Last month, 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 promote 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 its second year of activities.

The Magic Box Project involved a number of students from each partner country who had to prepare a box with 10 items that depicted aspects of their culture and tradition.

The Maltese box included items like a CD of varied Maltese music compiled by the students, a small statue of a knight, traditional Christmas sweets like qaghaq ta' l-ghasel, and their recipes. Our students got so enthusiastic about this activity that they even prepared short messages with greetings and e-mail addresses to their peers in Kiel and Caxias.

Each school had to send these two boxes to each partner country which were opened on the day of the Video Conference.

This truly was an important event because through the use of IT, we were able to bring the three schools closer together. It was quite a programme that started with the Heads' greeting followed by watching each country open the box and how the students reacted to the items found.

The students were also given time to do some research on three items chosen from the box. It was great 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.

Our students had an interesting time researching Amalia Rodrigues, a 16th century Portuguese ship and Port wine, Pumpernickel bread, Neuschwanstein Castle and the programme of Kiel Week and its sailing events. They were delighted to get in touch, talk, discuss, laugh and enjoy music, sweets and comments with the other students in Portugal and Germany.

This memorable session ended with best wishes for Christmas and the New Year given in the different

languages of the partner countries.