Newsletter 2 - July 2012

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Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter
Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group NEWSLETTER 2 ~ Sailing the right seas ~ July 2012
In this issue: * Are We Promoting Intercultural Communicative Competence in eTwinning? Helena Serdoura, Portugal * Artful Thinking and eTwinning Xanthie Chouliara, Ioanna Komninou, Mary Frenzou, Greece * eTwinning for All: e-Skills and Digital Competences at School from a Lifelong Learning Perspective Cinzia Colaiuda, Italy * eTwinning Groups: Can They Help You Build Better Projects? How? Irene Pateraki, Greece * eTwinning School Teams, Power Boats and Safari Parks Daniela Bunea, Romania * eTwinning, Silently Virgilio Iandiorio, Italy * eTwinning Walking Areas Maria Georgiadou, Greece * Every Body Language Pinar Alniak Comlek, Turkey * International Projects as a Way for Promoting e-Safety Lidija Kralj, Croatia * It Is Not Magic, It Is eTwinning! Maria Luz Borges, Portugal * Many Reasons to Believe Pedro Neves, Portugal * Message Boards Overview and Use in eTwinning Projects and the Classroom Patricia Zanfir, Romania * No Matter How Far - Yildiz Erdgomus, Turkey * Not Only Virtual: Sharing Is the Word Carla Tosoratti, Italy * TED: EU and US Teachers Learn from Each Other Paraschevi Belogia, Greece * Ups and Downs of My eTwinning Journey Adil Tugyan, Turkey * Video Conferencing Miriam Schembri, Malta Interview with Renata Wojtas, 2012 winner of eTwinning Prize ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Web 2.0 Tools: Smilebox Photofiltre Myebook TripWow
Editor: Daniela Bunea ISSN 2247-6881 ISSN L 2247-6881
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Index: Anne Gilleran: Introduction page 2 Daniela Bunea: eTwinning School Teams, Power Boats and Safari Parks page 3 Ksenija Vidmar-Nincevic: The Show Does Go on eTwinning Project King of My Castle (2011) Keeps on Rolling on a Stage page 5 Irene Pateraki: eTwinning Groups Can They Help You Build Better Projects? How? page 7 Maria Georgiadou: eTwinning Walking Areas page 9 Christina Drakopoulou: eTwinning Contact Seminar Misssion Accomplished! page 9 Cristina Nicolaita: eTwinning Visibility in Romania during the School Year 2011-2012 page 11 Pedro Neves: Many Reasons to Believe page 12 Interview with Renata Wojtas, 2012 eTwinning Prize Winner page 14 Xanthie Chouliara, Ioanna Komninou, Mary Frenzou: Artful Thinking and eTwinning page 15 Cristina Nicolaita: Smile with Smilebox! page 17 Eric Vayssie: Personalize a Group Photo with Photofiltre page 18 Daniela Bunea: Myebook Is Yours Too! page 19 Raluca Filip: Movies a Few Clicks Away with TripWow page 20 Alessandra Pallavicini: Filmmaking in the Classroom page 21 Patricia Zanfir: Message Boards Overview and Use in eTwinning projects and the Classroom page 22 Helena Serdoura: Are We Promoting Intercultural Communicative Competence in eTwinning? page 24 Cinzia Colaiuda: eTwinning for All: e-Skills and Digital Competences at School from a Lifelong Learning Perspective page 26 Lidija Kralj: International Projects as a Way for Promoting e-Safety page 28 Paraschevi Belogia: TED: EU and US Teachers Learn from Each Other page 29 Maria Luz Borges: It Is Not Magic, It Is eTwinning! page 31 Adil Tugyan: Ups and Downs of My eTwinning Journey page 33 Carla Tosoratti: Not Only Virtual, Sharing Is the Word page 35 Virgilio Iandiorio: eTwinning, Silently page 36 Pinar Alniak Comlek: Every Body Language page 38 Yildiz Erdogmus: No Matter How Far - page 40 Miriam Schembri: Video Conferencing page 41
Introduction By Anne Gilleran Anne Gilleran is Irish and has many years experience in education as a guidance counsellor, teacher, school principal, teacher trainer. She now works as an education consultant. She has specialised in Information Communication Technology in Education both in practice and research, and is currently the Pedagogical Manager for eTwinning Central Support Service, run by the European Schoolnet (EUN) in Brussels, Belgium.
One of the most encouraging aspects of eTwinning is the way in which teachers involved work together to share what is best in their teaching situations with their colleagues across Europe. This newsletter is a prime example of this spirit of sharing which offers inspiration to eTwinners and non eTwinners alike. I offer my congratulations to all these involved in its production. Anne Gilleran
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------eTwinning School Teams, Power Boats and Safari Parks By Daniela Bunea Daniela Bunea is a teacher of English at Colegiul National Gheorghe Lazar in Sibiu, Romania and a Romanian eTwinning ambassador. She is also the coordinator of the Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group and the editor of this Newsletter. Highlighting and promoting School Teams has been the focus of this years eTwinning Spring Campaign. Many eTwinners believe that School Teams enhance teachers professional development and help ones school move forward, but especially improve eTwinning in general and its teachers community. Here is my story. In my school during the school year 2010-2011 we designed and implemented with the help of partners from Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Greece, France, Italy, United Kingdom and Poland an extremely successful eTwinning project entitled Celebrating eTwinning Football Across Europe. The school team that worked on the project in my school was made up of the teacher of Physical Education, the teacher of Art and two teachers of English as a Foreign Language. Following the success of World Cup 2010 in South Africa, the founding partners thought about a parallel to the Qualifications for the European Championships 2012 (Poland - Ukraine). 10 countries gathered together around a common theme: football. In order to form a European Football Team, each participating school chose its national football player and developed his biography in English, tackling curriculum contents and using web 2.0 tools to display them. At the same time, schools that is, students, teachers, parents got deeply involved in creating a project logo, the choreographies and outfits for the cheerleaders, as well as preparing the football matches that took place across Europe using the same eTwinning Ball, an original Jabulani ball. Its journey can be followed in its blog: http://etwinningball.blogspot.ro/ I knew from the beginning that I would need my colleagues help on such a complex project. Leaders need to do a lot of things if they want to see their teams excel. I think that what we did in our school was an embodiment of the power boat metaphor. We started, in order to create our eTwinning school team and make it tick, by getting the right people on the power boat. I had an opportunity to assemble an experienced team of talented
individuals, and then work with them over time to determine their best seats on the boat, then how to keep those places, as well as the direction we would sail the boat on the eTwinning waves. This way we built a strengths-based team, making use of many super powers teachers all over the world have. Fans of action, fantasy and science fiction films are surely aware of the successful film The Avengers, which premiered in April. The team in this film is made up of super heroes individuals who possess super-human abilities and are dedicated to protecting the public. Have I uttered the word team? Yes, great minds think alike, and at the same time.
Author Annie Condron has helped me understand with her article here http://www.teachhub.com/top10-teacher-super-powers that these are teachers super powers: Teachers do have X-ray vision you cant deny the facts: you can see eyes roving onto a deskmates or classmates test, you can spot uniform infractions, you can notice a dozing pupil 30 metres away! Teachers have super gadgets at their disposal just like Batman, you rock projectors, iPads and all things eLearning to live up to 21st century; Teachers know super memorization you are able to memorize up to 90 names in a single day! Teachers know how to brush hair just by
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------looking at it; Teachers are elastic Physics cannot explain it, but teachers are constantly stretching themselves to do everything a crazy classroom requires: active methods, differentiated instruction, doing mountains of paperwork in a couple of hours, holding parent-teacher meetings with a smile on your face even if disaster approaches, researching ever newer teaching tools and techniques, and much more; Teachers can start fires it is the spark of learning; Teachers are super patient, really; Each teacher is equipped with a hammer like Thor, and knows how and when to use it this is simply called keeping discipline, and you are not afraid to bring down the hammer when necessary; Teachers can deflect distractors that is, students who try to get you off topic; Teachers are able to create force fields around classrooms a safe, protective classroom environment that welcomes students, no matter what they experience outside the classrooms doors. collaboration stepped in. Living and working nowadays require us to handle a lot of information, which is really beyond what we can manage alone. Therefore working in teams becomes crucial to accomplish many tasks in less time and with more effectiveness. Collaboration does work. There are countless success stories based on collaboration: The Beatles in music, Apple and Microsoft in corporate giants, the Wrights brothers in inventions, Warner Bros in entertainment. It is not about competition, but about contributing there are no losers or winners, only successful relationships, enhanced skills and group outputs. It was like that for us too. There was tension as well at times, just the right amount to get lots done. We ended up by adding up 4 more super powers: First, the power of listening genuine and fruitful relationships are built when the conversational space is filled with everybodys thoughts and concerns, so we have practiced this power of listening a lot. One more super power is the power of empathy trying to see beyond ones own agenda. Third comes the power of imagination starting from the small but powerful image of being in this together. Next comes the power of asking the right questions at the right times. It has worked for us. I am proud of my teams work. We did build a powerful school team on this project. We kept ourselves focused on critical targets, removing obstacles using our super powers, and we helped each other - as people with diverse talents and varied interests in reality build trust in one another. When I decided to lead an eTwinning school team, I knew all the members of the team needed to be able to recognize each others strengths and take advantage of these strengths for the benefit of the project. I am fortunate to work in a school with gifted children and extremely dedicated teachers who are very competent individuals; moreover, these team members have complementary competencies, and to these complementary competencies passion and willingness to have fun were added. I think these are the various factors that have made our eTwinning school team work.
To all these, we added some more, but first let me tell you that what ignited us was the understanding that we needed to have a strategy. At first, at the beginning of our voyage, we were all rather confused, with all our super powers, and what helped us to move on was grasping the fact that strategy-making was most of the times for most people in most situations about confused individuals eventually reaching common ground. So it was like creating a safari park.
Another metaphor here: the fenced territory a common framework for everybody, teachers and students involved, simultaneously allowing for various degrees of freedom. And in this safari park
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Obviously we have continually improved as a unit, debating and connecting all the time. Yet there were obstacles too. I do not mean family constraints, not even financial needs. It is something else. We started with a clear purpose, each of us knew what the goal was and what was in there for our students and ourselves. It turned out differently, and no matter how disappointing to say the least this was, it also taught us that it is OK to fail at times, and that negative feedback (as no feedback at all could be considered this way I presume) should be taken without being defensive, with the next project in mind ultimately. as the king/queen was just the cover, the paravan, the starting point for our children to show all they haven't dreamed they possess, somewhere, deeply hidden in themselves: their multiple intelligences and the 21st century skills, innovation and creativity, critical thinking and problem solving all through collaborative work with many partners throuout Europe. An innovative approach was the one regarding project trailers, made by students , a concept developed inside the eTwinning Teachers' Room eTwinning projects trailers. We also created the first trailer of two very different but so similar (in the end) eTwinning projects, made in collaboration with Daniela Arghir Bunea from Celebrating eTwinning Football across Europe project. Here is the link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbEEO5ixMAg.
The Show Does Go on eTwinning Project King of My Castle (2011) Keeps on Rolling on a Stage By Ksenija Vidmar-Nincevic Ksenija Vidmar-Ninevi is a teacher of English at O.. Bartula Kaia in Zadar, Croatia. She has been an active eTwinning member for almost 4 years now. She has been involved in more than 30 projects 6 of them have her as the founder. Who hasn't been imagining himself as the queen/king in her/his own kingdom, where s/he could rule the way s/he's always beem dreaming of, while everybody had to listen? Listen? That's the cruelest deed one has to do; obeying is too difficult! Well, my dear friend Cristina Nicolaita and I created the eTwinning project entitled 'King of My Castle'. Of course, the eternal theme of imagining oneself
Our tangible outcomes are vivid by our outstanding Project blog, designed by my twinner Cristina, that many have judged as fantastic. Please, see the blog at http://king-of-my-castle.blogspot.com/.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Also, the Project TwinSpace was full with most imaginative children's artwork, fantastic presentations, cartoons, games that expressed their pure joy for taking part in the project as real partners of ours. Those untangible outcomes tackled the areas of creative thinking, cognitive, affective, psychomotor and other thinking skills in children, as much as their willingness to widen up their ICT skills and to learn to be more communicative with their peers & develop interpersonal skills. Of these skills, the interpersonal skills have been expanded gradually, but constantly, from the time the project was closed. As my pupils (then aged 8 to 12) expressed their desire to continue the project, I had an idea. One of the tasks in the project was set as the relation of castles with maths. We created our maths story called Princess Amalia Needs Help as the project task: http://www.slideboom.com/presentations/245185/ AMALIA%2C-THE-PRINCESS%2C-needs-HELP%21.
