Intercultural Learning Opportunities
Presentation by Petru Dumitru during first workshop session.
March 20, 2008
Suggestions for the future portal, desktop, twinspace ...
The new outlook was considered much better. Lots of suggestions were given, carefully considered by all and noted by Santi Scimeca. In September the new portal, desktops and Twinspaces will be available.Eye friendliness, careful guidelines for easy , simple uploading of various types of files, also an index with the titles of the different files inside the files is necessary, so that users may know where to find what they want . These and other matters will be given extra attention. Next to the name of a headmaster who is a man, will not appear the picture of a lady. Also a photo for each school and some info on the project coordinator will be included. A useful workshop where feedback was taken very seriously.
Teresa Fernandes, eTwinning embassador, Escola Secundária D. Dinis, Lisboa, Portugal
Fizika - svarbi ir jdomi: Science and Maths Category Winner
Presentation from Fizika - svarbi ir įdomi. Physics is interesting and important project coordinators.
Kudinov Kaunas, Kauno Statybininkų Rengimo Centras, LITHUANIA
Elżbieta Gawron, Publiczne Gimnazjum im. Jana Pawła II wTyczynie, POLAND
Wooden Dolls Project: Age Category 4-10 Winner
Presentation by The new Europeans: The two wooden dolls project coordinators.
Birgitta Flodén, Hässelbygårdsskolan, SWEDEN
Christiane Meisenburg, Siegerland-Grundschule, GERMANY
March 18, 2008
Kids H@nd in H@nd: Age 4-10 Category Runner-up
Two presentations by Kids H@nd in H@nd project coordinators.
Lieven Van Parys, Primary school Sint-Amandus, Belgium
Viljenka Savli, Osnovna Sola Solkan, Slovenia
Tiiu Leibur, Pärnu Koidula Gymnasium, Estonia
Alexandra Pilková, ZŠA. Stodolu, Martin, Slovakia
Margit Horváth, Kalocsai Belvárosi-Dunaszentbenedeki �ltalános Iskola és Óvoda, Hungary
Mela RodrÃguez, CEIP Vidal Portela, Spain
Belen Junquera, CEIP Sestelo-Baión, Spain
Erika Raffai, Jerney János, Hungary
Planete @dos: Age 16-19 category Winner
Presentation by Planete @dos project coordinators.
Ria de Wilde, Sint-Janscollege, BELGIUM
Marina Marino, Liceo Scientifico "F. Cecioni", ITALY
Brigitte Vaudoric, Lycée Geneviève de Gaulle Anthonioz, FRANCE
March 17, 2008
Your eTwinning: Workshop on the Platform
This workshop set out to get feedback from teachers about the current eTwinning Platform as well as to show and discuss elements that are already planned for the future. The participants gave us a lot of great feedback based on the tools that they use, that they find difficult and what they would like to see in the future.
In the first half of the session, Christina Crawley discussed the current platform all its areas - (1) Public Platform, (2) Private individual Desktop and (3) Project TwinSpace - and participants worked in 3 separate groups on questions about specific areas of the platform.
In the second half of the session, Santi Scimeca discussed some of the work that is planned for the next launch of the eTwinning Platform in September 2008. Participants then gave feedback on the ideas as well as on web 2.0 tools such as social networking and widgets.
Photo taken by Filip Toupalik, Czech Republic
Have a look at the presentation:
Posted by Christina Crawley, eTwinning CSS
Your eTwinning: Workshop on Pedagogy
In this workshop we set out to look at the various Pedagogical aspects of eTwinning. These include both the Pedagogical resources on the Portal as well as activities such as Professional Development Workshops (PDWS), the eTwinning Prizes, and the quality labels at both National and European level. We also looked at the eTwinning book and general pedagogical resources.
About 65 people attended the workshop and were divided into groups. I started by giving a quick overview of the various Pedagogical aspects of eTwinning in the form of a PowerPoint. Then I gave each group 6 questions to discuss.
Questions
1. What do you think would be a suitable alternative to the eTwinning Camp?
2. What pedagogical resources would you like to see on the Portal?
3. What features would you like to see in an eTwinning community?
4. What type of eTwinning book would be useful to you?
5. What should be the focus for Professional Development Workshops?
6. What would you like to have in a ready made project kit?
You can see the results of the discussion on the PowerPoint:
Anne Gilleran
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!
Continue reading "Your eTwinning: workshop on communications" »
Conference collage
by Teresa Fernandes
Draw me the task - Students produced documentation
Happy teachers from RUNNER-UP project in eTwinning Prize category Science and Maths "Draw me the task".
