On the 12 December, Lily of the Valley Girls’ Secondary School, together with its Comenius Partners: Hebbelschule, Kiel (Germany) and Sao Bruno Caxias (Portugal) participated in a project called “The Magic Box – A Video Conference”.

The aim of this project was to build better communication with our European partners through the use of IT, and to enhance a better understanding on the culture and traditions of the partner countries.

This venture was part of the Comenius Project entitled “Communicating in a Changing Europe” which is now in the second year of its activities.

The Magic Box Project involved a number of students from each partner country who had to prepare a box with 10 items which depict aspects of culture and tradition. The Maltese box included items like a CD of varied Maltese music which was compiled by the students, a small statue of a knight, traditional Christmas sweets qaghaq ta’ l-ghasel and their recipes.

Our students became so enthusiastic about the exercise that they even prepared short messages with greetings and email addresses to their peers in Kiel and Caxias. Each school then had to send these two boxes to each partner country which was then opened on the day of the video conference.

This truly marked an important event where through the use of IT, we were able to bring the three schools closer together. It was quite a programme, starting off with the Heads’ greeting and then to see each country open the box and the reaction of the students to the items found.

The students were also given time to do some research on three items that were chosen from the box. It was motivating to see the enthusiasm of the Portuguese and German students present information on some of the objects found in the Maltese box. The items researched were the Knight of St John, Gozo cheese, the Fertility Goddess, the Maltese flag and the Maltese luzzu. The Maltese students had an interesting time researching Amalia Rodrigues, a 16th century Portuguese ship, and port wine, and from the German box, the students chose Pumpernickel bread, a picture of Neuschwanstein Castle and the programme for the Kiel Week and its sailing events. With such a potpourri of items the students were delighted to get in touch, to talk, discuss, laugh and enjoy music, sweets and comments with the partner schools.