Our Princess Amalia was again performed but on stages of the Zadar central Theatre.The pupils, though, one year older, acted great. And we had fantastic fun once again! Here is the link to our performance: http://youtu.be/HhbcxID3kPs. This article aims to present the elements of sustainability and transferability of one eTwinning project, on the example of King of My Castle that has been both expanded and continued, tranformed into a nice play. Also, this example may serve as the motivation to other colleagues to keep on 'playing' and using other media to motivate pupils more to seek, find and show many hidden talents. Therefore, the 'show' does go on! Why not? We all need more fun!
Somehow, I got the idea to write down the script based on this maths problem. It became a funny play overwhelmed by my students: we started practising & adding some parts all together. That was our fantastic enthusiastic experience that is impossible to explain. We took part in public events with great success: last year, in Zadar Days of extra school activities (2011) in June, we were thrilled to perform the play in front of our Cathedral. This year we were invited to represent our School in the Theatre, in the great finalle of rewarding the most successful students for this school year 2011/2012.
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eTwinning Groups: Can They Help You Build Better Projects? How? By Irene Pateraki Irene Pateraki is the administrator of the Creative Classroom eTwinning Group. She is a Greek kindergarten teacher but for the last two years she has been seconded in the Hellenic Ministry of Education. Since 2010, in eTwinning there is an effort to reinforce a social network environment, which is being attempted through online groups and Teachers Rooms. eTwinning Groups are private platforms for eTwinners to discuss and work together on a specific topic or theme. Moderated by an experienced eTwinner, each Group sets out activities and tasks for teachers to do and discuss. The aim is for eTwinners to share practice examples, discuss teaching and learning methodologies and find support for professional development. But what exactly do we mean when we are talking about groups and communities? The term describes the social group that is created through the meeting and interaction between people who communicate via the Internet (Kowch, 1997). There are important areas of negotiation, learning, interpretation and identity (Kirschner & Lai, 2007).According to Preece (2000): People who interact socially, satisfying simultaneously their own needs. There is a common goal that gives a community a reason to exist. Tactics, protocols, rules and regulations which guide the interactions between the participants. Lastly, a digital community of practice (CoP) consists of a group of people who communicate with each other synchronously and/or asynchronously, concerning a topic of common interest according to the well-known C. Jones. At the moment, in eTwinning there is a great number of groups that work on different topics and cover many subjects with great success. Teachers there can exchange ideas, find useful material, collaborate with other teachers, create new activities or share their experience on different fields. Groups are a great opportunity to learn and also contribute to the learning of the other members. A successful group is a group where members do not only use the uploaded material, but they also contribute actively with their own material. But how can we keep active an eTwinning Group as administrators, sub-group moderators and members? Below, I will give you some tips and some examples of what we are doing in the Creative Classroom eTwinning Group: Bear in mind the purpose and objectives as well as users needs. You can organize surveys and polls from time to time in order to see what the members need or which topics are more interesting for them. Have a user-friendly structure. As members enter the groups all the year, it may be difficult to understand how they should work there. A simple video tutorial can give them a tour to the group and help them understand how it works. Be present; members can sense your reaction speed. Lead by example. As a group administrator or sub-group moderator you should give the good example and answer immediately when members ask for something, be active in group discussions etc. Activities should be designed to support sociability and participation. Groups can be a good exercise so that members learn to work collaboratively in their eTwinning projects. In the Creative Classroom Group members are invited to work together in some activities and share the results with the rest of the members. Plan a strategy to engage members: personal mails from time to time, requests to participate in activities, rewards, appraisal and recognition of their good work. In the Creative Classroom Group, we have organized polls where members voted for the best presentation with a Web 2.0 tool, all members work is gathered in thematic e-books, occasionally we have draws and members win eTwinning goodies etc. Track non-active members. It is very common that not all members will be active all the time. As a group administrator, you can send mails to inactive members and
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------check if everything is ok and ask if they need any help or guidance. Use a blended approach with offline and online activities and events. This year, we launched expert talks in the Creative Classroom Group. Almost every month, an expert was invited to talk about a topic, offer new ideas, discuss with participants and inspire them to their work at class. These webinars took place in Blackboard Collaborate and they are recorded. Always bear in mind that eTwinning Groups are addressed to a diverse audience that represents a variety of backgrounds. Try to involve active members in leadership roles and rotate these roles frequently. Ask members opinion regularly, value their ideas and take their comments into consideration. Members are asked for their opinion during the year. At the end of each school year they are asked to complete an online survey that will help us take into consideration their suggestions for next year. Provide technical support and help when it is needed. Provoke discussions in the forums and provide new activities frequently. Consider the timetable of the teachers (they are sometimes busy with school activities and they do not have the time they want for the Group). Organize competitions, polls, contests to keep members active and give them a reward for the time they spend for the Group. how important it is to contribute to the material. This year we had the chance to talk and create material to our Group about filmmaking in the classroom, digital comics, Web 2.0 tools, creative drama, game-based learning, School Teams and ways to motivate our students and keep them motivated. A range of topics we could also use in our eTwinning projects. Coming to an end, I would like to invite you to join 1-2 of the eTwinning Groups that are close to your interests (I would advise you not to be members in many, because you will not be able to be active in all). Because, as Henry Ford once said, coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success. References: Kirscher & Lai (2007), Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 16, 2, pp. 127131 Kowch, E. and Schwier, R. A. (1997), Considerations in the construction of technology-based virtual learning communities, Canadian Journal of Educational Communication, 26 (1), 1-12 Preece, J. (2000), Online communities: Designing usability, supporting sociability Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons
A good group needs time and work; it is a trial-anderror process. So you should not be disappointed if things do not work as you wanted to. Give another try, choose a different approach and bear in mind that a group stays active only when it meets members needs and when members understand
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------eTwinning Contact Seminar Mission Accomplished! By Christina Drakopoulou Christina Drakopoulou teaches French in a public school of secondary in Greece. Her profile is here: http://users.sch.gr/christinadrak. Who? 38 teachers from different European Countries Where? In Montpellier France New projects, new ideas, new learning events, new tools are always in the knowledge menu, and we enjoy that! But there is something deeper that I love, above all that: emotions shared when meeting together, exchanging ideas, joking, even without working together but always speaking about our projects! We meet just walking around, in the eTwinning Walking Areas, whether it is called eTwinning Greece , eTwinning Mentors or Comenius Coordinators! Its our Europewide (like worldwide) random encounters! Personally I am very happy to know these people, to work with most of them in the eTwinning Learning Events, to meet them around not in person, of course, and speak together, members of the beloved Twinning family. When? In May 2012 Why? To discover eTwinnning to explore the eTwin possibilities to find teachers cooperators. But lets start from the beginning: We all know that eTwinning is a great learning and creative experience not only for pupils, but for teachers, too. For that purpose there are several Professional Development Workshops which are aimed at individuals who want to learn more about eTwinning and develop their skills in European collaboration using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). On 10 May 38 participants from different European countries arrived to Montpellier in France to get involved with the philosophy of eTwinning, to exchange opinions, to share experiences, to make the first steps towards building an eTwinning project, to participate in workshops and, finally, to plan their first or second/third (?) eTwinning Project.
eTwinning Walking Areas By Maria Georgiadou
Maria Georgiadou is a teacher of French. She works at the 6th Junior High School of Rhodes, in Greece. Hello, my dear eTwinners, new friends that became old now, old not about the age but about what we have lived and are living together!
eTwinning Learning Events? My favourite ones! What I enjoyed this year? The two implemented by Daniela Arghir Bunea, the first one about webbased videos in eTwinning and the second one about ntergenerational Learning. I especially appreciated the subtitling techniques in Adam Stepinskis learning event, and also trying to find ways to involve old people in several projects! Another one that was targeted at eTwinning ambassadors was a good experience as well! I also enjoyed the learning event organized by Ioanna Komninou and her partners, concerning eTwinning and the creative classroom. As you can see, so many things happen in the eTwinning environment! See you next year!
The eTwinning quality and organization were obvious everywhere. JeanGabriel Bertrand, member of the Regional Support Service in the south of France (Acadmie de Montpellier), and all the team of CRDP (Regional Centre of Pedagogical Documentation), did their best to guarantee the effectiveness and success of the seminar.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Everything was well planned: the agenda of the Seminar, the aims, the methods, the tools, but also more practical issues like the participants accommodation, the respect of the timetable, the intervals between the workshops At that point lets travel back in Montpellier and remember day after day some Seminar moments! The 10th of May was the opening day registrations and first contacts took place. All the participants were enthusiastic and very soon the ice broke! On May 11 the participants had the chance to follow two interesting and helpful speeches concerning the European dimension of an eTwinning program. They also realized how the simplest idea could open new roads to everyone involved (person or school organization). After the lunch break it was time for work! Three teams three workshops concerning basic steps: eTwinning desktop, inscriptions, adding contacts, how to manage the TwinSpace ICT Tools presentations: Prezi and Voki) how to plan a project: calendar, objectives, material, expected results, evaluation. On 12 May after the registrations the 38 participants, as if they were small enthusiastic pupils, tried to organize their ideas and make their own eTwinning project plans. Half an hour later, ideas became projects that we all shared via presentation tools. The feelings were mixed satisfaction for learning new things, joy to make new friends, melancholy that the seminar arrived to its end. In fact nothing ended. Everything started that day. We left with more e-mail addresses, many photos, new ICT Tools, French flavours and memories of Montpellier. And all these under the colourful eTwinning prism. Useful Reference: To learn more about the eTwinning Professional Development (Workshops Learning Events eTwinning Groups Training) you can visit this url: http://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/professional_dev elopment/european_workshops.htm The second seminar day closed with the wonderful tour of the city of Montpellier. If you want to come with us, visit this link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33063389/eTwinn%20Co ntact%20Seminar%202012.wmv
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------eTwinning Visibility in Romania during the School Year 2011-2012 By Cristina Nicolaita Cristina Nicolaita is from Caracal, Romania. She works at Gh. Magheru School, where she teaches Physics and ICT. She started to develop eTwinning projects in 2008, now she has more than 20 projects, 8 of them with EQLs, one of them finalist last year at the eTwinning Prizes Competition in Budapest, Mathematicomix. She is a 2011 eTwinning mentor she then helped other new eTwinners start their work on the portal. She was also involved in School Teams campaign in 2012 with the project 12 PHOTOS- 12 MONTHS and is a member and sub-group moderator in a number of eTwinning Groups. It was a good year for eTwinning projects visibility. Starting with the CSS campaigns and continuing with our NSS campaigns, the eTwinning spirit grew and blossomed. Back to school campaign, or mentoring campaign, launched by CSS, was just a starting point for our NSS many inspiring campaigns and contests: - eTwinning Embassy in my school, where experienced eTwinners were challenged to involve their colleagues and guide them start at least one new project to conquer this rewarding status for their schools. Being one of the 32 Romanian eTwinning mentors (listed here: http://www.etwinning.ro/primii-mentorii-etwinningromani), I was glad to be part of this campaign and introduced eTwinning to 3 schools and 2 kindergartens, my school becoming one of the 17 Romanian schools that won the embassy diploma. eTwinning fairy-tale in nursery schools; eTwinners help eTwinners. That was again a successful campaign, my school was again among the schools that won some eTwinning goods. - eTwinning all year round was another campaign launched in spring, together with the Little March for eTwinning, great inspirational ideas for a calendar dedicated to eTwinning activities and another one for a little trinket dedicated to eTwinning. You can see one of the winning work of art here on this page! It belongs to Scoala cu clasele I-VIII Chicerea, com. Tomesti, Iasi county, students: Marian Irinel Raileanu and Marius Zmau (3rd class), teacher: Simona Petronela Miron.
