Virtual Visitors Online Project Description of Activities

The project was in five stages
(Detailed descriptions, additional and supporting activities and their guidelines with examples were available to participating teachers on the website)

Stage 1
Exploring how we communicate
The work at Stage 1 was about raising awareness and understanding of the way emotions are communicated, expressed and represented. Pupils explored facial expressions and body language and the emotions and the messages that they can convey through simple 10 minute drawing games using pencil and paper and short drama exercises.

Stage 2
Preparation for the visitor
Stages 2 and 3 were about exploring how the emotions we communicate impact upon others. Pupils took a series of digital photographs of locations where they might meet or interact with the virtual visitor when they arrive (e.g. playground, school dinner hall, school gates etc.) They also photographed role playing a series of poses in pairs and small groups that describe different responses to the visitors arrival (e.g. welcoming, hostile, friendly, shy, curious etc.)

Stage 3
The visitors arrives
Pupils used PowerPoint to combine backgrounds, group photos and pictures of the visitors that they met on the website. They then attributed thoughts and speech to the tableaux and developed them into animated photo stories.

Stage 4
Developing empathy through sharing stories
Stage 4 was intended to teach pupils about what happened during the Holocaust on a human level offering another child’s view of the events that they can relate to and empathise with.
First pupils viewed the Virtual Visitor story presentations. They then asked the visitors questions via email. Responding visually to what they had learnt they then created photomontages of the visitors stories and incorported them into PowerPoint presentations which were e-mailed to the artists to be developed into a combined multimedia presentation for their school's section of the website.

Stage 5
Invitations
In the final stage of the project pupils looked at a real or imaginary activity that they could invite the visitors to join them in to help assimilate and befriend them. Their outcomes were incorporated into the final section of their PowerPoint Presentations.

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