As part of an eTwinning Project called iCreate, on the 14th of February, the Year 6.2 class held a videoconferencing session with two schools, one from Greece and one from Turkey. In this project the students are encouraged as much as possible to be creative in various activities and skills. The videoconference was part of the third phase of the project: iCreate connections. The first two phases were iCreate friendships, in which all participants prepared and uploaded presentations about themselves and iCreate crafts, in which crafts were created and sent to each other by post.
During the videoconference, all the students had a chance to introduce themselves personally and say hello to their partners. Then each class talked about the weather of the day and their usual climate during this season. The students had been recording weather data daily to show to their partners. Afterwards the Greek teacher prepared some games of Hangman where both the Turkish and Maltese students took turns to try to guess the mystery words. The students enjoyed the game. It was quite interesting to do! Many of the Greek students seemed to be keen on telling the Maltese and Turkish students that they enjoy playing Fortnite. Apparently also many Maltese and Turkish students enjoy this game and it was decided that the teachers will exchange the game nicknames so that they might start meeting online through this game too. During the session each class also sang their national anthem to their partners.
This videoconferencing session took an hour which filled the students with great enthusiasm and excitement. Now that they know who their partners are, they are more willing to do research work or experiments for the next phases of the project. They have a real audience receiving their work. Such activities give the students the opportunity to show their work to real people, students their own age.
