Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter no. 5 - July 2015 | Page 29
Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2015 Newsletter
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ a little bit more complicated from an
organizational point of view but extremely useful: a
period of teaching at the partner school.
And here you can see, at least in my experience,
the unique role of the members of my many "old"
eTwinning projects: we spent years running
projects in which we experienced and encouraged
collaboration among our students, where we found
issues and topics to work together to build an
engaging and motivating teaching process. Now it is
the time to stop and reflect on ourselves, on what
means to be twenty-first century teachers. We need
constant training open to Europe, we have to
closely observe the “real” school, to build
relationships and interactions among teachers who
live there every day, with its lights and its shadows.
That is why we did not hesitate a moment to plan
some activities of job shadowing with our historic
Spanish partners (with whom we shared eTwinning
projects, multilateral Comenius projects, a common
belonging to the community of eTwinning
Ambassadors). This ended up in a KA1 project
entitled "School without Borders", because after
more than a decade of exchanges and European
projects (often unfortunately run only by foreign
language teachers) we have finally reached a
comprehensive view of in-service training involving
quite all the subjects and teachers of our school.
Is it too utopian to think of a radical change in our
school teaching methods in only two years of our
KA1 project? Maybe, but when you really enter a
European perspective, as suggested by Erasmus+
you do not think so much about utopia (after all,
Erasmus himself wrote the famous “Praise of
Folly”…) but rather to the innovation that these
actions set in motion...
And then, not to lose that touch of madness that
now characterizes us, in this second year of the
European programme, we decided to broaden our
horizons and to launch into a KA2 project,
coordinated by our unstoppable and active Spanish
partners. The protagonists of what we hope is our
next three-year adventure are, of course, other old
Comenius-eTwinning partners. The title of our
project? "Open school", it goes without saying!
It means a school open to Europe, to all the
components that build it, to new pedagogical and
teaching methods involving teachers and students
in a process of reflection, construction and
experimentation of innovative teaching.
Where can we work on all these topics? On the
TwinSpace, of course! Since the very beginning of
our joint planning between partners we have
opened a project where to discuss, negotiate,
imagine the development of the new adventure.
But you cannot think of a fruitful follow-up of these
experiences if you do not provide contacts and
interactions even outside of periods of pure
mobility: the eTwinning platform, with the
opportunity of opening a TwinSpace for the project,
provides a place where to find and share materials,
ideas and opportunities for discussion to the staff
involved in training (and, consequently, to the
whole institution), with a view of "extended school",
truly multicultural and multilingual, without physical
boundaries.
Then, if the project is approved, we will have a new
TwinSpace, which will be the place where all our
ideas will really take shape thanks to the
contribution of all the partners involved.
The slogan we created few years ago is now quickly
adapting itself to the new context:
"eTwinning and KA1 to train together in Europe",
"eTwinning and KA2 to build together a new
Europe"!
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