eTwinning Teachers' Blog - Main page
I produce 2 tutorials to help my eTwinning partner to create a folder, photo gallery and also how to make our work in Twinspace visible to other persons. I hope it can help other colleagues too.
- Folder and photo gallery - here
- Publish CMS - here
- How to publish a message, image or video in a blog (blogspot) - here
- How to edit message in the blog - here
Sharing our eTwinning project.
As part of the Lycée Paul Moreau Reunion Island and
Sackville School UK podcasting project students from Reunion
Island are conducting interviews with a team of scientist
who are conducting research in the Arctic and Antartic. The
website links to video podcasts created by students from
Lycée Paul Moreau, Reunion Island.
A blog provides the opportunity for participating students
to share ideas and thoughts about the environmental changes
in the polar regions brought about human activities.
We would like to share this with other students. Please
visit the site, view the podcasts and contribute to the
blog.
I start this project (user and password: etwinning), in March 2006, with a colleague from Italy (Danilo) from a professional school. Like my class his class had only boys. So, a project with more or less 45 boys.
In September/October we had 2 colleague interested in participating in our project. Bea form Slovak and Irena from Poland… and guess what??? More boys… and both from technical school! So, we have a project with approximately 100 boys. Where the girls have no place…!
On 26th September our school celebrated these two important days which are connected together. When we take place in international projects, we have to use foreign languages such as English, German and French.
There were a lot of events during the day for all the students, the seniors and the students from the junior grammar school , as well. Mrs Gebauerová prepared a concert for older students. They could hear beautiful Irish songs, sang by Věra Klásková, the famous folk singer. The students who study German had a chance to see a play in German, students from tercie A acted in it and the play was prepared by Mrs Hronzová.
The "back to school" eTwinning Weeks 2007 will be taking place this year between 17 September and 19 October.
There are various activities planned, but be sure to participate in the eTwinning Blog by continuing to post information and start discussions with others.
Best of luck for the 2007-2008 school year!
The eTwinning Team
I have been working in eTwinning for more than three years and I must say that not always all the projects have been good. During all those months of interesting work, our school have created about twenty projects.
What are the reasons of the problems to finish the project?
• the number of the students on one side is much larger than on the other side. It has happened to us with Portugal this year and my students were confused each having two Portuguese children as their pen friends. Then we preferred using the forum where all the kids talked together.
• we had a plan but we forgot about the partner’s holiday and the end of the school year. We had to change the plan and make the project shorter.
• the technical equipment of the schools was not on the same level. I had to explain to the children that they were lucky to go to our school and they had to accept the conditions of the other side. It was a problem because the children didn’t get as many letters as they had wished. But on the other hand I could use it educationally. My students were proud of our school ICT rooms more than before.
• ICT knowledge of the partner teachers wasn’t the same. It can often happen but then, the more experienced teacher can help the new friend. It happened to us with Greece, but my friend from Greece was a good student and today she is just perfect. We spent a lot of chats discussing technical problems. There are seminars in all the EU countries for the teachers who are not sure what to do. Those teachers can also use the help from their local NSSs.
• But the worst problem is when one of the partners finishes without saying a word. Then we have to tell the children and explain the situation. If it happens ones, it can be explained easily but if it happens more times, it is not easy to motivate the children for a new project. They should always feel that their work was useful.
What to do with an unfinished project?
• If the children are registered in the Twinspace in My team section, we can go on with the project as if nothing has happened. We can try to find another partner who would replace the first one, which can be a bit confusing but sometimes it is better than nothing.
• If you do not find a new partner, then you still can use the Twinspace. You can divide the children into two groups and they can choose the country they will represent. I know that it is not the same like with a real partner, but we need to finish the project. The students can still write letters, work in the Forum, and create folders and photo galleries. They can work with the Internet and create PowerPoint presentations about various details of the chosen countries. Maybe they will become interested in a new country and they will be motivated to start a new project. The only thing is that we probably will not be successful in the National or International competitions.
But what is more important? Definitely not to discourage the children from other contacts but make them happy that they had done a good job.
How to protect our partnership?
• set clear conditions at the very beginning
• discuss the school year holidays
• be in touch regularly- it is important especially at the beginning of the project
• try to get to know your partner better before you promise anything to the children
• prepare the project with the children - you can help them but they should be involved as much as possible
• keep the list of the students with their partners- they may forget them. It is useful to put the list in the Twinspace
• keep the list of the students‘ usernames and passwords for the eTwinning web page. If you do not go regularly into the Twinspace, younger children might forget them.