This project is a fun approach to teaching basic mathematics concepts to younger pupil.
The jury said, “this project demonstrates how effective a simple approach to a topic can be. The children obviously learned a lot while having fun�.
Kiki Haynes to the right in the picture told us how her students independently worked with different kinds of software, and even prepared rich documentation - both to help her present the process and results, and for others to share knowledge of these great tools.
- Kiki Haynes tells about the contribution of her students. Short audio interview (wav 8 MB).
- More about Draw me the task in the project's public twinspace.
- Student's documentation on "Use of software": Download pdf file
- Here's a dump from the beginning of the document...
Posted by Claus Berg, NSS Denmark
Alternative prize to the eTwinning Camp?
Teacher Inger Nielsen from Denmark went to the Workshop Session: "Your eTwinning – Pedagogy".
We talked to her about her impressions from the workshop. Inger says:
�In this workshop Anne Gilleran asked the participants to comment on a few questions concerning different pedagogical aspects of eTwinning In the future.
One of the questions was:
What do you think would be a suitable alternative prize to eTwinning Camp?
A few ideas from the participants were:
- money to take pupils to visit their partner school
- the winning school should have a team of experts in their school for 3 days to show/teach pupils and teachers the eTwinning possibilities
- funds for technology and training on how to use technology for eTwinning and time for the teacher to train.
Many of the participants think that there is quite a problem about the eTwinning 1st prize now, because all the pupils/classes in the winner projects can not go to the camp because of the limit of participants.�
Posted by Claus Berg, NSS Denmark
March 16, 2008
Some thoughts about a workshop
Share your learning resources
Lemill is a community for finding, authoring and sharing free and open learning resources. It`s like Wikipedia for educational resources.
Teachers can create and share content - such as webpages, presentations, exercises and video - methods, tools and join the online community. LeMill offers a built-in tool to generate different kinds of exercises.
The website is user-friendly. Feedback from teachers is allways welcome. Lemill is very popular in Estonia - where it was developed - and also in its neighbouring countries and it is slowly spreading over Europe. It is available in 10 languages.
The presentation of Lemill is available on slideshare
The MELT-portal is also an environment for sharing educational resources. It is a database with learning objects from all over Europe.
The users can add comment for each learning resource (website, presentation,…) and you can easily search for materials in your own language.
Robert Conings is an webapplication teacher in a vocational school in Maasmechelen, a village in the east of Belgium. He is one of the Belgian teachers that participates in the MELT-project.
What do you think about the MELT-project?
Robert: “ The success of this project depends on the willingness of teachers to share their work with colleagues all around Europe. The MELT project stimulates teachers to share their learning materials.�
Why should teachers share their work on the MELT-website?
Robert: "Why not share a good idea with fellow teachers and pick up new ideas in reverse? Teachers improve their teaching by learning from each other."
How many teachers are working with MELT?
Robert: "We are now just starting with the portal, so I would like to invite all teachers in Europe to join us!"
Social bookmarking is also a helpfull tool for sharing your resources with other teachers in Europe. In stead of just bookmarking your favourite websites in your browser and save them to your own desktop you can save them online and share them on websites like deli.cio.us. The advantage of social bookmarking is that you can tag your sites with more than one key word and you can search for other websites with the same tag. Your bookmarks can be interesting for other teachers.
All teachers can benefit from sharing and collaborative authoring learning resources. eTwinning is about learning from each other, so projects like Lemill, MELT and social bookmarking are a logical next step for eTwinners.
Posted by: Bart Verswijvel – teacher in Immaculata Instituut Oostmalle Belgium
Robert Conings – teacher in PTS Maasmechelen Belgium
Sara Gilissen – NSS eTwinning Department of Education Flemish Community Belgium
Why are we here?
Last day of the conference today and I’m trying to gather my thoughts together and decide what the gist of yesterday’s second day was.
Early in the morning I attended the Intercultural learning opportunities in eTwinning workshop with Petru Dumitru and you can find more details and the files of that presentation here
Mr Demetru mentioned the limitations that may exist in schools that make intercultural (and all kind of) projects difficult. I was a bit disappointed to check many of them exist in my school. Lack of facilities, limited computer skills, limited language skills and more. But I suppose this happens more or less everywhere and we shouldn’t be discouraged. Conditions will always be difficult for teachers, I have yet to meet a teacher who works in excellent conditions. The important thing is to be open and available for working with children, for giving this little extra time and dedication that will change someone’s life. Throughout this whole conference I am most amazed by how much teachers work with their students, how committed they are. I am inspired by their work and I am looking forward to going back to class and sharing with my students (and colleagues) what I learned here.