The story goes on with the eTwinning and Comenius 7 years of collaboration campaign, organised by TEHNE and ISE, the organisations responsible for Romanian eTwinning, a campaign developed on two directions: eTwinning-Comenius Chronicle eTwinnig-Comenius showcase The winning presentation is to be found in the 2012 Collection of good practice, at http://www.etwinning.ro/bune-practici-etwinning, a brochure our NSS publish every year. I am proud to be included there two years in a row, and hope for more eTwinning school team campaign was another action close to my heart. Not only our project 12 Photos 12 Months was part of the gallery of good practice, but I was involved in the Creative Classroom eTwinning Groups activity regarding school teams, with a remarkable result: the eBook entitled Can you be creative with your colleagues contribution? to be found here: http://www.myebook.com/ebook_viewer.php?eboo kId=126005.
- The Embassy campaign was followed by a new challenge, a campaign divided in three categories: eTwinning fairy-tale for students;
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------So, to sum up, it was a good year for eTwinning visibility, and the story goes on, like the chain story our Creative classroom group developed during the last videoconference Happy holiday everybody, and come back with new ideas because, you know, eTwinning breaks the spell, or so the buzz is, just have a look at http://issuu.com/euroteensclub/docs/break_the_sp ell2! same time, with emotion, fun and joy. For me, eTwinning has two major aspects: communication and technological innovation. Communication, since schools develop networks of virtual information among them and communicate in different ways, developing the foreign languages as well as ICT skills. The other aspect has to do with the enormous amount of Internet software now available, which facilitates communication and the presentation of contents in a varied and appealing way in which image, sound and video play very important roles. Among the technological innovations I would highlight Wallwisher, a kind of mural that gathers a lot of multimedia content (videos, photos, links) and Flixtime, a flash video programme with preestablished templates. Both were used in the project Many Reasons to Believe.
Many Reasons to Believe By Pedro Neves Pedro Neves (Portugal) is a teacher of Physical Education in Agrupamento de Escolas de Sardoal and has been the Coordinator of the eTwinning Club since 2009. eTwinning is a very interesting community and platform, which I found by chance a few years ago, when surfing the net. As I have always liked travelling and getting to know new peoples and cultures, I soon realized that it was an innovative idea full of pedagogical potential and decided to enter the eTwinning world. It was a great thing to do, since then the experience has been fantastic! In three years we have promoted great activities in the eTwinning club, in Sardoal, activities which could not be developed within the curriculum. Besides the two European Quality Labels we have received, I have met European teachers and students and also created networks of collaborative work. On the other hand, my students have learned a lot about Europe, have made new friends and have developed their language and ICT skills. eTwinning is part of my daily life now, eTwinning means freedom, teaching passionately and, at the
Flashmeeting, a very easy and intuitive video chat, used in web meetings and web conferences, is also an important tool. It has a great advantage, which is to record all the conversations, and is able to have many people chatting online at the same time.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------www.prezi.com Prezi is a great way of making presentations, which perfectly combines image/video with text and follows a sequence. There is a blog, used as a support, for each one of the projects. http://manyreasonstobelieve.blogspot.pt/ - We are coordinating the Project Many Reasons to Believe, a project on social issues, which has partner schools in Turkey, Greece and Poland. Feedjit (http://www.geovisites.com), Geovisites (http://feedjit.com) and Clustrmaps (http://www3.clustrmaps.com) work as accessories on the blogs, providing statistics on the origin of the visitors, and the date and time of their visit.
http://www.voki.com is a voice tool in which one can create a character and choose the language he/she wants to speak.
www.facebook.com The most popular social network in the world. I use FB as a complement of my work. https://www.facebook.com/etwinning.sardoal - I use it to communicate with my students, post photos, images, videos, or news related to the themes of the project.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Interview with Renata Wojtas, 2012 eTwinning Prize winner and exhibitions in the classrooms or corridors, to present photos and outcomes of our project. We promoted our project by presenting it to the local community during schools open days or local festivities: all students, teachers, parents, grandparents, authorities and all guests. Interviewer: What did your students enjoy most about the project? Renata Wojtas: Our students liked the reality of the project. They liked seeing the photos of the teachers and pupils and their schools. They liked getting and sending messages, emails, and traditional letters or postcards. They enjoyed working in English, being able to communicate with their friends and develop their linguistic skills. They met real people and real situations. They realized how important it is to learn this language and to be able to communicate. ICT tools provided in the TwinSpace gave our students a wonderful opportunity to use communicative methods of learning English. It was also possible to introduce CLIL method Content and Language Integrated Learning, which became very popular. They were enthusiastic abut the collaboration and creating a story together with children from other European countries. It was a great satisfaction for students to be authors of the international comic book and they were very proud of it. They used imagination and creativity within their story, adding humorous adventures that presented real places and interesting facts about different countries. It was a good way to discover their own country as well as other countries in Europe and around the world. One project and we could teach and learn so much. Learning and fun; teaching and fun; collaborating and making friends what more could students and teachers wish for? Interviewer: Indeed! What kind of official recognition did your project receive? Renata Wojtas: We thought that our project was really successful because of our strong collaboration, and great effects, so we decided to apply for the quality label. We got the Quality Label, and then we took part in national competitions organised by NSS authorities. The project won first place in France, in Italy, in Poland
Renata Wojtas, teacher of English as a foreign language at Primary School no 32 in Bielsko-Biaa, Poland and Honorary Ambassador of eTwinning, is one of the teachers awarded in Berlin at the Annual eTwinning Conference in March 2012 for the eTwinning project "The adventures of Twinnies around the world". She was very kind and shared her experience with us! Read the interview!
Interviewer: What is the main idea of your winning project? Renata Wojtas: Our project The adventures of the Twinnies around the world became a fantastic medium for motivating students. An adventure is defined as being an exiting or unusual experience, and therefore this is attractive for children. Our virtual journey around the world involves learning and discovering interesting facts about different countries and cultures so the topic is valuable in terms of education and pedagogy. Our pupils loved the project and in fact, they didnt even realise that they were learning. Interviewer: What did you do to make your project visible? Renata Wojtas: To make the project visible, we tried to introduce our work to the whole school community. We provided links to our project on our schools website, so anyone at any time could have a look and see the progress of the project and how it was developing. We also prepared special corners
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------and first place in the European eTwinning Prizes 2012 for pupils aged 5 to 12. Our students participated in the eTwinning camp organised in a beautiful place in Turkey, and met their project friends face to face unforgettable experience! Artful Thinking and eTwinning By Xanthie Chouliara, in collaboration with:
Ioanna Komninou
Mary Frenzou
Interviewer: What advice would you give to fellow eTwinners eager to develop similarly successful projects? Renata Wojtas: All you really need is a nice topic and a good, enthusiastic team. Together you can build on ideas, create a project, make it grow, flourish and bear fruit. Listen to the words of advice sang by our students: eTwinning is the beginning of friendships and adventures, different countries and different schools coming together, it all happens at etwinning.net, so find a project and link to your partner on the Internet! Just join and enjoy! Interviewer: Thank you, and good luck in all your future endeavours!
Xanthie Chouliara is a Primary School Head Teacher at Primary School of Highland Zone, Zakynthos Island, Greece and a Greek NSS member. She is also International Coordinator, teacher4europe 2012 and the creator of the Head eT group for Greek head teachers and Net.gr Greek network about creativity. Ioanna Komninou is a member of the Greek NSS, and member of the teachers pedagogical team. Mary Frentzou is a teacher of English as a foreign language, an eTwinner since 2005 and member of the Hellenic NSS. Recently a lot of Greeks educators have started implementing the Artful thinking in their eTwinning projects thus improving the quality of the projects which got awards in many categories of the National and European eTwinning Awards.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Artful thinking is the integration of noticing and artful observation. Artists do not even think this as a strategy to include in the classroom, they think it is the normal way about creating and interpreting art. By applying these techniques to reading, geometry, science. history, language learning and a lot of other school subjects, students can suddenly engage in questioning and active involvement.
But what is Artful Thinking? It is a strategy that involves asking deep critical thinking questions such as what do you see?, what do you think?, what do you understand seeing this piece of art?
They no longer just receive and memorize information. Instead, they are listening, learning, giving, receiving, and thinking critically and interact with each other and the teachers.
Low level students, not proficient in writing can also express their thoughts and feelings with pictures this is what we want for eTwinning projects!
All these questions enrich a conversation in the classroom and promote creative thinking and creative writing.
Artful thinking is one of the subjects of teacher inservice training in Greece nowadays, so as many teachers as possible get acquainted with this technique.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Web 2.0 Compass Area: Smilebox is... Creative With more than 1000 customizable designs for any occasion and style plus the ability to add your own photos, videos, words and music, Smilebox lets you be as creative as you want.
Smile with Smilebox! By Cristina Nicolaita, Romania This simple application for PC and Mac lets you quickly and easily create slideshows, invitations, greetings, collages, scrapbooks and photo albums right on your computer. To get started, download and install the Smilebox application. Then simply select the photos you want to use, choose a template, add comments and music and voila, you've made a Smilebox! With more than 1000 customizable templates to choose from, you'll find inspiration around every corner.
Personal Whether sending a digital greeting or printing a collage of your vacation, sharing life's moments is more personal with Smilebox. The response you'll get will keep you coming back for more.
Fun Smilebox is a fun place to explore what you can do with your photos and videos. It's quick, easy and addictive! And, when you send someone a Smilebox, it is a delightful spark of connection.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. Open your photo with Photofiltre. I use 2 methods to make the sheet of paper completely white. 3.1 The Magic Wand Tool Try to select the surface of the sheet , testing different tolerances. Then cut the selection (CTRL+X). Your selection takes the background color: white.
SmileBox lets you share your unique creative designs through various platforms and social media networks, such as Facebook and MySpace. It also allows you to invite your friends and e-mail your work to them or publish it on blogging sites. 3.2 The Polygon Tool Select the surface , drawing a polygon zone. Each point click will be the corner of the polygon. Then cut the selection (CTRL+X). Your selection, takes the background color: white.
Personalize a Group Photo with Photofiltre By Eric Vayssie, France For the promotion of your eTwinning or Comenius project you probably made a group photo. This tutorial explains how to personalize it with flags and names. 1. Download the application Photofiltre Free from here: http://photofiltre.en.softonic.com/download. 2. Take a photo of your group. Each member needs to hold a white sheet of paper. On this photo the paper does not appear completely white , there are shadows.
Repeat that process for all the sheets of your photo
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Download country flags. Use a Google image search. There is also a flag gallery in Wikipedia. Open that flag image in a new Photofiltre window. Select the flag image and paste it on your photo. You might need to resize the flag. Repeat the process for all the flags. Then write the members names. Myebook Is Yours Too! By Daniela Bunea, Romania Myebook is designed to completely change the way that books or magazines are published on the Internet. It is an all-in-one solution for the creation and sharing of online books, and one of the easiest ways to get a book or magazine out there and start spreading the word about it. Our newsletters are published using myebook! E-books are easier to publish then print books however, this is still fairly difficult for some people. Myebook has been designed to make it really easy for anyone to publish e-books on the Internet.
That is all! Good work!
It is possible to use the application to create as many books as one wants for free. Myebook has a very nice and simple user interface and it is suitable for virtually any type of book or magazine photo albums, brochures, comics, leaflets, manuals, childrens books.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It is possible to embed multimedia content including video and audio, which will make your book that little bit more special. With myebook users can create their own e-book from scratch or from a .pdf file, incorporate a myriad of file types into their book, browse and effortlessly flip through other e-books, and connect with other members. From the very beginning I was impressed with the quantity of options, and loved the way the layout and the content of a page can be customized to my liking. Page content can be edited with standard word processing features, but there are also a great variety of photo frames, clip art, special effects that can enliven and/or enforce the content. Once done building the myebook, the author can publish it publicly or privately, and specify whether viewers can add comments or not, or share the work or not. Once published, the e-book will be added to the sites library, and consequently can be shared across social networks or embedded elsewhere. Movies a Few Clicks Away with TripWow By Raluca Filip, Romania TripWow - a super cute tool by TripAdvisor is my #1 travel guide and rating place, and an absolute must feature to make use of when you have returned from your vacation and wish to share your photos in a fun way with friends and family, or when you want to virtually present your town or country to a foreigner.