• be diplomatic when you chat or write to your partner. We are different nations and different mentalities and so we can hurt our friend unintentionally.
In conclusion
Be optimistic and believe that every new project will be better and more successful than the first one. The friendship which is offered to in an eTwinning project is a treasure. So do not waste it, keep it, look after it, enlarge it and you will never be alone in this world.
Naděžda Kadlecová, Gymnázium Česká Lípa, Czech Republic
Visit her blog at http://et-friendship.blogspot.com/
Armin Hottmann interviews Oscar Stringer during the eTwinning Camp 2007 in Sicily (25-28 April).
Ponte di bandiere in fiore
Bambine/i di 4-5 anni italiani
e ragazze/i delle superiori della Romania si incontrano grazie ad un ponte fatto di e-mail, materiali pubblicati on line, bandiere dell’Europa trasformati in foglie di esili, ma forti tulipani
Copii italiani de 4-5 ani din Italia si elevi de gimnaziu din Romania se intalnesc printr-o punte de mesaje e-mail,
materiale publicate online, steaguri ale tarilor din Europa transformate in petale de lalele
A bridge made of flowery flags
4-5 year old Italian children and students from Romania meet thanks to a bridge of emails, online materials and European flags transformed in delicate but strong tulips.
Through a central blog entitled "A Portal to our Global Classroom", students from across Europe share their own cultures with each other in this eTwinning project.
The central project blog, containing a large amount of information also regroups a number of personal student blogs where individual students post information and share it with the group. You can view their Blogs in the Blogroll section of the master Blog page.
Many thanks to Brian Diack for sharing his project information.
To follow an interesting blog run by a group of teachers working in eTwinning, check out the Euroteaching Blog!
The blog has a number of discussion topics, mostly about literature, and information is available in both English and Spanish.
Many thanks to Maria Eugenia Matia for sharing her project information.
This joint Italian and Austrian eTwinning project is about CLIL (Content & Language Integrated Learning): Teaching English Across the Curriculum. Teachers interested in taking part need to be involved in CLIL experience.
This joint Italian and Austrian eTwinning project is about CLIL (Content & Language Integrated Learning): Teaching English Across the Curriculum. Teachers interested in taking part need to be involved in CLIL experience.
Linking computers onto a network and using Virtual Learning Environments enables teachers to open up their classes to other pupils, other cultures and to promote cross-discipline projects such as CLIL, Content and Language Integrated Learning.
The first step consists in finding partner teachers who are prepared to take part in a class project on an international scale. Having contacted Secondary Schools by email in 1998-1999, we used the partner finding forum of the European Schoolnet in the beginning of 2000. Since January 2005 a new opportunity has emerged with the ETWINNING School partnerships in Europe communication platform.
Through ETWINNING, spectacular results can be obtained since we have access to a database which numbers 22000 Primary, Secondary and Sixth Form Schools, with motivated teachers prepared to take the necessary measures to guide their pupils into class projects on an international scale.
Our WKTO virtual class project was born in September 1999. It links 30 schools together in 15 different countries. The project involves studying class material through the medium of a foreign language : English, German, Spanish and French. The topics covered so far have ranged from economics to sustainable development and the arts.
ETWINNING is a fabulous opening for finding correspondents in the most efficient and effective way. The time of inter-school connections and virtual classes has come, ETWINNING is no longer merely an opportunity, but a priority.
May we invite you to visit the working site of our WKTO project on
http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/wkto/as/activity.htm
and wish you all a very Happy New Year 2007.
Asuncion, Kathryn, Jean-Claude, Bernard.
LYCEE L'OISELET, BOURGOIN JALLIEU, FRANCE.
Contact: http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/wkto
This twinning programme seems very exciting and challenge. We need a lot of time, but my students enjoy doing it. I hope we can achieve our goal, but if not, we have practised a lot of English and known more about Europe.
This twinning programme seems very exciting and challenge. We need a lot of time, but my students enjoy doing it. I hope we can achieve our goal, but if not, we have practised a lot of English and known more about Europe.
Though it´s the first time I take part in eTwinning, I have followed you in the last years. You have grown quickly since this virtual site allows teachers to communicate creativity, their interest of doing something more than lessons and something which could be called as the feeling of fresh air from other distant schools.