In the photo Stamatis Papadakis, one of the teachers that presented intercultural activities in Mr Dumitru's workshop
March 15, 2008
Runner-ups
9:30 and the teachers in charge of the three runner-up projects are ready to show and explain them to the rest of us.
We start with the youngest category (4 to 10 year-old children) and we are so proud to find two teachers from Spain in the project called H@and in H@and. We were told about how difficult it was to find partners before the eTwinning portal was available (thousands and thousands of e-mails sent everywhere, fingers crossed while waiting for answers), and then step by step we were given the details of the project. It was a dynamic, entertaining and amusing presentation which maintained people’s attention all the time and made us laugh more than once (and that is always something to be grateful for).
It was then the turn for the runner-up in the 2nd category, the project called Aspects of Religion in Europe, run by three countries Belgium, Denmark and Greece. It was extremely interesting to discover how a “tough� subject (and this is the opinion of the own teachers running the project) can be turned into something amusing and motivating for teenagers.
And last but in no way least, the turn for the runner-up in the third category, the project called Facciamoci noi lezione!!!, from Germany and Italy. After a minute’s wait to solve some problems with the Internet connection (you know how things are sometimes…) they showed us some of the language teaching materials produced by the students to be used in class and we do believe the teachers involved in the project when they tell us that these are much more motivating for students than the materials we often use in class.
And just as they did yesterday, all the teachers mentioned and thanked their pupils; it is only fair to do so, without them none of the eTwinning projects would have been possible. Thanks a lot to all of them!!!
9:30 y los profesores a cargo de los proyectos finalistas en las tres categorÃas están preparados para enseñárnoslos y explicárnoslos al resto de nosotros.
Empezamos con la categorÃa de alumnos más jóvenes (de 4 a 10 años) y estamos muy orgullosos de encontrar dos profesoras de España en el proyecto H@and in H@and. Se nos cuenta lo difÃcil que resultaba encontrar socios para los proyectos antes de que el portal de eTwinning estuviera disponible ( miles y miles de correos electrónicos enviados, los dedos cruzados en espera de respuestas), y luego paso a paso se nos fueron dando los detalles del proyecto. Fue una sesión dinámica, entretenida y graciosa que mantuvo nuestra atención durante todo el tiempo y nos hizo reÃr a menudo (lo cual siempre es de agradecer).
Fue entonces el turno del finalista de la 2ª categorÃa, el proyecto llamado Aspects of Religión in Europe, realizado por profesores de Bélgica, Dinamarca y Grecia. Resultó muy interesante ver cómo una asignatura tradicionalmente “duraâ€? (y ésta es la opinión de las propias profesoras a cargo del proyecto) puede convertirse en algo divertido y motivador para los adolescentes.
Y por último, aunque de ninguna manera menos importante, el turno del finalista en la 3ª categorÃa, el proyecto Facciamoci noi lezione!!! de Alemania e Italia. Después de un minuto de espera para solucionar problemas con la conexión a Internet (ya se sabe cómo son estas cosas a veces…) nos mostraron algunos de los materiales de aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras producidos por los propios alumnos para utilizar en clase y creemos a las profesoras cuando nos dicen que resultan mucho más atractivos para ellos que los que con frecuencia usamos en clase.
Y, tal y como hicieron ayer, todos los profesores mencionaron y dieron las gracias a sus estudiantes. Es totalmente justo hacerlo, sin ellos ninguno de los proyectos eTwinning hubiera sido posible. ¡¡¡MuchÃsimas gracias a todos ellos !!!
Posted by Beatriz MartÃnez Nieves, teacher from I.E.S. Las Llamas, Santander, Spain
eTwinning and Educational Resources
In the last workshop today, the participants of the eTwinning and Educational Resources-workshop created a "window wiki" as an exercise to get used to the idea of collaborative tagging.
We asked everyone to write a word on a post-it that they associated with the building where the eTwinning conference takes place. What came out is our collective thinking and understanding about the building. Hans grouped the terms in the post-its, it also reflects different clusters that the participants formed.
Interesting? This is the same idea that users do when they do collaborative tagging of learning resources in the LRE portal!
Links:
The slides from both Riina and Hans are available through Slideshare, http://www.slideshare.net/tag/etwinning
Even before you will be invited to test the MELT portal for yourself, you can check out some "travel well" learning resources here: http://del.icio.us/tag/travelwell.
Here is the video about social bookmarking, now with subtitles in different languages!
The "travel well" survey that Riina talked about it here.
Posted by Riina Vuorikari, EUN office
Intercultural learning opportunities in eTwinning
Petru Dumitru introduced the workshop be giving definitions of culture values and social organisation. He talked about barriers for intercultural communication.
