Leuven Contrasting Study Website

Last Tuesday I launched to a group of primary headteachers a new digital resource website. The Leuven Contrasting Study website is the culmination of a two year British Council funded Comenius Regio project between Newport and Stad Leuven in Belgium. Two of our primary schools and a school in Leuven, Belgium were involved in the project.

The website is a teacher resource site containing lots of information about Belgium, Leuven, along with planning documents, an approach on how to teach this study in the classroom and links to nearly 300 photographs and 29 videos which can be used freely in your class. It is a geography resource aimed primarily at Yr5/6 children who are studying a contrasting locality, however there are ample opportunities for a variety of other skills to be developed including communication, thinking skills and ICT.

The use of ICT as a key skill was a major focus in this project and the pupils used ICT tools to effectively give presentations of findings to their peers, parents and the mayor! They also created some excellent videos looking at both Newport and Leuven, along with the usual posters and leaflets.

The site is freely available to all at www.newportlearn.net/leuven

Interestingly for the first time I created this website using various Google technologies. Google Sites to create the site and hold relevant documents, Picasa to host the photographs, both NewTube and YouTube to host the videos, along with Google Maps embedded into the site itself.

Have a look and share with others. I welcome any feedback from users.

If you are particularly interested in setting up and running a Comenius Regio project you may be interested in this website I put together that looked at the background and day-to-day running of a project such as this. Contains documents, background information, photos and podcasts.

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