New Finnish Core Curriculum, international cooperation and eTwinning

The new Core Curriculum for Basic Education (approved on December 22, 2014) strongly supports the idea that school is closely connected to the community,  society and world around it. Finland is becoming culturally more diverse and global and local continuously mingle and overlap in our everyday life. This should be visible at school and inherent in teaching.

At school we work, if possible, together with schools and developers of teaching and learning from other countries. Basic education is a positive and constructive force for change in society, nationally and internationally. CCBE p. 16

eTwinning offers an excellent and easy way to co-operate with the developers of teaching. For registered teachers, the eTwinning portal offers a wide variety of ways to network and develop professionally. In different thematic groups (eg. Creative Classroom or Language Teachers groups) teachers can share their knowledge and get tips for teaching. If you want to exchange ideas and experiences on a specific topic, you can look for a Teachers Room. If you cannot find one, you can set up a room yourself. 

eTwinning also provides continuous professional development opportunities. Learning events and webinars are offered on many different topics, particularly the ones relating to student-centered pedagogy, ICT in education and 21st century competences. These are also included in new Finnish core curriculum and there referred as transversal (cross-curricular) competences (L1-L7).

The Core Curriculum for Basic Education brings up international co-operation combined with ICT.

During the basic education, students will have experiences of using ICT in international interaction. CCBE p. 21
Contacts with schools in different countries increase students’ skills to operate in a globalized world. CCBE p. 26

Twinspace (eTwinning’s virtual learning environment) has been designed and made just for this purpose. It offers students an opportunity to interact and learn together with their European peers and partner classes. Students can chat, write messages on forums, share photos, videos and a variety of files created by themselves or together with their peers in a safe and protected learning environment. This way they can enhance their intercultural and cooperation skills as well as communication and ICT skills.

An international project is well suited for multidisciplinaty, cross-curricular and phenomenon-based learning. In eTwinning projects foreign language and ICT learning are integrated in different subject- and content areas. At the moment, projects dealing with STEM subject areas (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) are especially popular. Global education, cultural heritage and cultural diversity related themes are also quite common. They encourage students to reflect on the state of the world and the future, engage them in making the world a better place and, thus, develop creativity and problem-solving skills. They also enhance "cultural knowledge based on respect for human rights, respectful interaction and diverse ways to express oneself and one's views." CCBE p. 19

International cooperation and eTwinning partnerships have, of course, a very special role in language teaching and learning.

Opportunities are created for students and groups of students to network and communicate with people all around  the world. Information and communication technology offers a way and an environment to implement language learning in authentic situations following students' communication needs. CCBE p. 243

I started my first eTwinning projects 10 years ago just because I wanted to create possibilities for my students to use English language in authentic communication situations. It was quite another thing to tell about oneself, one’s own school and hometown

to a young European partner, who is genuinely interested in exchanging ideas and experiences, than to tell these same things to a classmate you know since kindergarten. The active use of language on discussion boards and collaboration when carrying out project tasks increased students’ motivation and significantly improved their language skills.

It is clear that in basic education all students won’t be able to participate in student exchange or mobilities and, environmentally, it wouldn’t be very sustainable. However, eTwinning offers everyone an opportunity for encounters and friendships across borders free of charge and without carbon footprints. It is Internationalization At Home (IaH) at its best.

#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!