The IOI-KIDS Best Project Competition 2010

IOI-Kids (www.ioikids.net) is a website dedicated to the sea for primary and secondary school children and youngsters. It offers a virtual and interactive learning experience, where students can increase their knowledge about the marine and coastal environment through the use of interactive games, fora, surveys, lessons, informative articles and audiovisual media. IOI-Kids also provides a space for virtual dialogue to encourage  children as well as youth, community groups and teachers to exchange ideas, projects and experiences with others across the world. The project is supported by the Women, Youth & the Sea Programme of the International Ocean Institute (IOI).

Within this competition primary and secondary school children were challenged to combine their artistic and computer talents to prepare attractive and informative electronic contributions in the form of projects on topics related to the sea. The competition was open to individuals or teams of children worldwide and youngsters in two separate age groups: (Age 5-10) and (Age 11-16).

The Local Competition

60 submissions were presented for the competition, 26 primary and 24 secondary level. The participants produced computer-based projects about topics related to the sea and the coast including ecosystems, protection of the sea, plant and species, the use of technology in the sea and even fiction based on characters created by the authors themselves. Most of the works took the form of presentations complemented with images (in the form of photos or drawings) and/or audio or video clips. Others presented essays and one particular case was a small fiction book presented by twins of 8 years old.

After the selection board met and worked on the results of the local competition, the winners were invited for the award ceremony which took place on Sunday 14th November at Sundown Courts. For this event a number of distinguished guests were present including Mrs. Catherine Gonzi who presented the gifts to the winners. The winners of the local competition are enlisted hereunder:

The International Competition

The IOI-KIDS International Best Project Competition 2010 was held amongst 4 IOI centres namely, Thailand, South Africa, Ukraine, Costa Rica and Malta. The selection for the IOI-KIDS International Project Competition was based on two sources; online voting and peer review. Following the selection from local contests made by the IOI Centres in the respective countries, such contributions from the four partnering countries were published online. The works appeared online voting on the IOI-KIDS website from the beginning of November till the end of December 2010 and voting was open to anybody linking to the dedicated voting system.

Peer review accounted for 50% of the marking scheme and was conducted amongst the partnering IOI-Centres. They set up a voting panel and jointly prepared one final rating for ALL the projects from both categories A and B. The projects were rated on a common number of criteria as follows: Relevance and Originality of Work, -Originality of text and Material, - Degree of direct input (e.g. photos, interviews etc…), -Presentation and visual appeal, - Suitability for online publishing, -Referencing to material used from external sources. A total score from 0-60 was be entitled to each project and presented as a collective final mark.

Following the closing of the voting and the peer review activities, the projects rankings were assessed both on the online voting and the peer review. A more detailed classification of the results is illustrated in the table hereunder.