Reality is not great when working with difficult teenagers, and these virtual pages (Comenius Space, Spring Day, Etwinning) offer us the sensation that a project can be carried out with certain nearness to other positive teachers (whose we don´t know, but who can be encouraging for us in a common educational task). So in some ways, these iniciatives create a kind of invisible threads linking future realities in my pupils (they may not understand all of English; however they can take part in projects and join this virtual community.
And not only for the teaching of foreign languages, but also for the creation of a feeling of a common citizenship... linked by generous teachers who offer us ideas and products to share.
Continue reading "etwinning: A European site and some fresh air" »
I have been working in the eTwinning programme since the very beginning and it is always very adveturous when I open the twinspace and can see some possitive changes there. My students just love the twinspace and they visit this etwinning tool more often than only at school.
When we find our partners and register a new project, we will get our twinspace. This twispace is an exellent place, where we can display our contributions, pictures/ a new tool photogallery is very useful/ and also forum is there. The most important thing is the possibility of sending letters to our twin partners via the mail in the twinspace. You do not have to use your personal post, there are no spams and you have all your letters stored there. The students do not have to remember the addresses, they will find their partner in the list of My team. This is what we always do. When the students are ready to write a letter on the given topic, we go to the computer room and use the twinsapce.
I also like the forum very much. T have allowed my students to create their own topics and when I am not at school, I give them my topics to answer themselves. It is also very educational, they can see various mistakes and they talk about them. They know that more people will see their contributions and so they always want to correct the mistakes.
My students are users in th etwinspace, they can use only limited number of the tools there. Those, who are very active and serious, get the role of the administrator later and it is the biggest reward for them.
The eTwinning has become the important part of our lessons.
It was three years (Summer 2004) ago when by "accident", as I surfed in the net I bump on to the web side of the unformed yet e-twinning. I watched it growing up year by year till it become the large community that it is today. I participated from the first moment with great enthusiasm and the experience reward my expectations. I love it but most important children love it as well. What a "big" open window to the educational world of Europe!!! How many friends did we make and hopefully are going to make in the future!! What an interesting experience. And the most important thing... it offers its goods asking nothing in return. No bureaucracy, no endless paper work, nothing. Our only obligation is towards our partners and ourselves! We are working for the joy and we enjoying the work.
That's what makes the difference from anything else before it.
Thank you e-twinning for the experience!
Keep up going as undemanding as you are today!
Keep up offer us these great experiences!
Vasiliki Kotsana
Hellas
eTwinning is a way for schools to work across national borders to harvest pedagogical, social, cultural and language benefits. This programme develops and reinforces networking and learning among schools, it provides an opportunity for young Europeans to learn about each other’s cultural and social lives, develops skills in ICT and helps to improve their language skills.
My students and I, from Business Academy in Levice, Slovakia, joined eTwinning from the very beginning in January 2005 and found a partner from Bundeshandelsakademie Linz, Austria. Our project was successful and it brought us great recognition - we were the winners of the Slovakian eTwinning project competition in 2005. Our eTwinning project has given us a chance to cooperate with a new partner who was interested in the same topic, “After school activities - Human rights”.
My students and I think it has been a new challenge to modernise classical ways of teaching and learning, and therefore has been a valuable experience. It has lead students to work creatively, independently and responsibly. eTwinning is illuminating and valuable for both teachers and students.
Dr. Zuzana Mészárosová
Teacher at Business Academy in Levice, Slovakia
e-mail: meszarosovaz@nextra.sk
eTwinning project: "After school activities – Human rights“ with partner from Bundeshandelsakademie Linz, Austria
Project website: www.oalevice.edu.sk/etwinning
DigiSkills is an European Comenius 1.3 / eTwinning project. It's about developing digital skills for teachers (Comenius) and students (eTwinning). 10 schools in 8 countries are participating and we now have started our 2nd project-year.
We will meet in Realschule Regenstauf (Germany 10-15 october) and teachers and students will be working with ejournals, blogs, the LMS Dokeos (opensource) and the content management system Joomla and Fronter.
We are trying to have the national quality-label for each country, and Germany already has it. Afterwards we are going for the European label. We also try to prepare a Flashmeeting (videoconference) between students.
At this point we are interested in Web 2.0 and some of it's educational web-applications.