TripWow is a user-friendly slideshow program that is very simple to use but also lets you play creative director, adding elements like music, animated maps, and captions to your latest ouvre. And just as importantly, you can do the sharing and viewing from the comfort of your own desktop.
Myebook is a good, professional tool for selfpublishing written content. It is an impressive service with a variety of use cases try it too!
The TripWow interface is attractive and easy to navigate through. You start by uploading your photos you can choose between several photo storage providers such as Facebook, flickr and Picasa as well as uploading pics from your PC or Mac. Next, you customize your sideshow by selecting a theme, background music, and related text your name, the place and more. The program does the rest. TripWow slideshows can also be easily shared with friends and family via e-mail or social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. You can also embed your slideshow in websites or blogs.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I didn't have a great experience in podcasting or filmmaking, and once again eTwinning came to help me: two webinars were organised after some weeks, one about podcasting and another one about filmmaking. I thought it was a sign! I subscribed and attended them both. I learnt a lot, and then I decided to put everything I had learnt into practice with my students. What Nikos Theodosakis writes on the Home Page of his site http://thedirectorintheclassroom.ning.com/ has been food for thought for me. He says: We need filmmaking in our classrooms, not to graduate filmmakers, but to graduate problem solvers, critical thinkers and passionate people who can work with others to make that which does not exist, real.
Every time I used TripWow, I really loved the idea of making a movie at the click of a few buttons!
Filmmaking in the Classroom By Alessandra Pallavicini Alessandra Pallavicini is a teacher of English at ISIS Galilei-Fermi-Pacassi in Gorizia, Italy and an Italian eTwinning Ambassador. eTwinning has always been a source of inspiration in my job. I have been an eTwinner for seven years now and have seen the development of the portal: from its very beginning, when it consisted mainly of a partner finding forum and not much else, to now when it has become a community of teachers, a social network and a lot more. Last year for some reasons I decided to apply for a move and change schools. I was so lucky to see my application accepted and so I could start working in a highly technological school where some years ago a group of teachers had founded a webradio and then also a webTV. I joined them as soon as I arrived because I think that, as a teacher, I am a lifelong learner and what I like most in my job is the opportunity it gives me to learn something new every year.
I admit I had never thought of filmmaking this way before, and at first I didn't completely understand the idea of the necessity of such an activity in the classroom. But later I realized how right he was: the process of filmmaking can be really useful for students in order to develop their skills of analysis, planning, synthesis, creativity and cooperative learning. I decided to give it a try. The first idea was quite simple: I thought of asking my first-year students who are 15 years old and mostly at an A2 level of English to create a couple of situations in which they had to use the English language employing the vocabulary and grammar they had learnt so far. We decided together how to organize our work. At first they worked in groups and thought of the situations. They decided to write about: asking and giving street directions; asking for information at a railway station; and doing the shopping in a supermarket. Then they had to write the script. At first they were sure they would not have any difficulty: what problems could we have? It is so easy, they said. But then they realized how much they needed to think about the situation they meant to work on.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It was interesting to see how they discussed in order to make their story not just a series of sentences or utterances. They actually tried to create a context, a kind of situation in the situation where the actors would play and perform. For example, it was not only a matter of asking for directions on the street, but also to explain why the people needed such information, then they had to think about who the people were, where they were, what they were doing there and so on. Their creativity was under pressure! It was nice to see them so engaged in this productive phase! Once the scripts were ready, they had to think about the location, and here too they wanted to do some experiments: they suggested a couple of real locations but also they asked for the possibility to try to create the location just like in a studio. Later, a couple of students from higher levels showed interest too and asked to join us. We thought about having the same situations but on a B1/B2 level of English. The process was the same: planning of the story, creation of the script and so on. There is still so much to be done pronunciation and intonation are not perfect at all! But is it easy to act in a foreign language? Acting is quite poor, I'm afraid, but our focus this time was not on that aspect. After watching the videos, the students themselves suggested changes in the process: for example, they said that next time they'd better not write a full story but leave more room to improvisation in order to be more natural in their performance. I think this example shows how useful it is to integrate filmmaking in the classroom, and when, some time after the videos were ready, I read Matthew Needleman's post here: http://creatinglifelonglearners.com/?p=220, I could only agree. After this first experience I've been using filmmaking also in an eTwinning project where students are writing news to be published in an online newspaper. We thought of creating a News TV programme where they read their articles just like speakers.
Message Boards Overview and Use in eTwinning Projects and the Classroom By Patricia Zanfir Patricia Zanfir is a teacher of English at Colegiul National Gheorghe Lazar in Sibiu, Romania. She is a computer fan and project enthusiast. A message board can be easily defined as a type of Internet site, also known as a forum, over which people can communicate, share ideas, pictures, short videos, or links towards other sites of interest. It is basically a site over which people can have conversations in the form of posted messages. According to Wikipedia, forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; e.g. a single conversation is called a thread. A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: a forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish. It is sometimes viewed as a virtual playground, for grown-ups and children alike, as more and more people seem to discover the benefits of sharing thoughts and ideas over the internet, whether it is
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------the joy of sharing a good joke, or a rant about something that has been bothering them; there is nothing that compares to a sympathetic, if virtual, ear. Using message boards can be highly beneficial for teachers and students alike in or outside the classroom, as well as in projects. Besides the obvious benefits of joining a group of people who have the same interests (if you like pink, fluffy bunnies, just do a Google search and you will most definitely find a group who loves them just as much as you do), they also offer immense advantages for people across the globe, who are suddenly connected through a common goal: in our case an eTwinning project. Another advantage of using Message boards for communicating in eTwinning projects is the fact that everyone involved, regardless of their physical whereabouts, can practically be in the same space, at the same time, as if actually in the same quarters. And if different time zones hinder such straightforward communication, messages can always be responded to at a later time, without any inconvenience: the thread will still be an ongoing conversation about a certain topic. In addition, all the ideas communicated are stored for practically an unlimited period of time, meaning that people are able to contribute to the discussion at their convenience. This type of advantage that transcends time and space barriers cannot be overlooked. Students and teachers alike will interact, among themselves and with each other, just like in day-to-day situations. And teachers of EFL will have the added benefit of communicating in English. The purpose of eTwinning projects is to have people all over the world participate and collaborate in reaching a common goal: a project. What better use of message boards than for effective communication? The TwinSpace offers message boards for teachers in the Staff Room, and for students in the Pupils Corner. Obviously one can choose to work on external message boards as well. A message board represents much more than a simple site with messages piled upon each other randomly; it is a much more organized space. It can be divided into different threads, one for each topic of discussion, as mentioned previously. You can have topped or pinned threads that is, they are always stuck to the front of the page and they will be the first topics a person will encounter upon entering the site. Such threads usually deal with Rules and Regulations and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), but they can also be Introduction threads in which people post to break the ice and say a little something about themselves, thus creating those essential, first bonds with the other participants. In addition, there are Birthday Threads, in which people can post their birth date and host virtual parties: people post their wishes for the birthday boy/gal, together with pictures, animations, songs and so on. Such threads can become quite lively and have been known to even help barriers in communication. You have the perfect starter right there, in the form of a relevant calendar date. Message boards are perfect for keeping in touch in the case of eTwinning projects and for offclassroom use. Correctly utilized, they will prove to be invaluable. In addition to the general topic threads previously discussed, one may create a virtually endless number of threads, to suit various purposes. For example, you can have general discussions in threads such as the TV Lounge, The Music Room, The Book Club, etc., or more specific ones, i.e. Teachers Lounge (which will be teacher access only, for obvious reasons), or threads in which students may post THEIR ideas, projects, recommendations, etc. It is highly advantageous for students and teachers alike. Students communicate via a well-known and appreciated means the Internet in a secure space the TwinSpace , and teachers can also venture into the 21st century, making use of new technologies to further their teaching methods. After all, whether we like it or not, we are all more or less slaves of the new technologies, the Internet in particular: always checking our e-mails or Facebook pages and feeling slightly unnerved when we cannot. Why not use them for our projects as well? Just as a message board is more than a collection of messages floating together in the murky waters of the ocean that is the Internet, posters do not just post randomly whatever crosses their mind. A moderator is in charge of a board; he/she is the boss, more simply put. A moderators role is to monitor discussions and make sure the posters do not offend anyone. Moreover, a moderator will
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------make sure that people stay on topic. It is a fine line that a moderator must walk in order to maintain the good disposition and decide which things hurt the discussion, and which things, while slightly offtopic, only enhance it. What is more, a moderator will have to try and involve everyone in the conversation, which can be nerve-wracking and time consuming to say the least. He/she will also propose new threads/topics when conversation lags or has come to a halt. A moderator is really the lifeline of a board, and no self-respecting board can function without one. To conclude, we must once again weigh in the benefits of message boards: they are highly effective in communicating and in quickly getting the message across the message is transmitted instantly, they still hold an aura of novelty, especially for projects and other teaching purposes, and last but not least, they are spot-on on the new direction in teaching, with integrating the new technologies into the classroom. I would even venture as far as recommending that an entire eTwinning project take place over the internet. much as collaborative work and ICT skills, seemed to be the key aspects of integrating eTwinning as part of language teachers approach for a more authentic and meaningful way of promoting the intercultural communicative competence. With the aim of understanding how eTwinning action develops processes of intercultural communication mediation among individuals of multiple and diverse contexts and identities, a study was carried out. It sought to understand to what extent eTwinning action can bridge the gap between cultures and boost intercultural communicative competence among students of different participating countries. It was both a descriptive and evaluative study, based on an interpretative approach, involving the analysis of official documents, its online working environment and a survey to foreign language teachers that develop eTwinning projects. The results lead to the conclusion that eTwinning action provides the conditions for intercultural encounters to take place, in the sense that promotes the use and the learning of foreign languages in an authentic communicative context where, through the projects, students my compare cultural similarities and differences among the participant cultures. However, it also showed that the development of the intercultural communicative competence isnt an easy task, for the teachers perceptions revealed problems in their understanding of the extent on how communicative competence can be promoted. This reflection aims to bring some light regarding the concepts that shape the intercultural communicative competence in foreign languages, providing guidelines for teachers that wish to research further into these matters. Presently, foreign language education is concerned with plurilingual and pluricultural competences development which is built in linguistic and cultural experience encounters. To reach this goal, researchers like Byram (1997) have suggested a change of language learning and teaching paradigm, switching from a native-speaker approach to an intercultural speakers proposition in order to provide students with the necessary tools to explore multiple cultural perspectives and negotiate differences and meanings. Kaikkonen (2001) adds that the use of ICT tools pave the way for these intercultural and interactive experiences, which with eTwinning take place among students from various levels of education across Europe.
