Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter no. 5 - July 2015 | Page 40

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2015 Newsletter -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Going beyond classroom walls by Andrea Ullrich This year I had my Year 7 group in two really good and challenging eTwinning projects: “care2feed”, related to the topic of EXPO 2015, and “Don’t bully, act kindly, live happily”. Both projects got recognition outside our eTwinning community. When Niculina Chiper, Romania introduced “Together in EXPO”, a global project for schools organized by the Italian ministry of education in cooperation with EXPO Milano, to us and six of our “care2feed” teams decided to join we had no clue what was waiting for us – a school year full of creative challenges with weekly missions on whatever you can think of related to the topic “Feed the planet, energy for life”. To get an impression of what we were doing in addition to the activities we had originally planned for the “care2feed” project, check the German collection http://padlet.com/MrsU/EXPO2015. This is the place to thank eTwinning Europe and European Schoolnet for all the opportunities of professional development they offer – without all the courses I have taken many of these products wouldn’t have been possible; they would even have been far beyond my imagination. I think my presentation with Betina Astride, Portugal at the Creative Classroom Group Unconference showed well how eTwinning teachers can benefit from learning together. Let us come back to the project; we made sure to spread the word about eTwinning: - the Dutch, Maltese and German teams used our project title in their names: portwijk_care2feed, care2feedMalta, care2feedGymGeorg; - in our profiles all of us referred to the eTwinning project; - in some of our products for missions we referred to eTwinning, too. All six teams were constantly among top 20 of 2750 participating teams, Paulien du Fossé with her Dutch team unbeatable number 1, which showed the strength and commitment of our eTwinning group. But that was not all. When the winners of an additional competition, where you had to team up with another participant and create a collaborative product, were announced three of the nine winning entries were with care2feed teams. We had four teams among the winners as one of the products was 100% care2feed (the German and Polish teams). We were so proud and happy that we used social networks to let the world know about the power of our eTwinning group. In September 2015 we will visit EXPO to show our project https://www.thinglink.com/scene/62291945443033 0881 together with our Polish team mates in the Italian pavilion. The German pavilion has also contacted us to arrange a meeting. 40