Maybe we will meet you next year in Bruges (Belgium 23.02.2007 - 25.02.2007) for the European eTwinning-meeting. Many teachers are coming....
Contactpersons:
Uschi Schmack (Germany): project-coördinator
Hans Feldmeier (Germany): webdesign
Robert Conings (Belgium): Dokeos webplatform-administrator
Some websites:
Web- en communicationplatform Dokeos
eTwinning-website
DigiSkills eTwinning Blog
DigiSkills ejournal
As teachers, our eTwinning experience has given us many benefits, so that we
are now developing our third project. Both partners in the eTwinning
project like to enrich their pedagogical practices, and have found new ideas
and new ways to teach pupils.
ICT gives us the opportunity to exchange material and to show the results
obtained.
An example of the content management system of our project called UNIVERSAL VALUES is shown in:
In order to share the information more efficiently, Webnews systems and
Blogs are being considered. They have been developed for our last project,
but as they are new they are changing everyday:
http://mediablog.mail2web.com/littleexplorers/
http://webnews.textalk.com/pl/view.php?id=8842
Our skills in using ICT are improving through the partnerships. Another
important benefit is being able to practice English in real communications.
More like a teacher training course.
In summary, with ICT: (1) We are improving as teachers, (2) we reflect on
our pedagogical practices, (3) we reflect on our knowledge of the English
language, and most important of all (4) the children have fun too.
What more can you ask from an eTwinning experience?
I would recommend an eTwinning partnership to all kind of teachers,
especially when you teach a language (like English). Moreover, for the
teachers and pupils involved, the intercultural exchange is important too.
Seeing the rewards of the achievements, our eTwinning team is so
enthusiastic, that it keeps on participating with examples and new material.
Best regards,
Our school has been involved in eTwinning since the start of the project. We have found the concept of using European links to motivate pupils and staff by using ICT in a real and meaningful way as a successful strategy of tackling curriculum objectives. The use of the eTwinning portal ensures online safety and the support of the National Support Service is very effective. Pupils have ceated rich learning experiences through the contact with other cultures and languages in a number of European countries. Using cross curricular approaches we have provided new and exciting learning experiences based on History, Geography, Health and Healthy Lifestyles, second language skills, citizenship, global citizenship, cultural understanding, Art, PE, dance, Language and Maths.
If you would like to see more information on some of these projects click the links below.
www.ww2inthehighlands.co.uk/etwinning
(archiving memoirs project)
http://cauldeen.blogspot.com
http://nessie-gozo-scotland.blogspot.com (Nessie /Gozo project)
http://mediablog.mail2web.com/miriamschembri/portal (Infant healthy lifestyles project)
http://highlandclearances.info/clearances/index
(history & population movement project)
Continue reading "eTwinning THE motivational learning experience" »
Dear All,
before sharing my ideas with you, let me introduce myself briefly.
I am Silvia and I've just got involved in this wonderful eTwinning experience by my collegues at Muratori High school in Modena Italy. I'm very happy to take part into this activity because I've always been interested in international projects. Since it is the very first time for me I hope to start off on the right foot!
My collegues at "Muratori" are enthustiastic about how the eTwinning went on last year and so everybody is eager to continue.
I hope to get to know you all as soon as possible and to start interesting projects together. I send to you Elisabetta's and Raffaella's best regards together with those of our Institute.
All the best,
Silvia
A couple of weeks ago I received a wonderful e-mail. It was from my Spanish colleague Arturo, who wished to go on with our eTwinning project. Last year our students worked together in a shared learning environment. They wrote forum posts telling about their everyday life in their home countries (205 letters altogether!).
One of the most exciting things was the exchange of the students' favourite recipes. In IES Escultor Juan de Villanueva they actually had a special cookery class and tried out our Finnish recipes. It really must have been an extraordinary experience. And we got a few lovely pictures of our partners cooking.
So, all through the year, it was a lot of ideas and experiences, photos and video clips passed on to each other. What I hadn't anticipated was that a true feeling of friendship would slowly grow as we worked together.
During the special "eTwinning Weeks" organised from 25 September - 15 October, teachers already working in eTwinning can share their experiences with fellow teachers across Europe.
For experienced eTwinners, share information about your project, your partnership and the various challenges and successes you had along the way.
For teachers not yet involved in an eTwinning partnership, this is a great opportunity to find out first-hand just how easy it is to get involved, make new friends in other European countries, learn together and have fun!