There are different kind of opportunities to bring intercultural learning in the school. Teachers from different countries presented their way of intercultural learning.
This is Petru Dumitru's reaction:
Download file
Peter Rasmussen from Denmark presented Springday 2008. Springday gives teachers the opportunity to work with ready made activities for intercultural dialogue. www.springday2008.net
Click to see Peter's reaction
Download file
Marleen Spierings from the Netherlands presented My Europe. http://myeurope.eun.org . This project is focused on citizenship. Thanks to My Europe, Marleen in her students got knowlodge about eastern Europe.
Click to see Marleen's reaction:
Download file
Stamatios Papadakis from Greece presented ‘50 years together in diversity’. This competition gives students the opportunity to be united.
Click to see Stamatios's reaction:
Download file
Ylva Guntsch-Malmhav from Sweden presented their project ‘Faces of Energy’. 3 weeks without energy gave X the inspiration to start a project about energy. They produced an eTwinning webmagazine with different countries.
Click here to see Ylva's reaction:
Download file
Lidia Minza from Romania presented her project‘Future Energia Project ‘www.futurenergia.org.
This project deals with the main enemy in our days, pollutions and waste materials.
Click here to see Lidia's reaction
Download file
Andreea Silter from Romania talked about ‘Learning objects’. A modern method to experience other cultures from a early age.
Click here to see Andreea's reaction
Download file
Viljenka Savli from Slovenia presented the project ‘Face to Face’. They used faces made of hand, socks etc. express different feelings. Many countries participate in this project. Teachers reaction: Posted by Marjolein Mennes (NSS Netherlands) and Jan Oosterhuis, eTwinning Ambassador - The Netherlands
See Viljenka's reaction:
Download file
Download file
SLOVAKIA - Variety of nations and ideas
Friday and Saturday of the second March weekend all etwinning collectives have an opportunity to meet with the best realised school projects in Europe. After the Friday party we know the winners and runners-up in three age categories and Math and Science category.
At the workshop we saw the variety of approches to the real cooperation between schools. In the first age category 4-10 years pupils it was project My town your town primary School, UNITED KINGDOM and
CEIP Virxe da Luz, SPAIN. They have very similar idea as many other partnership – know each other better, to show some cultural typical events and customs. What was different – great enthusiasm, great motivation, very good planning phase where children can decide and choose what they prefer and cooperation with parents. Teachers spoke about their common work and use various technical tools, but very simple suitable for beginners. They prepared many materilas and very nice Calendar of events.
The second category 11-14 years old pupils won partnership of Sweden and Germany schools. Two wooden dolls project was very original way how to help children from migrants groups to join to their new homes and communities. Dolls were made by children and illustrated two nationalities who find their place in new life ,new situations. It was project focused on playing and telling stories and children used animation tools, very intensive collaborative methods. Really interesting for everybody who works with migrants and minorities in the classroom.
The third category 15-19 years was represent by the French,Belgium and Italy schools in the project Planete @dos
which connected students from different environment by technical tools like podcasting, videoconference , blogs, creating stories tohgether.
All these projects brought the most important feature – children learned everyday things very differenta and amazing way. They are very interesting about project work and they have great motivation for study and cooperation. Etwinning have the great chance for the future!
Gabriela Podolanová,NSS Slovakia, gabriela.podolanova@etwinning.sk
eTwinning and Tools
This morning I attended a great session on using different free tools for eTwinning presented by John Warwick, Thomas Maier and Christian Komonen.
John pictured above showed us how easy it is to video-conference using Flashmeeting, a webcam and a computer. He explained how teachers can use the tool to network with each other as well as help their pupils share ideas with their partner school. He then went on to describe other features such as being able to record conversations including text chats and having a presentation mode which lets users share images with each other during meetings.
Christian then went on to tell us about the tool Magazine Factory which lets you create an e-magazine either as an individual school or as a collaboration between schools. He also showed us how to embed YouTube videos and Google Maps into the magazine which was cool.
Finally, Thomas talked about blogging and podcasting from definitions to practical examples, prompting us to think of the possibilities of using such tools for personalised and distance learning. Each talk was delivered with enthusiasm and was very "teacher friendly".
I particularly liked John's slide with the message: "Technology is just a tool, nothing more or less"
In other words, as teachers we need to concentrate on how to use tools like these to facilitate good learning not just be interested in using technology for the sake of it. I for one, was certainly persuaded by the effectiveness of using these tools for eTwinning and I can see how they could be very useful in maintaining good links with other schools around Europe and further a field. Thanks to John, Christian and Thomas for their inspiration.