Are We Promoting Intercultural Communicative Competence in eTwinning? By Helena Serdoura Helena Serdoura from Portugal is a teacher of English as a foreign language and of Portuguese as mother tongue, at a lower secondary school with children 10 to 14 years of age. () the most important goal of foreign language education is to help learners grow out of the shell of their mother tongue and their own culture. (Kaikkonen, 1991, cit. by Kaikkonen, 2001:64) As far as foreign language is concerned, reinforcing language learning and intercultural dialogue, as
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------According to Kaikkonen (2001:70) and Sercu et al. (2005:26) the reinforcement of ones own cultural identity is the starting point for an intercultural education in foreign languages. This line of thought is also corroborated by Byram (1997:24) when he states that the encounter with otherness itself creates a clear sense of ones own identity. Further, the shift to intercultural speaker presumes that one is able to cross borders and who can mediate between two or more cultural identities (); who can develop skills as cultural intermediaries between different ways of perceiving and interpreting the world (Byram, cit. by Elsen & St. John, 2007: 23). For this to happen, Sercu et al. (2005: 2) consider essential that the individual undertakes efforts to develop a series of predispositions, competencies and intercultural skills and attitudes to mediate intercultural encounters: 1 Willingness to engage with the foreign culture 2 Self-awareness and the ability to look upon oneself from the outside 3 The ability to see the world through the others eyes 4 The ability to cope with uncertainty 5 The ability to act as a cultural mediator 6 The ability to evaluate others points of view 7 The ability to consciously use culture learning skills 8 The ability to read the cultural context 9 The understanding that individuals cannot be reduced to their collective identities To elucidate the intercultural speakers profile and the factors involved in intercultural competence, it was adopted in the study Byrams conceptual model for Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), as it follows: educational objectives mentioned above. In order to help teachers reflecting upon their teaching methods and evaluate what perspectives and positioning to adopt in foreign languages education, the following table presents a comparison between the traditional and the experiential model.
According to Steele, cit. by Aguilar (2002), one of the advantages of adopting the intercultural speaker perspective relies on the fact that the learner is placed in the centre of the learning and teaching process: learner-centred methodology that has been widely adopted as an effective way of teaching a foreign language, as the interaction, implicit in the idea of the intercultural speaker as a mediator between two cultures, places the learner at the centre of teaching and learning process. (op. cit.:92) To avoid culture teaching mistakes such as the passing on of specific culture information about foreign culture so students become familiar with those aspects dealt in the textbooks, or even when teachers compare cultures but do not help pupils reflect on their own cultural identity and deeper insights in their own culture, Sercu et al. (2005:7578) propose a set of activities that teachers can use to promote the subcompetences proposed by Byram in his ICC conceptual mode: 1. I ask my pupils to compare an aspect of their own culture with that aspect in the foreign culture 2. I talk with my pupils about stereotypes regarding particular cultures and countries or regarding the inhabitants of particular countries
Clarified the concepts that drawn up the intercultural speakers profile, it is now important to think in ways foreign languages teachers can implement teaching strategies that will promote the
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. I comment on the way in which the foreign culture is represented in the foreign language materials I am using in a particular class 4. I ask my pupils about their experiences in the foreign country 5. I ask my pupils to describe an aspect of their own culture in the foreign language 6. I ask my pupils to think about the image which the media promote the foreign country 7. I ask my pupils to think about what it would be like to live in the foreign culture 8. I ask my pupils to independently explore an aspect of the foreign culture 9. I ask my pupils to participate in role-play situations in which people from different cultures meet 10. I touch upon an aspect of the foreign culture regarding which I/they feel negatively disposed 11. I invite a person originating from the foreign country to my classroom 12. () After this reflections, it is not difficult to agree with Kaikkonen when he declares that becoming an intercultural speaker is a life-long process; () a whole lifetime of foreign language and intercultural learning (2001: 89). The starting point is to recognize its relevance, understand what lies beneath it and start making the necessary changes so ICC can become a reality in our foreign language classes and eTwinning projects. References: [1] Aguilar, M. J. (2002). Intercultural communicative competence: a step beyond communicative competence. Estudios de linguistic inglesa aplicada, ELIA 3, PP. 85-102. [2] Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. [3] Byram, M., Gribkova, B., Starkey, H. (2002). Developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching - a practical introduction for teachers. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Language Policy Division. Available at: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/guid e_dimintercult_en.pdf [4] Elsen, A. & St. John, O. (2007). Learner autonomy and intercultural competence. In Jimnez Raya, M. & Sercu, L. (eds.) Challenges in teacher development learner autonomy and intercultural competence. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp. 15-38. eTwinning for All: e-Skills and Digital Competences at School from a Lifelong Learning Perspective By Cinzia Colaiuda Cinzia Colaiuda is a teacher of German at the lower secondary school Ovidio in Sulmona, Italy. Cinzia is an eTwinning Ambassador in her region and works closely with the eTwinning CSS and NSS on developing pedagogical material in eTwinning. She has been an eTwinner since 2008. Currently she is working at the Ministry of Education in Rome. Digital technologies have enormous potential to benefit our everyday lives and tackle social challenges. In the globalisation era we are all connected through the internet in the www[5] Kaikkonen, P. (2001). Intercultural learning through foreign language education. In Kohonen, V., Jaatinen, R., Kaikkonen, P. & Lehtovaara, J. Experiential learning in foreign language education. Essex: Pearson Education, pp. 61-102. [6] Kohonen, V. (1992). Experiential language learning: second language learning as cooperative learner education. In Nunan, D. (ed.). Collaborative language learning and teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 14-39. [7] Sercu, L., Bandura, E., Castro, P., Davchev, L., Laskaridou, C., Lundgren, U., Mndez Garca, M. C. & Ryan, P. (2005). Foreign language teachers and intercultural competence na international investigation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------village. In particular social networks are the most popular and powerful social media people are using in order to communicate with the rest of the world. Surely, social networks (Facebook, Twitter etc.) can be used to create a sense of community and to highlight the increasing importance of eTwinning projects at school as a way to promote e-inclusion based on knowledge, innovation, creativity and a lifelong learning vision of the future. In fact, the popularity of these social networks can be a way to share general aims, educational goals, project plans and final results of eTwinning projects (external websites, blogs, wikis, file sharing, multimedia presentations etc.) with the rest of educational community (peer feedback, collaborative assessment, educational research based on mutual understanding etc.) and to deliver a new, wider form of online social cohesion outside the eTwinning platform. A recent survey has shown that over 50% of Europeans use the internet daily but 30% have never used it at all! This is an unacceptable digital divide, and all our people need enhanced digital skills to participate fully in society. Social inclusion of disabled, foreign pupils, convicted minors, hospitalized and senior citizens can also be fostered through the internet and the acquisition of e-skills. ICT plays an important role among the actions undertaken at European level in the field of education and educational research, and will have an even stronger position in the new EU Programme Erasmus for All. The increasing importance of eTwinning in the EU school systems and in the EU educational policies can be seen as a new way to promote e-inclusion and to develop digital literacy and digital competences among young people at school, from pre-primary to upper secondary school level. In fact, the so called digital natives can surely use the internet, ICT tools and social media better than adults, but sometimes they cannot do it in a smart way, that is they cannot critically evaluate different features of media aspects and contents for learning, self-development, employment and social integration.
Social networks could also be used to develop collaborative media projects or to create a larger network of outside experts, which could have a strong influence on the future development of the main pedagogical features of eTwinning projects. References: Digital Agenda for Europe: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/dig ital-agenda/index_en.htm Digital competence for lifelong learning: http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/JRC48708.TN.pdf Erasmus for All: http://ec.europa.eu/education/erasmus-forall/ e-skills: http://eskills.eun.org/web/guest;jsessionid =CCDC998D25A919FC20B55839F2B2D8AC L. Ilomki, A. Kantosalo, M. Lakkala, What is digital competence? , http://linked.eun.org/c/document_library/g et_file?p_l_id=16319&folderId=22089&nam e=DLFE-711.pdf
How can we highlight the increasing role of eTwinning within the Comenius Programme? How can eTwinning projects be more visible on the net? How can we foster e-skills, digital literacy and competences at school through the eTwinning platform?
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------International Projects as a Way for Promoting e-Safety By Lidija Kralj public exposure of their private data, photos or videos, and how to be respectful towards others in an online environment.
Lidija Kralj is a Croatian teacher of Mathematics and Informatics at Veliki Bukovec Primary School, and also a leader for national campaign "Safer Internet for children and youth". Teachers and students are using more and more web 2.0 tools, work with different cloud resources and social networks. Do they pay enough attention to safety of online environment and make balance between usability and possible risks? If we look at eTwinning and TwinSpace from that perspective, I am happy to say that eTwinning projects are great way of engaging students with online communication and collaboration in a safe environment and guaranteed good company. The TwinSpace has elements of social network but does not put our students in dangerous situations. Math empowered with e-safety Last year, French math teacher Maryse Duprey and I started a project "Architecture of My City" about architecture, from a geometric point of view. Our students (14 and 15 year olds) worked in pairs on different mathematical tasks connected with project idea and embraced mathematical language in English, French and Croatian. This project gave students the opportunity to see the mathematical aspect of everyday situations and share their knowledge with peers from another country. Students worked on tasks in the computer lab, mathematical classroom, outside and at home. They solved tasks making drawings, descriptions, videos, taking photos and collaboratively working on blogs and documents in TwinSpace. Students use TwinSpace tools for communication, collaboration and sharing of their findings. We used chat for discussing their solutions and differences among some mathematical approaches, and videoconferences in which we shared our experiences about project, discussed social networks, their potential benefits-pitfalls and learn some French and Croatian phrases. So we employed the opportunity of using TwinSpace as social network to show our students what can be shared online, how to pay attention to Teachers and e-safety School policies about use of computers, mobile devices, Internet and social media are still rare to find in most of the EU schools. For example, not one school in Croatia has it. At the same time we are all exposed to social media influence and we cannot just make up rules as we come across some misuse. It is time to plan ahead it would be much easier for all of us if game rules are known from the beginning.
Alongside with our primary mathematical goals, we realized internet safety aims, as TwinSpace gave us excellent opportunity to communicate and collaborate in a safe online environment and to teach our students how to use the Internet in a safe, responsible and effective manner.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For the start, teachers can adapt some guidelines about social media use from business environment. Check this Policy Database here: http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php for lots of examples. And we can use social media to help us and join forces with other teachers creating this Crowdsourced School Social Media Policy: http://edudemic.com/2012/06/school-social-mediapolicy/ - now you just have to translate it and use it wisely. Simon Finch, Internet safety advisor, on his blog article Thoughts on writing social media policy http://simfin.wordpress.com/more/thoughts-onwriting-a-social-media-policy/ recommends to teachers that prior to use any program for social networking create a risk assessment to ensure a consistent approach to the use of social media. This assessment may include some of the following: Are there adequate privacy options available? Can comments be moderated prior to publishing? Is the service generally recognized as trusted and reliable? Have parents been notified of the intended use of the social media within their childs teaching? Does the service have responsive reporting systems in place? Has the educational value of the activity been shared with colleagues, learners and parents? Is there a clearly identified pastoral/disciplinary process in place in the event of an incident? So, it is really on teachers to decide if they will use social network programs, which one, and how they will use them with their students, and not to forget that students safety comes first. More information: Project "Architecture of My City" earned Croatian Comet Award for the best project in category 11 14 yrs: http://www.os-velikibukovec.skole.hr/?p=354; also it was shortlisted for eTwinning Prizes 2012: http://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/awards/european _prizes/shortlist_2012.htm. You can find further information on the projects TwinSpace: http://newtwinspace.etwinning.net/web/p41820. If you can read Croatian, here is one of my articles about social media policies for schools, Putokazi kroz drutvene mree: http://pogledkrozprozor.wordpress.com/2011/11/3 0/putokazi-kroz-drutvene-mreze/ Lidija Kralj, Pogled kroz prozor No. 35, November 2011
