#eTwinning10 - down the memory lane

In January 2005, I remember waiting impatiently for the eTwinning portal to be launched. I was looking for European friends for my students. The idea was to start international cooperation using a virtual environment and, at the same time, to develop the students’ English communication and ICT skills. We had prepared an English website for our school in order to facilitate partner finding and our Moodle environment was ready and waiting.

When the portal was opened, I was among the first to register. Within a week I found two enthusiastic teachers willing to try something new and plunge into unknown, one from Poland and the other from Greece. We discussed the project plan and decided the objectives and contents. The title of the project was "To Be Young in Europe in 2005". A couple of weeks later, at the beginning of February the project had been approved and we were able to start.

That spring was great fun and lots of different activities. Web-based international project work was new to all of us, as well as the use of Moodle in teaching and learning. The students were excited when they got to meet other young people online, chat and post letters in forums. We experimented with all kinds of tools and made a lot of mistakes, but it did not spoil the feeling of excitement. We felt that we were educational innovators and pedagogical experimentalists and visionaries.

We were interested in finding out about the pupils' use of ICT. It was easy to create and carry out surveys in the Moodle. So, we made quite a few questionnaires for the pupils about their use of personal computers, mobile phones and game consoles. At that time, 40% of the students didn’t have computers at home and only 50% had their own mobile phones. Today, the percentages would be very close to 100. I found the project report on the net. It still seems surprisingly fresh and up-to-date, even after 10 years. :)

As the students became friends when they learned to know each other, the same happened with us teachers. My Greek partner Panagiotis Kampylis moved to Finland to write his doctoral thesis and is currently working in the European Commission's Research Centre in Seville. I lost contact with Iwona Bujlow from Poland, but now she is again back in eTwinning.

The first eTwinning project is like a beloved child. Not quite perfect, but all the more dear and cherished. That spring, in 2005, I learned so much. I learned about project-based learning, web-based learning and project management. The following autumn I started two new projects and had much clearer idea, from the start, about what to do and how to construct a collaborative project in a virtual learning environment. As a result our project  won the eTwinning competition in 2006 in the series "pedagogic innovation". Since then it has been 10 years of projects, learning events, conferences and seminars, as well as a huge number of friends all over Europe. It sure has been worth it!

Children Making the World a Better Place

Our Students – Future European Entrepreneurial Citizens was a two-year Comenius project in 2011-2013 coordinated by the Primary School of Orivesi Centre. Six primary schools from England, Ireland, Italy, Austria and Finland participated in this multilateral project.

The project was founded on the basic principle that good life is based on acknowledged rights and responsibilities, shared values and mutual respect. The focus was on the students, creating a possibility for them to learn to know each other, learn about other countries and cultures, and develop their information technology and communications skills. The main contents of the project were the understanding of children's rights, responsibilities and our shared values as well as various participatory learning tasks, dealing with art, traditions, voluntary work and the culture of the partner countries.

In addition to that, quite a few students were able to visit the partner countries in order to learn about other European cultures, explore similarities and differences between their own lives and those of their peers and share their experiences with their schoolmates.

The project helped our pupils to develop the skills and values needed to promote active citizenship and overcome situations of injustice and discrimination. Some of the schools in the partnership, located in very deprived areas, created opportunities to encounter different cultures for pupils who may otherwise never be able to travel.

More about the project and its outcomes on the English website of the Primary School of Orivesi Centre.

Integrating math, science and technology in an international project

My good friend, Finnish eTwinning ambassador Tuija Lindström, has been involved in new ways of teaching and learning for quite a few years, first in GOAL (Go Outside and Learn) and then in MOE (Maths on Earth) projects.

Maths on Earth is both Comenius and eTwinning project. It focuses on the use of mathematics as a tool to study real world phenomena and to lead students to mathematical and scientific problem-solving in everyday situations.

Many of the project activities are carried out outside the classroom in the nature, museums, workshops and companies. Mainly, participatory teaching methods, such as short inquiry-based projects, experimental arrangements, games and brain-storming, are used. The idea is to connect everything that is studied in students’ everyday life. The partner teachers design learning materials and workshops to be held jointly together, thus widening and deepening their own understanding of teaching and learning.

The students aged 13-15 are extremely motivated to carry out the tasks. Their communication and social skills have developed. Especially the girls have benefitted from the new holistic approach to math and science.  The communication between students from different countries in an authentic virtual environment supports foreign language learning. Students have the opportunity to design their own learning and work. In this way their own initiative is encouraged and their self-esteem and self-organizing skills are developed. The results of the students’ work are published on the net.

Tuija outlines her own experience:

As a teacher I’ve developed and widened my views. Sharing and learning together with teachers and students from different cultures has been rewarding.  My relationship with my own students has developed as my role as a teacher has changed. The students’ uniqueness and diversity as human beings has become more evident day by day while working together with them, side-by-side.

MOE - project website

Promoting cultural awareness and understanding

Last week I had great news. The eTwinning project Intercultural dialogue through fairy tales, drama and art was awarded by the Mevlana prize for connecting people across borders. I had the pleasure of being one minor part of this huge project comprising students and teachers from 35 different schools in almost as many countries.

During the one year project students first chose a traditional fairy tale of their own country, translated it in English and illustrated it. After that they made a drama video of one of the partner countries’ fairy tales. The process of students working together was documented. All the project products were published on a shared wiki containing an eBook of the fairy tales called Once upon a Time in Europe and a video book containing the students' performances. 

It’s inherent for eTwinning projects that the activities involved are integrated in the school curriculum and support achieving its goals. The best projects are typically cross curricular, so that many different subjects and skills are developed. In this project our students learned Finnish, English and art and, especially, communication and media skills, creative use of digital photography and videos, team work and cooperation. Their awareness of different European countries and cultures developed and their horizons widened while reading the fairy tales, watching the videos and writing cards and sending greetings to their partners.

Once a year excellent eTwinning projects are rewarded at a prize giving ceremony at the annual eTwinning conference. This year it will be in Lisbon on the 14th of March. It's a wonderful opportunity for many of the teachers who worked closely together for a year to meet face-to-face for the first time. The winners of 2013.

"Participating in an eTwinning project means that you wish to (…) offer your pupils the possibility to exchange, to share, to cooperate and to broaden their horizons. (…) By running this type of project you are making a specific contribution to improving the quality of teaching. (…) The practices you carry out in your projects (…) are teaching treasures and techniques that deserve to be shared, and should be made known and recognized by the whole of the European educational community."