wartime memories of veterans who lived through World War 2. The Maltese school will also be sending a party of 10 to Lanzarote.

Pupils from both schools recorded the recollections, thoughts and feelings of local people who lived through the war years. Through e-twinning, they exchanged information and developed curricular materials with partner schools in Malta and Poland to gain different perspectives on this significant historical period. As a result, school to school, class to class and pupil to pupil contacts have been developed.

Cauldeen head teacher George Glass recently attended the first European eTwinning Awards in Linz, Austria, organised by the European Commission, to jointly receive the award in the Best School Collaboration category.

He said: "I am delighted for the pupils who have put so much time and effort into this important educational project. The prize is very exciting and the pupils who are chosen to represent the school will be looking forward to meeting the pupils they have been emailing over the past few months. European Awards for eTwinning is the development across the whole of Europe of electronic links between European schools through the use of ICT. The prime aims are to foster understanding, exchange pedagogical practice, develop joint materials and integrate the study of Europe in creative and interesting ways into the curriculum across member states.

"The prize is a reward to enable pupils from the partner schools to meet and develop their collaboration and ICT skills during the 4-day camp organised and paid for by the European Commission. Activities and ICT skills development will be at the core of this event but with lots of fun things also for the pupils to participate in. Pupils will meet and work with the children from the other winning categories which include children from Malta, Norway, Finland, Spain, Poland, France, Italy, Germany, Slovakia and Belgium."

Bruce Robertson, Director of Education Culture and Sport, said: "This award is richly deserved as Cauldeen Primary, for some time now, has been very active and innovative in its approaches to education.  There is an excellent ethos in the school which caters for pupils of all abilities and there have been particular successes in the fields of IT development and global education.  I think that the opportunity for pupils and staff to meet their peers and colleagues from across Europe in Lanzarote later this year will be a unique experience for them all.  Well done Cauldeen!"