TED: EU and US Teachers Learn from Each Other By Paraschevi Belogia
Paraskevi Belogia is a teacher of English in Secondary Education in Greece and an active eTwinner. As a teacher heavily involved with various eTwinning projects, I have always enjoyed what could be described as imaginary trips to my partners homelands. Because, no matter how far these places are, after growing closer to my partners through working together, it felt like I was able to reach them, not just by looking at a photo or by reading just a few short lines about them, but, more importantly, by getting a genuine feel of the people who make up that place's culture. Escaping my countrys boundaries and effectively travelling around Europe through my imagination while working on eTwinning projects has always been a deep pleasure for me, even though at times it did prove to be quite a challenge. Even with my past eTwinning experience, however, TED managed to trigger my imagination like no such other course has. For me, it turned out to be a ticket to knowledge that gave me the opportunity to cross the Atlantic and broaden my personal and professional horizons.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In order to describe my experience with TED, I would like to go back to the first day I saw the announcement to join TED on the eTwinning desktop. Having always been a big follower of online seminars and learning events and always eager to have new experiences, the announcement grabbed my interest. The title of the course was too promising and I could not stop myself from applying. Before I get to the details of my experience with the course, I feel I should start with an overview of what exactly TED is. The Transatlantic Educators Dialogue (TED) is a Moodle-based course, sponsored by the European Union Center and the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. The first TED course took place in 2010, which means that participants this year have attended the third Transatlantic Educators Dialogue. The 2012 TED started on February 12th and lasted until April 29th. We participated in 12 online sessions using Elluminate Live! for one and a half hour each, every Sunday. We were also able to join forum discussions and share educational resources in the Moodle platform. 80 educators in total from the US and the EU, divided into two groups, took part in TED. The leader and coordinator of the course was Lucinda Morgan, a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, who also works in the office of International Programs in the College of Education at Illinois. TED was a vastly different online course from the ones I had attended so far. Whereas most courses I have been a part of tend to closely follow the typical format of a program, in TED there were no specific tasks to be completed, no studying, at least in the traditional sense of the term, and no marking or any other kind of evaluation. The course was more like a series of online interactions among teachers from Europe and the US on various educational topics. All the participants took an active role in these online discussions, sharing information about themselves and their schools along with their countries, collaborating and exchanging ideas and resources, ultimately learning from each other in a relaxing, yet creative and, in my opinion, very effective way. During the first two weeks of TED, we all had the chance to glimpse into each others' educational systems and we got to share our views and knowledge on EU and US infrastructure. From the third week on, small groups of 2-3 participants were formed to lead the weekly Elluminate sessions. Each week was dedicated to a specific topic and the group responsible to lead each weeks conversation had to collaborate before-hand and then introduce the main ideas of the specific topic that would make for the basis of the discussion, as well as provide a set questions that would assist with moving the discussion forward. Since a lot of the people attending TED are active eTwinners, it was inevitable for all of us to relate each one of the topics discussed with our work on eTwinning projects. I cannot remember a single Sunday session going without someone mentioning it. Each of these sessions proved inspiring and thought-provoking and every single time we came away with new ideas for eTwinning projects. Perhaps, more importantly, I feel like we transferred our passion for eTwinning and collaborative projects to our US peers as most of them ended up eager to learn more about it and even take part in eTwinning projects with their students. Most of them also agreed that we Europeans are really fortunate to have built such a creative community for our schools, since there is nothing similar to eTwinning in the US.
The main topics that we discussed during this 12week-period in TED were: Impressions of the other, approaches to teaching, evaluation and assessment systems, youth culture, immigration, rural and urban situations, economics, opportunities for international cooperation and the future of education. Through all these interactions, I realized that even though we might live in different countries or even different continents, we all share the same concerns and face similar problems and, above all, we all have the same passion for education and teaching, which I feel can help us overcome any obstacle. After the end of each TED session I felt that I gained not only in depth knowledge on the discussed topics but, through coming into contact with others, experience with the subject as well. Personal stories of identity that my peers shared
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------brought us closer, allowing us to know each other better and helping us gain a better understanding of other countries and cultures. TED reinforced my belief that successful educational systems should focus on how to build inclusive schools; this is the only way that can lead to the creation of inclusive societies. TED discussions made it clear to me that assessment should encourage lifelong learning and not discourage teachers and students from educating themselves. Certain TED sessions showed me that teenagers deal with the same youth problems even in the most developed countries and convinced me that only through a well-designed educational system that provides equal opportunities for all would these problems be solved. Through TED, I was effectively transferred to various classrooms in Europe and the US, in urban, suburban and rural areas, and allowed to have a closer look at their educational practices and needs. All in all, these interactions convinced me that investing in education and training can really shape a countrys economy and future (and made me wonder why the people who govern my country have not realized that yet). Last but not least, through TED I managed to meet wonderful people, dedicated and creative teachers, make new friends and find new partners for my future eTwinning projects. In closing, I would like to say that TED is the most successful and effective example of collaborative learning that I know of and it has been a joy to be a part of it. It provided us with collaborative knowledge and peer-learning. We learnt by teaching others, by doing things together, by discussing, by solving problems and by doing research in groups. TED definitely showed us the way to the future classroom, where we would all like to teach, where technology will be the medium, teachers will be the guides and students will learn through interaction, collaboration and through sharing their knowledge with their peers. So, if you do come across the next years announcement for TED 2013, you should definitely apply for it without second thought! It will be your ticket to cross the Atlantic and your chance to have an unforgettable experience. It Is Not Magic, It Is eTwinning! By Maria Luz Borges
Maria Luz Borges is from Lisbon, Portugal. She is a kindergarten teacher at E.B1/ JI So Bento in Valejas. She enjoys what she does, she also loves reading, writing, laughing, travelling, cats and eTwinning, which has brought a new breath into her teaching life. Since forever I dreamed of flying... Since forever I tried to live well every moment of my life, without staying in one place only, and always going one step further from myself, my desires, longings, and the world around me... I'm a Childhood Educator, a kindergarten teacher, for many, many years now (this is my 36th year of work). Probably, when some of you were born, I was already working... Since forever I was passionate about my profession, where I always felt like a fish in the water, without effort, without sorrow, without fight. Education is my world, and I feel fully accomplished when I am at school. During my long teaching practice, I passed through many educational currents, many fashions, many theories, but beyond all these, my goal has always been the same: to look at each and every one of the children as being unique and special, and go in their direction to meet their interests and needs, making them happy and help them to fully develop all their skills and talents. I have always loved what I do, but always felt that, in my never ending quest to adapt to a changing world, something was missing. Since forever I felt alone in this vast world called Education. Not for lack of meetings, colleagues, rules, ordinances, theories... I always felt alone because I always believed that only sharing, collaboration, team spirit can lead to the success of education, of the students, of the school, and I have never managed to adapt to the competition, the quest for merit, to the vanity of wanting to be the best and the first... Since forever I dreamed about a new school, a school in which a collaborative community is
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------focused on children, on their well-being, to meet it, and together with it to become the school builder. Since forever I dreamed about a school made of new spaces and new horizons, and always felt that the school we have is too small and limited to the present days... Until four years ago... In 2009, the best thing that can happen to a teacher happened to me. During an ITC training, the trainer, an experienced eTwinner, spoke of her experience in eTwinning... Hearing her, I thought that this was the dimension I want for my students and my school... At the end of the session I asked her to speak to me more about eTwinning. It fascinated me. So, that Saturday night, when I got home and sat at my computer, I made my registration on the eTwinning platform, without really knowing what it was, without knowing what to do, without even imagining that there was an NSS also here in Portugal. I discovered that day that eTwinning is for everyone and therefore could also be for me. And I fell in love. That year, in May, there was a meeting in Warsaw and I was able to participate. There everything changed. Besides the fascination that led me, I felt myself at home, happy, and made me commit myself even more. There I found partners who wanted to share this great adventure with me. And we recorded our first project, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", which won national prize 2010 in Portugal and second place in Poland. And other projects followed. "Our River" in 2010 marked the International Year of Biodiversity, "An Adventure with Chemistry" marked 2011 as the International Year of Chemistry, "Kindergarten without toys" marked 2012 as the International Year of Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations, and there were some more But the best thing of all this, is to see that, even with an age range as small as preschool students, with eTwinning performance improved dramatically. eTwinning gives them security in the performance, makes them more selfconfident, more interested. And my colleagues in the 1st cycle, receiving eTwinning classes, began to say that these classes are better prepared, with children more mature, more informed, with a confidence in themselves unusual for this age. It's great to hear this! For example one of the teachers was amazed because students 6 years of age already know that there are time zones and the hours are different from country to country. And the good thing about this is that they know this not because someone taught" them, but because they experienced it, they learned in practice, when they made the video conferences with partners in other countries and they had to get to school early or stay late in order to find their friends. And in the school? Well, after many years of struggle, finally we have begun to breathe community and collaboration. However, there are no other eTwinners yet, because the ICT and the foreign language still frighten many teachers, but we are working on that too... Teamwork has already started, and I think in the next year it will be possible to start a project involving the whole school, or even better, all the school community. It is impossible not to. The children who have already experienced this European dimension, can no longer be closed again within the four walls of a school that can never be the same again. And step by step we enlarge our horizons and grow together.
This is the new school I always dreamed about! To eTwinning, which has brought a new breath to my practice and allowed me to start building my dream, a huge thank you.Using the words of children: "A gigantic thankyou, a thankyou from here to the moon, a thankyou of the size of Heaven!" Thank you!
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Ups and Downs of My eTwinning Journey By Adil Tugyan Adil Tugyan from Turkey is a teacher of English, an active eTwinner since 2010, an eTwinning mentor and sub-group moderator in the Creative Classroom eTwinning Group. He has been running 20 eTwinning projects, and he is very good at ICT and 2.0 web tools. I have participated in eTwinning since 2010, when our directory of education organised a weekend seminar in our town by an eTwinning ambassador. The way he described eTwinning made me very curious to explore this new world, and when the seminar was over I went home and I immediately registered. When I logged in, I tried all the buttons on the portal to see how everything functioned . I placed my ideas for my first project about music and titled the project Regional Traditional Folk Songs. Soon a teacher in Denmark replied that he was interested to start off a project with me, and I was so enthusiastic! Then we formed our project teams and started the work process. We the Turkish team did a lot of work, but our partner ended up doing nothing, and that was a big fruastration for us. We were very disappointed, but I never gave up and sent a few mails to my partner trying to get him back into the project and finally I succeded and everything went well from that moment on - we did great collaborative work and became really good friends. He even visited us and stayed in our town for five days.That was how my eTwinning journey started. eTwinning connects people and enables great friendships to happen Then I spent many hours on my computer to learn everything about the portal. Every day I was learning something new and trying to figure out what other eTwinners were doing and what tools they were using for their projects, and I checked the winner projects.What I understood from all my research and observations was a single word: Collaboration. For a successful eTwinning project, a well built collaboration is a must And then I discovered the Learning Events. There was a call for eTwinners on the announcement window, and I read it and decided to apply for it,
