Just over five months from the changeover date, the National Euro Changeover Committee (NECC) yesterday launched a new website intended for students and teachers in order to facilitate euro understanding and teaching.
NECC chairman Joseph FX Zahra explained the vital role of students and teachers in order to deliver the right message.
“Students tend to learn faster and providing the right tools for them will help NECC to reach their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters. This website is one of the different tools made available for our students in order to learn what the changeover from the Maltese lira to euro is all about.”
The website address is: www.skola.gov.mt/euro.
NECC executive director Alan Camilleri explained that training within the education sector will be two-pronged. It will consist of training of teachers and the training of officers responsible for the school administration and cash handling.
Mr Zahra explained that the Education Department, under the auspices of the NECC, has continued its work in order to ensure that the educational curriculum for 2007-2008 fully reflects this historic change.
The NECC is providing continuous support to educational institutions, through the provision of material, information, quality assurance and participation in any events organised.
The Education Sectoral Committee had also submitted proposals for the development of a number of educational projects. The NECC financed the development of three educational television series, with each series targeting a different age group ranging from young children through to adults. The entire series (each consisting of 30, five-minute programmes) have been filmed and are currently being aired on ED22 and PBS. A DVD copy of the series is also available for purchase from the ED22 studios.
Mr Camilleri said that the NECC has also committed itself to providing plastic notes and coins to aid educational institutions in their work. In this regard, each student in year three to year six during the 2007/2008 scholastic year, is to receive a “euro wallet” consisting of plastic euro coins and low denomination notes. In addition to this, a “pool” of plastic money kits is also to be provided for all primary schools so as to ensure adequate resources and their efficient use.
One particularly interesting development, which is fully funded by the European Commission, and which is to be launched during the next scholastic year is the Euro Challenge competition. This challenge is open to all secondary school students in Forms Three, Four, and Five during the 2007/2008 scholastic year. The concept behind the competition is to allow students to develop an educational booklet, by students and for students, that deals with EMU and the euro in a multi-faceted manner.
The rewards for the winning team are outstanding, and include a familiarisation visit to European institutions.
In addition to this, the winning product will be professionally developed by a publishing house and distributed to educational institutions.
The European Commission is also considering endorsing the publication as an official Commission document.
Each team reaching the final round will also receive a book token for each team member, with the winning school also benefiting from a EUR500 book token as a contribution towards the development of its library resources.
Referring to the launch of the new website for students and teachers, Alan Camilleri thanked all the people involved at the Department of Technology in Education.
This department was responsible for the creation, design and programming of the games and website.
The site is accessible both from schools PCs and from any other internet point.
The five games are aimed at different age groups.
The main aim is to expose students to the euro coins.
However other curricular aspects such as mathematical issues, geographical, social and healthy eating, especially in the view of the new healthy eating policy issued by the department were taken into consideration.