Your eTwinning: workshop on communications
I organised a workshop on Communications issues in eTwinning and was pleased to have good attendance by teachers from Romania, Ireland, Spain, Finland, Flemish Belgium and others, as well as representatives from the UK and French NSS.
They split into groups and discussed:
- links between eTwinning and Comenius
- how to reach out to new teachers
-communications tools
The main conclusions were:
- eTwinning should focus more on trainee teachers and teacher training institutions. New teachers can use eTwinning as a training ground (the Spanish NSS has supported this) via a testing project set up on the portal. There should be a special communication outreach to teacher training institutions.
- A book may not be the best way to reach out. Teachers like kits and boxes. A good outreach tool could be a box containing a small book, some digital materials (e.g. on a USB key) and maybe even some equipment such as a webcam
- eTwinning has tremendous pedagogical benefits and it needs to be communicated better. The teachers suggested Ministries of Education should consider how eTwinning could be embedded in the curriculum as an obligatory activity.
- New teachers need to know how easy eTwinning is. It doesn't have to imply extra work if you focus your projects on topics which already exist in the curriculum.
- Technology is still a barrier. Teachers indicated that technology companies like Microsoft, Intel, etc. have a lot to offer in terms of support which could be integrated into eTwinning.
Many thanks to the enthusiastic and creative participants for their excellent ideas!
Here's the presentation I made to set the discussion framework.
Alexa Joyce - eTwinning CSS - European Schoolnet