Intercultural Understanding in eTwinning - we loved it!
Intercultural understanding in eTwinning – Workshop session, Bucharest, 15th March 2008
Session One – Intercultural learning opportunities in eTwinning.
With a full room of participants, among which there were leaders of the top projects, the session, chaired by Conor Galvin has started. It must be said that the diversity presented during these session was overwhelming making everyone focused and involved in areas that were covered.
The topics presented by renowned scholars included:
- Spring Day for Europe overview: Petru Dumitru
- Spring Day for Europe in schools: Peter Rasmussen, Denmark
- myEUROPE: Marleen Spierings, The Netherlands
- 50 Years Together in Diversity: Stamatios Papadakis, Greece
- Energy education in a multi-cultural context: Ylva Guntsch-Malmhav, Sweeden
- FuturEnergia: Lidia Minza, Romania
- Learning objects, a modern methods to experience other cultures from an early age: Andreea Silter, Romania
- Online chats or language learning in a real intercultural context: Petru Dumitru
If we bear in mind that all these subjects were thoroughly discussed during 90 minutes, it would be unfair not to give credit to organizers as well as participants for a smooth, constructive and highly educational session. I am certain that all people present had a similar impression.
The applause given at the end of the session could mean only one thing: we loved it!
Posted by: Lukasz Kluszczyk, eTwinning Ambassador, teacher from ZS Nr3 secondary School in Jaslo, Poland
Communicate, communicate, communicate - and collaborate
This headline tells all about what you could learn if you participated in the workshop �eTwinning & Tools� at the eTwinning conference.
With professor Sugata Mitra’s lecture in our minds we were very open to hear about tools for collaboration.
When you have an eTwinning project it is possible for you to use some external tools:
• Videoconferencing with FlashMeeting
• Magazine Factory – a tool for making web-magazines
• Blogs and podcasting
Click on the link below the picture to read the rest of the post.
Posted by: John Kraaer NSS Denmark
Continue reading "Communicate, communicate, communicate - and collaborate" »
A New Look and Focus for your eTwinning Portal
Workshop session: Strand 4 - Your eTwinning.
Session 1: The eTwinning Portal. Presenters Christina Crawley and Santi Scimeca indicated that it is intended to redesign the eTwinning platform during this year and the focus of this session was twofold: to get feedback from participants on their view of the current eTwinning platform and to introduce and get feedback on some of the planned features of the new eTwinning platform.
Feedback from participants on the current platform:
Portal: Negative feedback included difficulty in finding your national support service, difficulty in finding answers to FAQs. TwinSpace should be more prominent, a CDROM user guide might be useful, online help and support should be more prominent. A “remember my password� feature for login to TwinSpace would be very useful.
Desktop Tools: Which tools do you use most? Mailbox, TwinSpace, TwinFinder, Least use? Chat, Progress Card. Difficult to use - TwinFinder. Which tools would you like included? Wiki. Simple directions as to use. Gallery of pictures with an index.
Twinspace: Many prefer to use personal email. Calendar not much used. Forum used a little, should be an alert to inform you when someone posts. Chat not much used. Uploading documents difficult to do at start. Easy when you learn!
The New Platform will include a “Welcome to eTwinning� for newcomers and a “What is Going On� window for news and project information.
It will be possible to browse schools, people, projects, by subject, country, school categories. If you choose a country you will see a country page. This will contain a
map of registered schools, a featured project, lists of all schools registered, all projects registered, national support service, interviews with teachers.
New desktop elements will include My Groups - for discussions on subject, ICTs. This will allow people to get together, create their own groups which may eventually result in a project. The redesign will stress and increase social networking aspects and opportunities.
New richer user profile pages are planned. These will include My Projects. My Project Ideas, My Awards. There will be a rating feature which will be called something else. This rating will be based on how active the teacher has been on eTwinning, how many times they log in etc.
New TwinSpace Home.
This will have a richer window with sections for partners with pictures, a description of the project. This is the public page of the project and public files from the project will be available here. It will have a guest book. A Twin Blog feature will replace the Progress Card.
Participants gave some feed back on the new portal - time was limited by this stage. Coffee was calling!
Everyone like the new visuals, interactive map. Suggested that “What is eTwinning� be highlighted. Welcome for the TwinBlog idea. Some questions about the rating system. If new users have only one star it is possible that this will mean that few people will contact them. Most people will contact those with a high rating. There was a query as regards the possibility of using a webcam on the new site.
- Posted by Michael Farry, teacher and ICT Advisor, Navan Education Centre, Ireland
