On project days 3, 4 and 5 computers were booked out to enable pupils to go on-line and look at the documentation of their introduction day and visit to the Horniman Museum on the Inspiration Africa! Website. They all seemed to enjoy seeing their photos on the World Wide Web and it gave those that had missed the introduction day a chance to see what happened. They also had the chance to look at pictures of the key objects again on the site, the originals of which they had seen at the Horniman Museum, and re-read the background information on their selected key object - the nkisi power figure.

Pupils logged into the Inspiration Africa! Classroom and sent each messages about the project and some personal messages. They discussed what they had been doing over the rest of the day. Some expressed an interest in continuing with the project and communicating with the other schools and sent welcome messages via the classroom.

I thought the project was informative and exciting some of the work that we did was great. I learnt some new skills such as screen printing and mono printing. I would like to be involved further in the project so please keep me listed!!!!

This project has been a useful and interesting use of time as I have really enjoyed having a look at the hieroglyphs and also some of the war masks were mystifying and they had loads of cool paint on them. You should volunteer immediately - as well as being educational it is also a lot of fun.

Pupils also searched the World Wide Web for more information on the nkisi power figure and found the following links(as some of the websites are no longer online hyperlinks were removed 2004):

http://www.dia.org/collections/aonwc/africanart/76.79.html
African Art, Figures of Power, Detroit Institute of Art Gallery

http://www.tamarin.com/kongo/kongdire1.htm
Tamarin Virtual Gallery

http://www.hubar.com/806_view.htm
Hubar productions (text by Text by Prof. Chris Roy (University of Iowa)

http://www.gna.be/Head/gallery/0040.htm
The Online Gallery of Native Art

http://www.malkia-african-art.com/middle.htm
Malkia African Art & Gifts

http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/people/Kongo.html
Art and Life in Africa - Online

http://www.civilisations.ca/membrs/traditio/tervuren/tera01e.html
Canadian Museum of Civilization

and found maps of Africa, in particular the Kongo region:

Congo, Democratic Republic (former Zaire) (Political) 1998 (425K)

Congo, Democratic Republic (former Zaire) (Small Map) 1997 (31K)

Finally, the pupils were able to look at the area of the site that explains about COGPROG and the virtual banner. This last project day (which includes the finishing ceremony where their personal poems will be placed inside their screen printed bags and pinned to the POWER BANNER/BOOK) will be happenning soon. The pupils will have already cut out a power shape that will be scanned onto a computer and saved as a bitmap image to be placed, by them, on a virtual banner inside the COGPROG programme. Read more about the virtual banner.