Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter no. 5 - July 2015 | Page 46
Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2015 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Due to its characteristics of flexibility, sustainability
and openness to innovation and to national and
international comparison, eTwinning is especially
suitable for the training of future teachers who
increasingly will be called to use ICT in everyday
teaching, to support communication and learning in
a foreign language, to work on projects involving
students in an active way and developing
personalized learning paths that foster the
development of key competences.
of the community, further legitimizing the projectbased learning with eTwinning as a community of
practice that is crucial for the continuous
professional development of teachers, as well as a
channel of innovation for the school as a whole.
Other advantages are considered in terms of
visibility, considering that all new teachers would be
informed about the existence of eTwinning and so
on all the possibilities Erasmus+ offers to the
schools in Europe.
Hence the importance of the approach to the
innovative reality of eTwinning since the initial
teacher training, with the hope that eTwinning will
become not only one of the numerous European
projects, but a vehicle to introduce in a simple and
natural way a different approach to teaching and
learning, through the regular use of new
technologies, communication in a foreign language
and learning in a multicultural context.
The Italian Universities participating in the project
are the University of Florence, Genoa, Palermo and
the Catholic University in Milan for the initial
training of teachers of primary and pre-primary,
and the University of Rome and the University of
Tuscia for the secondary level. The European
countries involved are the United Kingdom, Norway,
France, Spain, Denmark, Iceland and Flemish
Belgium.
Teams of trainees of different countries learned how
to plan projects in a collaborative way, taking into
account their contexts and aiming at improving
higher-level thinking together with key
competences.
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In Europe the Pilot started in 2012 by the initiative
of several British universities coordinated by the
British Council and by Flemish universities in
Belgium, Norway and Denmark, focusing
exclusively on nursery and primary schools.
In 2013 and 2014, other countries, including Italy,
joined and 20 institutions were involved in the final
phase of the Pilot in the academic year 2014-2015.
At the end of the Pilot, with a thorough evaluation
of the experiences so far, the countries involved will
develop a model of participation of trainees in
eTwinning to be presented to the European
Commission so that this can be a transferable
model for other institutions.
Such a step would bring great benefits to
eTwinning, especially in terms of the impact study
From postcards to stone culture, eTwinning
has no limits
by Lina Pereira
Every school year eTwinning is definitely part of our
planned activities and each project is a new
challenge and a rewarding experience for teachers
and students. The postcards and bookmarks
exchange to celebrate the European Day of
Languages has been an excellent starting point in
our school to involve our students in eTwinning
projects. These exchanges have a very positive
impact on the school community, promote a real
contact with European languages and cultural
diversity and it’s real fun for pupils to get
something from another school and country. This
year the number of schools collaborating with us
excceeded our expectations and we received
postcards from all over Europe.
Inspired by the rewarding effects of this exchange,
we decided to innovate by exchanging small
samples of rocks and minerals with our European
partners. We integrated our eTwinning work into
our students’curriculum and lessons planning and
joined science with languages, History and
Citizenship in a successful interdisciplinary
approach with very fruitful results for everyone. The
main subjects involved were Biology, Geology and
English. The students prepared the rock samples
with information cards, wrote the
partners’addresses in their Geology lessons and
translated them in the English lessons. They also
collected information about typical flora in our
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