then desperately waited for an approval email but I did not get one unfortunately, and the same thing happened on my second attempt. I was hopeless but I had a strong mind to participate in one of them and luckily on my third try I was accepted. It would be my first learning event and did not know anything about how to use the modular space, and again long hours on computer after school gave me everything I needed to know and successfully completed it .Then I of course learned the hint of being accepted. Learning events became an addiction for me, and I have taken part in 12 learning events so far, which changed all my opinions about teaching. Each learning event I participated in added new insights to my professional development. eTwinning fosters professional development and opens the doors of being a contemporary educator ICT and 2.0 web tools that I had not used in my classes before eTwinning were very new things to me but thanks to learning events I learned new tools and how to use them creatively in my classes and projects. My projects became more attractive and visible soon after I started to use them in my projects. It was the first time when people began to comment on my works. Each one of the comments made me more eager to be more creative and use many more tools in my projects. Then I learned another lesson. For the visibility of a successful eTwinning project, creative usage of ICT and 2.0 web tools is the key Each time I was logging in eTwinning desktop I was coming across with the groups, and I was really curious about them, so I was very determined to join one of them. As usual, I completed the survey for one of the groups at first and waited to be
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------accepted. Nothing happend. I never got an email saying that was accepted that year. I wrote an email to CSS to tell them I wanted to create a group of my own. As you might guess ,there was no reply to my emails .That time I gave up and forgot about them. About two moths later somehow I received two emails stating that I was accepted to join two groups, and I did not know how to feel really. Another adventure had just started for me and I had to learn how groups function. After spending many hours again, I got through them easily and guess what, I become a Sub-moderator in the Creative Classroom Group, which was and is wonderful for me, but I think I deserved it because I was working to contribute the group really hard. The groups are great, and they are the right places to share experiences and learn from each other in a friendly and sincere atmosphere. eTwinning Groups enable registered teachers to be real and active eTwinners in a friendly community, and let them feel the great sense of gathering for a common purpose I was learning and learning, every passing single day I was adding new skills to my profession and teaching them to my students in my classes. My classes were getting much more fun each day. One of my projects, called Show Me Around, was perfectly fitting to my school curriculum, and we the partners were both studying our school subject and working on the project at the same time, the tasks and activities of our project were the same with our schools coursebook modules - such as daily life, family, celebrations, health etc. At times we were doing collaborative classes using Skype on mobile Internet. It was the concrete proof that eTwining could be used in classrooms and add real liveliness to class periods. My students were learning with other students miles away from our country.I got really impressive results doing so. eTwinning brings joy and excitement into the classrooms and fosters online collaborative learning We were working really hard with my students, and the number of my projects was increasing. I had many friends from other countries with all of whom I was on really good terms.Then I got my first National Quality Label, which made us really happy and gave us strength to work harder. I was also helping my friends on the eTwinning portal and inspiring them with some creative ideas. Soon after, I was an eTwinning mentor, and three Eropean Quality Labels followed this. I was invited to an eTwinning seminar by our NSS and awarded for my work, my projects and for encouraging new eTwinners I was awarded for my being the most hardworking eTwinner! After that ,I was invited to a Grundtvig programme in Greece for 10 days to work with learners on ICT and its applications. I had achieved a good reputation on the eTwinning portal. Thanks to eTwinning I got recognition both in my country and in other European countries. eTwinning is the best way to get recognition nationally and internationally My qualifications on ICT and projects was increasing every passing day because eTwinning was a part of my free time activities. It was like an exciting online game for me, and each stage I completed was taking me to a higher level. I can hear that you are asking: How? I was accepted to TED ,Transatlantic Educators Dialogue, and SMILE, Media Education, and also became a pilot teacher for iTec, which gave me the chance to be a member of European Teachers Community.
Miracles never cease with eTwinning, and it has a lot to offer to eTwinners
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now, I have 18 new running projects and 180 students are involved in them. In spite of some challenges I confront due to external reasons, which are really discouraging, I carry on my work with my students incessantly. Of course there are many factors that affect the visibility of a project and the performance of an eTwinner, but the most important one is the support that you get from your NSS. If an eTwinner feels alone, no matter how creative and skillful he or she is , they end up with nothing. A positive coordination among CSS + NSS + ambassadors + eTwinner = projects of high quality and visibility Whether the project that has just been closed has been successful or not, it is important for both teachers and students to carry out a way of making it known and sharing it with other people involved in the education sector. This group and the whole eTwinning website have provided its members with plenty of possibilities, and web tools, to promote our projects online. What I am going to illustrate here is however a range of initiatives whose main aim is to encourage teachers (both eTwinners and non-eTwinners, students, teachers from other schools etc.) to be informed about eTwinning and its overall activity. The first step should involve our students those who took part in one (or more) eTwinning projects. Students can become excellent ambassadors and share their knowledge and experience with their peers during one of the informal opportunities they are offered at school. Or, as an alternative (and I am referring here to the Italian secondary school situation), they might allocate a slot during one of the monthly School Assemblies institutionally organized by each school for all students where they could show their project and be ready to offer assistance to others.
Not Only Virtual: Sharing Is the Word By Carla Tosoratti Carla Tosoratti teaches English Language and Literature at Liceo Scientifico "Duca degli Abruzzi" in Gorizia, Italy. She is an eTwinning Ambassador and has won a European Quality Label for her project "Where did the Romans get to?". She is a teacher trainer, and CLIL teacher trainer and coordinator of a teacher network. She is a contract lecturer at Trieste University. She loves her job, and everything dealing with teacher training. The process of everything concerning an eTwinning project from the very first contacts with the future partner to a reciprocal evaluation of the projects strengths and weaknesses requires time, dedication and a lot of regular commitment for both students and teachers involved in the project. What often happens when the project is over is that students need to concentrate on something else in order to gather new energy, while teachers plunge into either a new eTwinning project or continue with their daily hectic activity. What about the role of teachers? Well, apart from the usual regular dissemination that goes on informally with other teachers, one of the ideas which could be relevant is setting up a kind of network of schools which are already working with eTwinning. The network could be either organized on its own, hosting regular meetings, open to all the schools of the area, or embedded into other existing school networks or teachers associations dealing with teacher training, European projects, teacher development and so on.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I am sharing here my personal experience as a teacher trainer and local coordinator of two kinds of agencies involved in teacher development: a professional network of teachers and the local branch of a national association of Italian language teachers. Within the regular activity of these networks, it is possible to arrange an Open Afternoon in order to present the projects together with the process underlying the project itself. The activity would be particularly relevant to share all the steps teachers and students took in all the several stages of the decision-making process: the objectives, the contents selected for that project, the web tools explored, the relevance of the project to the whole class syllabus, the interdisciplinary dimension. Open days/afternoons or simply eTwinning sessions of this kind are not the same seminars given at national or regional level organized by the National Agencies with the aim of introducing eTwinning as one of the actions to promote common projects among European schools it is something more. It is using an amount of relevant work carried out by some local classes in order to make materials, procedures, good practices and advice available to colleagues probably living and working next door, but who have not had the chance and/or the courage to take advantage of eTwinning. It is also a way to show other teachers working in schools similar to ours, and even teaching the same subjects and syllabus, that eTwinning can be included in our curriculum and exploit a particular aspect of our syllabus. This way it is really a bottom-up approach, which is flexible, democratic and does not require too much time to organize. It is economic in that it exploits resources that already exist yet run the risk of being simply put aside. By sharing them, we may contribute to create a virtuous circle, setting up a network of professionals who care about the things they do and are willing to explore more ways to develop a community.
eTwinning, Silently By Virgilio Iandiorio Virgilio Iandiorio is headmaster in Italian schools, now in Liceo Classico Pietradefusi (Campania region). He has been participating in eTwinning from the beginning, and has made interesting eTwinning projects with European schools. The school year has ended without the useful and interesting stimulus of Daniela Bunea and many eTwinners friends. The first newsletter, in July 2011, seemed to have drawn a smooth road ahead, a road to innovation, very large and spacious. But rumors have weakened and silent seemed to fall. If to this I add my own experience, when in meetings and assemblies eTwinning we meet friends from previous years and with a few new faces with whom making friends, the silence can become discouraging. All this means that the initial enthusiasm of us eTwinners was not "contagious"? I wonder if you need a distance, that is, considering our experience in perspective and with the appropriate temporal distance. Silence, however, strikes fear: it is a dark area, an empty anguish that we slave to fill with sounds, with words just thought only, and with daily commitments. Because
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------we are afraid of seeing a reflection in a mirror of what we are not, but we want to be. Yet the silence of one year, which seems, at first sight, very long and painful, hides virtues of "therapeutic". Forgive, friends eTwinners, a reminder of the classical Latin, but it is our European culture! Isidore of Seville (Etimologiae, XIII, 12) writes about the silence: Sicut silentium non aliqua res est, sed ubi sonus non est, silentium dicitur; sic tenebrae non aliquid sunt, sed ubi lux non est, tenebrae dicuntur. "As the silence is not something that exists in itself, but you name silence when you do not give any sound, so darkness is in nothing in itself, but when you speak of darkness, there is not light". most distressing, to find yourself alone without relief. It is not only a condition of our day, it is a condition experienced and widely studied.
And staying on topic, for the Latin verb sileo does not have the same semantic value of the verb taceo. Plautus (Poenulus, Prologus v. 3) says to the audience, with the enthusiasm of those who want to be heard at all costs: silete et tacete atque advortite animum. "Be careful, be quiet, especially give ear." All these are different actions. The presence of silence in no way implies that there is someone who speaks in a corner of his mind or thinking goes. Tacere, is, by the Latins, the absence of words like negative act; Silere is silence as a positive and creative act. This is not to change the way we think about silence, but silence that pushes us to change our way of thinking, allows us to question our certainties, to reflect on the words spoken and to restrain those that follow each other in an uncontrolled manner sometimes. To be the bearer of innovations in any field of human activities as they relate also means to take responsibility for achieving the opposite effect to the goals you focused on, to see frustrated the efforts made and,
Teaching is not exempt from the drop in motivation, such as programs and projects. The school subjects must be reconsidered from the experience of students and their practical application for learning. Let me write also another reference to the Latin writers. The things they have written are really modern, sometimes in a shocking way, as these considerations of Pliny the Younger are: Erat autem antiquitus institutum, ut a maioribus natu non auribus modo, verum etiam oculis disceremus... omnem denique senatorium morem, quod fidissimum praecipiendi genus, exempliis docebantur. (Epistularum libri, VIII, 14), "Since antiquity reigned in fact the norm that we could learn from the elderly, not only with the ears but the eyes ..., well across the senatorial practice, everything was taught by example, that is the surest way to convey the rules". And yet this same authors thought that adapts well to teachers who have to deal with adolescents in school: Existimo severitatem comitatemque miscere, ne illa in tristitiam, haec in petulantiam excedat. (Epistularum libri, VIII,21). "I think the most reasonable and right rule is to mix seriousness with cheerfulness, so the first is not going to end up in a sullen scowl and the second is not going to end in an irresponsible lightness."
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A few months ago a Spanish colleague asked me to collaborate on a project about Latin. In turn, I addressed the invitation to the students of my class related, age and curriculum, to the Spanish. Students have welcomed the proposal. I explained them my role, that I do not want them to be spectators but participants, involved in the enterprise of their own way: to try with the beauty of research, experience the thrill of the results and progress, find out things like the first time. What are the results? I cannot tell yet as it is still very early, because the work will officially start after the summer holidays. But this topic will be included in the third Newsletter, next year, provided that the excellent Daniela will set me aside some space in it. I will go back to the beginning of the project. I teach English, and with my students, we decided to learn the similarities and differences in other body languages. Their ages are between 16 and 18 and they actively use body language to communicate, to interest or affect the people around. They are teenagers and they should demonstrate (as in prove) themselves. Body language is a kind of unopened box or pieces of puzzles to give communication a try. In our project we consider this point. 12th graderes worked on a video that was about '' Hand Shaking'' whereas 10th graderes' interest was on movements of eyes and lips, in short gestures and mimics. The students of Machine Technologies wished to record a video of a hundred smiling faces all around the streets of Bursa. They named the video ''100 Smiling Faces''. In Turkish, hundred and face are homophones, and my students wanted to play this trick. We the adults - know that self-confidence is necessary for all ages among learners. The students' active participation, their acting, roleplays and even own scripts really made them improve and trust themselves. From my side, I could witness them in their own area and watched them discussing, brain-storming and persuading. On one of those days, I came across a brilliant documentary called AC 360 Kids on Race on a foreign channel. Although it was about the ''Racial Divide in America'', I was interested in reading and understanding the body languages of pictures. I am familiar with the exact issue throughout the history of the USA as I am one of the graduates of American Culture and Literature Department. I could not help but watching the whole session, and now I will try to explain the common points with our eTwinning Project ''Body Language''. In this experiment, both white and black children are shown the same picture where only the colour skin of the students in the picture change. Let me describe the picture to make you understand the point. A white boy falls on the ground and his books are everywhere, at the back of the boy stands a black child. In the second picture only the skin colour changes but the situation is the same. Yes, the question for the subjects of the experiment is "What's happening in this picture?". What they see and tell are so different that understanding the body language differs from person to person even in the same community. The deduction and the arguement of the experiment may lead to another issue but even the body languages in the pictures
Every Body Language By Pinar Alniak Comlek Pinar Alniak Comlek is a teacher of English at a technical school in Turkey. She has many awarded projects in eTwinning and she is interested in teaching with web-based technologies. She is the responsible for the Project Team in her school. What is language? How do we gain it or how are we occupied by it? There are many theories and researches so far but I am not on that matter in my eTwinning Project '' Body Language'' in 2011-2012. Everything has a voice either silent or loud. In order to witness or hear, we should be alert and patient. I know it because I am expecting a baby girl who has also her body language inside. She has a unique movement after eating a creamy ice-cream on these hot days. What a different experience!
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------can alter, too. Optimism, pessimism, friendship and misunderstanding can be seen throughout the pictures. At the end of the seminar we decided to register all the participants to www.etwinning.net. Moreover, we opted for opening a Facebook page for the eTwinners in Bursa and we have 35 members in it now: http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/etwinningburs a/. We share all the news and newly gained EeTwinning Certificates of my teacher friends. Creating an idea for a project or consulting more experienced teachers, giving the dates of seminars and Learning Labs on eTwinning are part of the information shared on the page. I am the coordinator of the page and welcome all eTwinners.
Not only I shared this information with my students, but also with my colleagues in my province. Elif Yaman Cal eTwinning Coordinator of Bursa City organized an informative seminar for new eTwinners. I was also the spokesperson for my previous and new projects and tried to answer the questions in their mind. That is why I would like to thank Elif for her enthusiasm and ambition to go further and further. Consequently, eTwinning is giving me fresh air, and I always need to tell what I know and learn, maybe this is my mission for now. It cannot help but adding that I am typing this article on my lovely eTwinning computer that I received after my successful project '' Me and My Town 2025'' in 2011 thanks to Ayse Saray and Mehmet Fatih Doger.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------pupils. With the help of our lovely intercultural projects such as http://uniquenessmakesthedifference.blogspot.com /, we have had an insight of understanding each other better and learning about our cultures first hand. We take pleasure in sharing similarities and celebrating differences with our partners.
No Matter How Far By Yildiz Erdogmus
Yldz Erdogmus is a Turkish teacher who has studied English teaching and English culture and literature. She has been teaching at the state primary school of Afyonkarahisar. She is a wellorganized and enthusiastic new eTwinner. Hello from Turkey! eTwinning is a very important portal for me. This year I have joined a few eTwinning projects and collaborated with teachers from all over Europe. In the beginning everything was very frustrating for me, because I had never had any eTwinning experience before. But my partners helped me very much, and I learnt everything about how to run a successful project from them. My partners were friendlier and more helpful that I had expected. Actually, as I was an inexperienced eTwinner, I sometimes drove them crazy! Yet they understood me and supported me in all circumstances.
We have had a chance to be recognized, and we can pay attention to what is going on in other schools in 32 countries! One of our partners is from Wales, and we have learnt many things about their country, as well as their school. This is an adventurous journey for us to share, learn and have fun from our cultures, as for pupils, drawing the flag of Wales was really tough, and for sure we had great fun during the process, learnt the story of the red dragon unique flag of Wales so it is an exceptionally worthwhile experience to be twin with European schools as a small village school in Turkey. Warm regards from sunny Turkey!
We will probably never meet face to face but it is really incredible that we have constructed warm relations from long-distanced and different countries. That is to say, eTwinning is more than a portal, it is a hangout for us to discuss, share, care, learn and catch up with European colleagues about the difficulties that we come across during our classes, no matter how far we are from each other. As for projects, we have been collaborating with European schools for about 9 months now in an innovative way, and that is a hugely motivating and excellent opportunity to be able to get in touch with different schools in Europe for both teachers and
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Video Conferencing Tools My favourite video conferencing tools are Flashmeeting and the Blackboard Collaborate Vroom. These tools are very easy to access but the only drawback is that one needs a fast internet connection for conferences to succeed as transmission can be lost. The use of an interactive whiteboard enhances the experience as board can easily be seen by a whole class of pupils. Collaborative Learning Experiences Connecting pupils virtually offers great potential for creating new and rich opportunities for teaching and learning. Social networking has changed the face of society. It is a part of our students culture and I can see this even with my preschool pupils who discuss social networking tools as they observe parents and older siblings using these tools. In an eTwinning project the social aspect of video conferencing is combined with pedagogy to make learning more meaningful to our pupils. Teachers share their expertise and creatively plan joint activities to be shared during a video conference. Pupils then work jointly on the same activities and share results. The following are some examples of activities which have been carried out in my preschool class. Children introduce themselves and are introduced to the different languages. Usually we introduce the children to a common language and teach children new vocabulary to help them to communicate. Singing nursery rhymes introduces children to all languages. An expert is invited into one of the classes and shares his/her expertise with the pupils. One such activity was when we invited a grandparent to make a kite. Children in both classes watched attentively and afterwards made kites of their own.
Video Conferencing By Miriam Schembri
Miriam Schembri is an early childhood educator in a kindergarten class at St Thomas More College, Fgura, Malta. She is eTwinning ambassador to Malta and has participated in various eTwinning projects. As a preschool teacher I always carry the dilemma of how young pupils can collaborate with partners in an eTwinning project. Although there are means and tools by which young children can communicate, having no writing skills and speaking different languages are a barrier. For young children their world is the immediate vicinity and I always question myself if these young children understand that they are part of a wider community especially the eTwinning community where they are meeting new children from a distant place. Community Building Video conferencing alters the way pupils interact with one another in an eTwinning project and the face-to-face element makes the partnership more real. They start to feel they are part of the community and become more active in the project. It is the closest thing to being there with technology. The synchronous meetings allow for connectedness and give opportunity to develop relationships. The immediate interaction and feedback give real meaning to a virtual community.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Children work on common shape and numeracy activities. They create common crafts items and share their finished products. They have a drawing session with a common theme for all children participating in video conference. By collaborating in video conferencing children begin to see different possibilities to solutions as their horizons and minds are broadened and become open to new ideas. Children are actively involved in the learning and although working in a group they are given the opportunity to develop their individuality. Sharing the different school cultures Children are very observant and during live sessions they notice similarities and differences in classroom settings and school culture. My pupils once noticed the cook coming into our partners classroom carrying the childrens dinner whereas my children have a packed lunch for school. This greatly interested the children and was their favourite topic for some time. Motivation Video conferencing promotes a 21st century learning environment which supports the digital natives in our classrooms. This learning environment is complemented with real world resources and contexts, modern learning technologies and innovative teaching strategies which leads to motivated children and learning based on childrens interests. Having a real audience further motivates pupils to invest extra effort in their participation and learning. Pupils want to express their ideas whilst reacting to other childrens ideas. They want to share their knowledge and skills thus revisiting their learning. During one such video conference one boy from my class had just learnt how to cut out a spiral out of a circle and he enthusiastically showed his skill with the other children getting interested and learning this new skill. Video conferences have a life of their own and although there is a planned agenda this can take different paths as the real actors in this enriched setting are the pupils whose participation and enthusiasm lead the learning taking place. Conclusion Video conferencing provides new opportunities for teaching and learning whilst broadening pupils opportunities for communication, collaboration and expression. This stimulating, positive and enjoyable environment promotes the sharing of different perspectives and ideas. Collective activities, embedded in curriculum, build productive and meaningful partnership and pupils become active participants in a virtual community.
Pupils show each other how to play traditional games from the different countries. Children are introduced to elements which they do not find in their vicinity. One such example was the planning of a session about snow. My pupils have never seen snow and they were very excited and awed when they saw the other children building a snowman.
Sharing of traditional festivities and customs.
These are just a few examples of practical video conference activities which can be carried out.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editor-in-chief: Daniela Bunea Designer: Anca Borza Photo editor: Jolanta Okuniewska Proofreader: Cristina Nicolaita Editorial assistant: Helena Serdoura More information on eTwinning, the EU Programme for schools is available on the Internet: www.etwinning.net The views expressed in documents by named authors are solely the responsibility of these authors. The websites mentioned throughout this newsletter were last accessed on the 15th of July 2012 by the editor-in-chief. The pictures in this newsletter are original photos of contributors and photos used with permission. The content of this newsletter is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives.
Contact For more information, please contact Daniela Bunea Address: Colegiul National Gheorghe Lazar Sibiu, Str. Gheorghe Lazar nr. 1-3, 550165 Sibiu, Romania Telephone: +40269212896 E-mail: arghir.daniela [at] gmail [dot] com ISSN 2247-6881 ISSN L 2247-6881 Online edition only. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Newsletter 2 - July 2012

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Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Web 2.0 Tools: Smilebox Photofiltre Myebook TripWow

Editor: Daniela Bunea ISSN 2247-6881 ISSN L 2247-6881

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

eTwinning Walking Areas By Maria Georgiadou

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Repeat that process for all the sheets of your photo

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

That is all! Good work!

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

TED: EU and US Teachers Learn from Each Other By Paraschevi Belogia

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

No Matter How Far By Yildiz Erdogmus

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Video Conferencing By Miriam Schembri

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

Sharing of traditional festivities and customs.

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter

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