Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter no. 5 - July 2015 | Page 16

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2015 Newsletter -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------recipes, questionnaires for students and parents regarding a healthy lifestyle and, of course, benefits of eating fruits and vegetables. The project develops students’ critical thinking, communication and debate skills, as students are required to speak about their habits on health, compare them with their classmates’ and also their partners’ from other European countries. Through these comparisons students learn about their partners’ perceptions, understand them and start feeling close to them, breaking barriers and stereotypes. Through discussions and friendship, students develop a positive stance towards native and foreign language learning, as well as ICT. Project "Tweaster" - Carmen Nicolaita, National College "Ionita Asan", Caracal collaborative online project. By sharing our activities on Facebook and also by inviting parents to activities, I was able to get a very positive feedback from them. For me it was an opportunity to rediscover the eTwinning portal, a new improved one, as it is eTwinning plus and part of Erasmus+ action now. My school benefit was the involvement in European projects, pointing out the European dimension. The most successful result in my opinion was the great involvement of my students, they became more responsible trying to meet the project's tasks and in the end they developed their self-esteem and self-awareness. Instead of conclusions: working in eTwinning projects, our students developed their linguistic and ICT skills but more importantly they learnt the importance of friendship and positive thinking in life. They broke stereotypes and discovered commonalities by studying the work of their partners and realized that, although we have different languages, we share the same values, dreams and emotions. Long live eTwinning at its 10th anniversary! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The eTwinning world for me by Costantino Soudaz Here is what I have received from the eTwinning World in 10 years. During this short project we twinned about Easter in different countries in Europe. We made pictures, video and drawings to show each other which habits we have during the Easter period in our country. We shared original ideas to show our results to the others. The project was open for everyone: new and experienced eTwinners. We kept it very simple and easy, to make it possible for everyone to take the first eTwinning steps. With the students we wanted to share cultural knowledge in Europe. We also wanted to work on the ICT and media skills of the students. As my students are young (8-9 years old) and they are beginners at English language, I tried to engage them using their talents: drawing, singing, taking photos, filming, and their ICT and internet skills, many of them being already little experts, using cameras, tablets and smartphones on a daily basis. The project has had a big impact upon my students (and their parents), being their first international I have chosen 10 pictures and I will comment on them one by one. I live in a mountain area and we experiment experience in digital divide: often we do not have in our school a good ADSL and communication is a little bit more complicated. So often we cannot work 16