Teachers registered in the eTwinning action are enabled to form partnerships and develop collaborative, pedagogical school projects in any subject area with the sole requirements to employ ICT to develop their project and collaborate with teachers from other European countries (at least two teachers from two different European countries are needed).
The primary workspace for the eTwinning action is the eTwinning Portal (www.etwinning.net) and it is available in twenty-five languages. Teachers registered in the eTwinning action, also called eTwinners, find each other, communicate, share resources and collaborate through the eTwinning platform. This growing and active community enforced the change in the motto of eTwinning from „School partnerships in Europe” to „The community for schools in Europe”.
On this platform we initiated and implemented the following project „Digital Citizen – Digital Schools”. The project has proposed to develop and improve students’ language and digital skills via interesting activities including collages, posters, movies, presentation using the latest virtual platforms and modern ICT resources.
Children have played and have fun, speaking in different languages, learning to code and to program, participating actively on popular international initiatives like „European Code Week” , „Hour of Code”, „European Day of Languages”, others.
The aims of the project were: development and enriched language, communicative and digital skills, actively engaging on project – based learning and on interesting international initiatives regarding to the topic.
The project was developed to run over 5 months, from September to January (1st semester of the school year)
WORK PROCESS
September :
1. Adding partners, teachers and students on etwinning
2. Presentation of the students and teachers (using linoit, padlet, others)
3. EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES -26 th September
October:
1. Countries/cities of the project partners – Virtual tour/ZeeMap
2. Presentation of schools on a poster – Postermywall/others tool
3. CODE WEEK (6th — 21st October)
November :
1. Live event for teacher and students
December:
1. Creating a movie (with PowToon/Kizoa/others)
2. HOUR OF CODE (December 3-9)
January:
1. Quiz for teacher and students
2. Evaluation of the project
3. Results & common products
The results of the project consisted of posters, movies, presentation, questionaire made on digital platforms. Pupils did exchange of common products on etwinning platform. The creations were uploaded on ‘Padlet’, ‘Linoit’ and ‘Thinglink’.
The project had 39 partners from diferent scoli si licee of Europe: Special Luceym of Athens (Athens, Greece), Scoala Gimnaziala „Sf.Dumitru” (Craiova, Romania), IES Juan José Calvo Miguel (Sotrondio, Spain), ICS „Chinnici-Roncalli” di Piazza Armerina (Piazza Armerina (En), Italy), I.P. Gimnaziul „Vasile Alecsandri” (Satul Scumpia, Republic of Moldova), Scoala Gimnaziala „Elena Farago” (Craiova, Romania), IISS „Medi”, Barcellona Pozzo Di Gotto (Italy), Lokman Hekim Anadolu Lisesi (Yüreğir, Turkey), Kastamonu Bilim Sanat Merkezi (Merkez, Turkey), İlhami Ertem Anadolu Lisesi (Merkez, Turkey), Fethiye Belediye Fen Lisesi (Fethiye, Turkey)
Throughout the whole project I tried to work as diverse as possible. Thus, monthly for two or three hours I presented to the students the theme of the project of that month, the online tools that were ready to solve the tasks, I practiced with the students the different tools. To complete the project, the students worked at home individually or in groups (creating posters / posters, movies, logos).
Some of the project activities were individually worked, others were carried out in a group of 2-3-5 students, depending on the complexity of the instrument. Where the tools used were simplistic or intuitive, students documented themselves in their use.
The communication with the partners was done almost exclusively on the etwinning platform, in the dedicated sections of the Home and Teacher Bulletin platform. Both my students and external partners communicated by posting different comments to our ads as guides.
Among the tools used to perform the tasks were: www.postermywall.com, piktochart.com, www.canva.com, spark.adobe.com, logomakr.com/, www.logaster.com/, PowToon, Kizoa.
The project and its results can be seen by accessing the following link: twinspace.etwinning.net/71064/home
Bibliography
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETwinning