Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2016 Newsletter

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Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group NEWSLETTER 6 ~ Keeping on the leading paths ~ July 2016 In this issue:      

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Core Values in eTwinning Projects Sophia Kouzouli, Greece Interculturality, Illustrated – Daniela Bunea, Romania eTwinning Project: Allez-y, Go à Rio! Anne Collet, Belgium Hello to All eTwinning Members! Daniela Ružić Mrak, Croatia Legend Jeopardy- Celebrating Diversity Using Legends – Cristina Nicolaita, Romania Let’s eTwin ER&MVO: eTwinning Departments of Education and Schools of Two Areas of Italy and Spain - Marta Pey, Spain eTwinning Projects in Vocational School - Eva Toth, Hungary Our Peace Song - Andrea Ullrich, Germany In Teaching Others We Teach Ourselves - Olivera Ilic, Serbia “Africa, Hello!” on 3 Continents - Svetla Popova, Bulgaria A Video Conference with Our French Partners: An Example of Cooperation, Exchange of Ideas, Good Practices and Fun - Laura Rua, Italy Web 2.0 – Definition, History, Future Adil Tugyan, Turkey Kahooting to Empower Learners to Leaders - Helena Serdoura, Portugal Using an eTwinning Project for Mentoring Teachers - Diana Linford, UK Thanks, eTwinning! - Cira Serio, Italy My Unforgettable eTwinning Projects Ana Tudor, Romania

Ambassadors

Web 2.0 Compass Gallery of Successful Projects Teaching & Learning with eTwinning

Editor: Daniela Bunea ISSN 2247-6881 ISSN – L 2247-6881

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Contents: Anne Gilleran: Introduction – page 4 Daniela Bunea: Interculturality, Illustrated – page 4 Sophia Kouzouli: Core Values in eTwinning Projects – page 6 Angeliki Kougiourouki: Teaching Tolerance with Comics through eTwinning Projects – page 10 Ana-Maria Ghioc: Media Literacy – An Inquiry-Based Approach – page 13 Nilüfer Dinc Demirok: My First Exciting Learning Event: eTwinning and Interculturality – page 15 Laura Rua: A Video Conference with Our French Partners: An Example of Cooperation, Exchange of Ideas, Good Practices and Fun – page 16 Maria Nica: eTwinning Ambassadors’ Course 2015: Teachers’ Development, My Powerful Development – page 18 Maria Teresa Asprella Libonati, Emma Giurlani, Francoise Altamura, Anna Rita Recchia, Enrica Maragliano, Brigida Clemente, Cinzia Masia, Sara Brunno, Maria Rosaria Gismondi, Roberta Maria Delle Monache, Alessandra Cannelli: Reflections on the Training Course for European eTwinning Ambassadors 2015-2016 – page 20 Arjana Blazic and Bart Verswijvel: Global Networking Webinar – page 24 Arjana Blazic: Do You Feel Infowhelmed? – page 25 Cornelia Melcu: eTwinning and Primary School Students – page 26 Theodora Gkeniou: The ESL eTwinning Group Is Loading for Active English Language Teachers across Europe – page 27 Gabriela Ileana Crisan: Flipped Classroom and Its Applications in Art Disciplines – page 29 Jutta Schwarz: Four Years in Vietnam – page 30 Brigida Clemente: Fostering Innovative Pedagogical Practices through eTwinning: A Training Case – page 33 Eva Toth: eTwinning Projects in Vocational School – page 37 Diana Linford: Using an eTwinning Project for Mentoring Teachers – page 39 Web 2.0 Compass: -

Adil Tugyan: Web 2.0 – Definition, History, Future – page 41

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Alexandra Duarte: 10+ Useful Tech Tools and Ideas for eTwinning Projects – page 45

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Helena Serdoura: Kahooting to Empower Learners to Leaders – page 47

Gallery of Successful Projects: -

Cristina Nicolaita: Legend Jeopardy- Celebrating Diversity Using Legends – page 50

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Olivera Ilic: In Teaching Others We Teach Ourselves – page 51

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Andrea Ullrich: Our Peace Song – page 54

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Vasilica Gazdac: Project ”BRIDGING3GENERATIONS” – page 56

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Paulina Grudniewska, Paola Amati: Tell Me Your Fairy Tale and Support My Development! – page 60

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Ana Tudor: My Unforgettable eTwinning Projects – page 62

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Kostas Loukas: “Values of Life” - eTwinning Project 2015-2016 – page 63

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Cira Serio: Thanks, eTwinning! – page 66

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Heidi Giese: The 63rd European Competition – Prepared with eTwinning – page 67

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Crina Clapou: Pâques en Europe! Easter in Europe! – page 68

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Cinzia Masia: “Making a Difference in Our Learning”: Our Students’ Point of View – page 70

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Anamaria Corina Golumbeanu: MUST eTwinning Project – page 72

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Anne Collet: eTwinning Project: Allez-y, Go à Rio! – page 73

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Daniela Grecu: Collaborative e-journal – page 75

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Maria Teresa Rughi: eTwinning and the Competences for a Democratic Culture – Living Together as Equals – page 77

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Deyana Peykova: Better e-Safe Than Sorry – page 79

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Ionela Camelia Lazea: Small Scientists from European Kindergartens – page 80

Francoise Altamura: GOOD PRACTICE: The Use of the Methodology Based on Projects – page 83 Zeljka Zagorac: eTwinning Contact Seminar in Croatia – page 84 Daniela Ružić Mrak: Hello to All eTwinning Members! – page 86 Paola Arduini, Laura Maffei, Marilina Lonigro, Elena Pezzi: Italian Plan for Digital School via eTwinning – page 87 Iuliana-Florentina Ispir: Why I Have Chosen eTwinning – page 91 Svetla Popova: “Africa, Hello!” on 3 Continents – page 92 Francesca Minaudo: A Door Always Open to the World – page 93 Johanna Chardaloupa: Ütekuun: Together (EN) – Gemeinsam (DE) – Mazi (μαζί / GR) – Koos (ES): An eTwinning Project through Skype – page 95 Marta Pey: Let’s eTwin ER&MVO: eTwinning Departments of Education and Schools of Two Areas of Italy and Spain – page 97 Manuela Maria Baptista: School Libraries Can Play a Key Role in Building eTwinning Projects – page 98 Irene Confalone: Learning by Playing with eTwinning – page 99 Natasha Djurkova: eTwinning Tree Campaign – page 101

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Introduction by Anne Gilleran

Interculturality, Illustrated by Daniela Bunea

European students and teachers, plus peers from other countries, work within eTwinning with ever greater enthusiasm and in ever bigger number year after year. They do project work that extends knowledge and capabilities, and become skilled at being successful in a complex, interconnected world.

According to authors J. M. Bennett and M. J. Bennett in their "Developing Intercultural Sensitivity. An integrative approach to global and domestic diversity" (2004), INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE is defined as being "the ability to communicate effectively in cross-cultural situations". It means: - building relationships while speaking another language, not the native language; - negotiating how to effectively communicate so that the participants' individual needs are addressed; - mediating conversations between people of diverse cultural backgrounds; - continuing to acquire communicative skills in foreign languages.

The texts in this newsletter – recipes for success, emotional testimonies, glimpses at the future, stories of challenges, pieces of feedback – are some of these teachers’ reflections and feelings during this undertaking. Enjoy, thank you and good luck!

Anne Gilleran has always worked in the field of education, firstly as a lecturer on a training course for guidance counsellors, then as guidance counsellor in a school. Then she became a School Principal in a post primary school in Dublin, before she moved to work in European Schoolnet. She has worked in eTwinning since the beginning in 2005 and she is the Pedagogical Manager, responsible for coordinating the pedagogical and professional development aspects of the community. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the 21st century, people must have skills to work collaboratively with other people from a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In other words, they must have a high degree of INTERCULTURALITY - the ability to actively participate in communication guided by an awareness and understanding of cultures. As R. Couet, G. Fulkerson and J. Bott Van Houten in their Language Educator article "How interculturality is changing our view of culture" (2014) put it, "demonstrating interculturality requires both the ability to use the language and to interact appropriately in cultural contexts". One way for learners to reflect on their interculturality is by using the European Language Portfolio that incorporates Michael Byram's theories of interculturality; in his 1997 book "Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence", he described intercultural

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------competence as being comprised of five savoirs, or types of knowledge, skills, and attitudes; finding these savoirs complementary to learners' communicative competence, he refers to this model as Intercultural Communicative Competence.

Teachers can address interculturality in the classroom with the help of a checklist of six steps, which serves as a guide for planning with interculturality in mind through a backward design process: 1. Intentionally set learning targets for language proficiency and intercultural competence. 2. Share learning targets with learners and encourage them to set their own goals. 3. Design performance assessments that integrate language and culture and assess interculturality. 4. Determine appropriate authentic resources. 5. Provide ample opportunities for learners to interact with native speakers. 6. Create ways for learners to reflect on and selfassess their progress.

We all have the capacity to communicate with other people, and to learn to understand them. In a world where intercultural contact is increasing and inevitable, it is important to find new ways to communicate our values and beliefs to each other. Internetworked media technologies have gradually diffused throughout the world. They have often been sparks for intercultural dialogue.

Facebook revolutions such as the 2011 Egyptian revolution and the 2014 Romanian presidential elections have been televised, blogged, photographed, videoed, twittered. One effect of these protests was to fuel intercultural communication on a world-historic scale.

There are 4 main connections between digital media and intercultural communicative competence: I. Digital media enable intercultural communicative competence through publicity. Starting from analogies between the printing press and the Internet, we can say that the internetworked communication obviates intermediaries such as newspaper editors. The diffusion of digital media into our everyday life invites us to consider the free speech issues that should accompany intercultural dialogue. II. Through multimedia forms of communication, digital media offer new and unique 'spaces' for intercultural communicative communication. The richness of multimedia is evident, for instance, in the stirring videos posted on the Internet of the first and second rounds of voting for the Romanian president, i.e. the long lines of Romanian citizens in the diaspora waiting to be permitted to vote (in November 2014). Visual representations offered an enhanced experience compared to more traditional, textualized narrative accounts. Building on the idea of a "linguistic landscape", as E. Shohamy and D. Gorter worded it in 2009 in their book "Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery", the ocularcentric culture of digital media can be seen as creating an "imagistic landscape" in which the richness of media provides a 'feel' of a place or situation through visual representation. Digital media thus offer new 'spaces' and (re)conceptualizations of intercultural encounters. III. Digital media facilitate intercultural communication on a new scale: many-to-many not few-to-few intercultural communication, not intercultural dialogue any longer, but intercultural dissemination. Many-to-many communication blends dialogue and dissemination on a broad scale. Hence comes the increase in multiperspectivalism, as several authors (A. Bruns, H. Gans, D. Pfister to

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------name a few) noticed in their works (see Bibliography). IV. Digital media offer new modes of representation that shape intercultural communication and perceptions. Publication is so cheap that almost anyone can do it. The Internet has 'democratized' representation by allowing individuals to represent themselves and their various groups rather than simply being represented. As in the Romanian 2014 presidential elections, citizens are able to provide their own account of the unfolding situation.

The worldwide explosion of new media technologies is uniquely situated at the crossroads of interpersonal, intercultural and mass communication. ICTs, including social media, but also mobile phones, text messaging, email, online games, blogs, Skype, enable people to connect across cultures, nations, time and space in ways unimagined until the dawn of the 21st century. Bibliography: Bennett, J. M., & Bennett, M. J. (2004) Developing intercultural sensitivity: An integrative approach to global and domestic diversity. In D. Landis, J. Bennett & M. Bennett (Eds.), Handbook of intercultural training (3rd ed). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Bruns, A. (2006) Wikinews: The next generation of online news? SCAN Journal, 3 (3). Byram, M. (1997) Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Couet, R., Fulkerson, G. and Bott Van Houten, J. (2014) From Fact to Function: How Interculturality Is Changing Our View of Culture. The Language Educator, January 2014, 42-45. Gans, H. (2001) Multiperspectival news revisited: Journalism and representative democracy. Journalism, 12 (1), 3-13.

Pfister, D. (2011) Networked expertise in an area of many-to-many communication: On Wikipedia and invention. Special Epistemology, 25 (3), 217-231. Shohamy, E. & Gorter, D. (2009) Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery. New York, NY: Routledge.

Daniela Bunea is a teacher of English at Colegiul National Gheorghe Lazar in Sibiu, Romania and a Romanian eTwinning ambassador. Daniela is author of online and onsite professional development training courses. She has written articles about teaching and learning with technology and 3 books for children. She is also the coordinator of the Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group and the editor of this Newsletter. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Core Values in eTwinning Projects by Sophia Kouzouli Abstract This paper discusses the dynamic nature of eTwinning projects reporting on the experience the author gained from the eTwinning projects she did with her classes during this school year. All the projects lasted more than seven months, were international and had a variety of work products created by students. Identifying the values with which eTwinning projects enrich pupils’ learning experiences at school highlight their multifaceted benefits, their pedagogical significance and their creative character, and can be helpful in generating future projects. Introduction The powerful qualities and contribution of eTwinning projects reflect valuable insight, which can definitely affect the designing of future projects at school and enhance students’ participation. The special characteristics of young learners (Mckay, 2006) from various countries cooperating and learning a foreign language (Brown and Yule, 1983) in the framework of a shared project and their implications in creating for them a safe environment for creative interaction (Petrina, 2007) are very adequately catered for within eTwinning.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The activities that will be depicted to portray the focus and intent of the present paper derive from the projects carried out in the two primary schools I worked at this school year, the 6th Primary School of Pyrgos and the 8th Primary School of Pyrgos. “The Land of Ambrosia” for my 1st graders and their partners was a trip to meet European pupils, learn about them and their country, using the food topic as central theme. “Art in Us” for my 3rd graders and their peers intended to promote interaction between European children through different forms of art and to develop children’s skills in collaboration, English language, national music and folk dance and creativity. In the project “My First Postcards” my 5th graders and their peers were motivated to learn English and other languages to speak to children in Europe, to know more about other cultures, to have fun, and make new friends. “Planet Diversity” for my 6th graders and their partners aimed to develop the concept of citizenship, social skills and creative thinking of pupils and to explore emotions and basic human values through the book processing of The little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupery. “The European Schools Newspaper” in which students from various grades of school took part was an opportunity for the participants to experience an enjoyable, creative and educational process of creating an English School Newspaper. Aims The underlying aims of the above collaborative projects involve the research into the European Member States, the European Union flag and the flags of all members of the European Union and the exploration in an experiential way of national celebrations, traditions, cuisine, music, art and authors. Furthermore, they aim at developing the students’ digital skills and strengthening their digital literacy. As far as the learning process is concerned they intend to raise their awareness on the specific topics and conquer knowledge with active participation through discovery, relate knowledge to everyday life and to develop collaborative skills and critical and creative thinking. They are essentially an endeavor to strengthen the positive self-image of students, to develop their personality and individuality and encourage them to realize the social dimension of individual development and understand the importance of respecting their own personal data, but also of others. Methodology Learning is a social, active, experiential, participatory and evolutionary process of interactive communication. It is important to create within the school a fruitful and friendly learning environment

for all students, which can encourage them to pursue exploratory, creative and active learning at higher levels. Dewey (1998) argues that education can be based on natural human impulses for research, communication and creation, formulating purposes, experiencing feelings and generating ideas. The perspective for an experiential and interdisciplinary learning approach, the inextricable connection between our educational activities at school with the curriculum and the European dimension in education are essential aspects of the eTwinning projects. According to the principles of cognitive constructivism formulated by Piaget (1978) students need to be enabled to process their learning experiences, reflect on their work and build knowledge and positive attitudes. The activities implemented with the projects must be in response to their age and needs so that students are able to relate to them and to carry them out. Also, the playful and communicative nature of the activities needs to be taken into account as play and communication are vital to the social development of the child (Schaffer,1999). The exploratory learning theory (Bruner, 1983) and the scaffolding of the students which can lead them to the zone of proximal development -Zone of Proximal Development, ZPD (Vygotski, 1978) is an integral part of all activities so that students collaborate and will later be able to implement them on their own. The theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983) meets the needs of students and offers them the opportunity to explore and improve their talents. Core values of the projects Robinson (2010) advocates that education is supposed to be the process that empowers learners to develop all resources. The four core principles of the eTwinning projects under discussion that reinforced the learning experience and started up learners’ imagination and motivation are the following. Collaboration eTwinning projects enhance group work among national and international teams creating a positive environment in the classroom. Clear communication and collaboration among teachers and students build a strong sense of purposefulness and guarantee that students will be offered opportunities to find their talents, challenge themselves and be creative with the help and scaffolding of their teachers and their peers.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In the project Planet Diversity in which we took part with my 6th graders, having the story of The Little Prince as our starting point, the students of the 7 partner countries formed five groups: the Active team, the Artists, the Astronomers, the Geographers and the Philosophers which interacted with each other-with the Active team promoting the learning experience into a physical embodied learning experience. They had the opportunity to explore fundamental and universal values, to affirm their abilities by accomplishing tasks and got inspired to pursue more challenging personal goals on their own.

Focus in on the Arts eTwinning projects set the Arts in the centre of our work as they are among the prime ways to negotiate our understanding of ourselves and the world, and connect with ourselves and with each other. In the eTwinning project “Art In Us” pupils listened to folk music of the partner countries, selected the piece they liked most and improvised a dance for it. Greek pupils devised a unique dance for a Portuguese Fado. The joy of creativity is seen from the seriousness on the faces of the pupils and on the way they check on each other to be sure that everything goes as planned. The mutual feeling of sharing and cooperation shone out bright when they accomplished their work.

During the project “Land of Ambrosia” students read the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Then they drew pictures to tell the story. They sent these pictures to their French partner school and they made a completely different and original story out of them, naming it “A cocoon for two”. Therefore, expressing themselves with music, Art and theatre and learning about other cultures through them enables them to create their unique forms of expression and develop interdependence and ownership.

Creativity emerging from diversity Working with students from different backgrounds, engaging in the same activities with them, exploring their culture and learning about them helped dispel any preconceived notions from a very early age.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Learners not only learnt to respect and appreciate their own heritage but also to respect and connect with other cultures. Evaluation Hunter-Carsch (1995) advocates that assessment should begin with personal response types.

to pursue genuine and sustainable success in what they do. Bibliography Brown, G and Yule, G, (1983). Teaching Spoken Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Bruner, J. (1983). Child’s Talk: Learning to Use Language. New York: Norton. Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Hunter-Carsch, M. (1995). Keeping track: assessing, monitoring and recording children’s progress and achievement. In Moyles, J. (ed) pp. 195-216. Beginning teaching: beginning learning in primary education , Buckingham: Open University Press.

Therefore, in all the projects we implemented evaluation with the form of google docs in “Art in Us” and “Land of Ambrosia”, AnswerGarden in “The European Schools Newspaper”, a padlet diary for “Planet Diversity” and Tricider for the project “My First Postcards”. Students were thus inspired and motivated to participate actively and reflect on their learning and communication. The added value of eTwinning projects The reflection on the projects and results of the assessment techniques applied in these projects clearly reveal their added value, promoting creativity and innovation. The dissemination through Twinspace, social networks, the school websites and personal blogs of the teachers, the organization of presentations in school and celebratory events for the local community, as well as the participation in seminars can help amplify and multiply the results of our projects.

Conclusion Reality is characterized by rapid changes which create the need to strengthen the role of reconstructive education so that students can be inspired and grow creatively. eTwinning projects offer amazing learning experiences which create a vibrant collaborative classroom, and ignite learners

Mckay, P. (2006). Assessing Young Language Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Petrina, S. (2007). Advanced teaching methods for the technology classroom. Hershey: Information Sciences, International. Piaget, J. (1978). The Child and Reality. New York: Penguin Books. Robinson, K. (2010). The Element: How finding Your Passion Changes Everything. London: Penguin Books. Schaffer, H.R. (1999). Understanding socialization: from unidirectional to bidirectional conceptions. In M. Bennett (Ed), Developmental Psychology: Achievements and Prospects. Washington: Psychology Press. Vygotski, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Sophia Kouzouli is a teacher of English. She holds a B.A. in English Language and Literature and an M.Ed. in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from the H.O.U., Patra. She has been teaching English for more than 20 years and is an enthusiastic eTwinner.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Teaching Tolerance with Comics through eTwinning Projects by Angeliki Kougiourouki

as pupils’ motivation, development of visual and technological literacy, permanence of visual stimulus, mediating role, popularity.

The purpose of this teaching proposal is to identify the potential use of comics in teaching tolerance in the context of collaborative educational eTwinning projects where students are working in an interdisciplinary manner and taking further advantage of the use of ICT tools.

Towards the end of the 20th century distinguished educators recommended the utilization of comics in teaching various subjects of the curriculum especially for pupils who were for the most part reluctant readers. More particularly in the 21st century, during which people must have skills to work collaboratively with others from a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

With the terms comics or illustrations (Maritinidis, 1990) we define the picture stories which, through a series of closely connected sketches and accompanying dialogues, render more vividly action stories (Platis, 1978). Their role and value in education was the object of study by many educators who pointed out their particularly raised popularity among the younger ages. At the same time, the keen response on the part of young people and the particularities of the comics culture turned the interest of sociologists towards the study of ideological trends, of stereotypes, of the roles of heroes but also of the social parameters which are reflected in them (Theodoridis & Chalkia, 2005). The utilization of elements of the youth culture within a pedagogical process is not something new as it dates back to the 40s (Hutchinson, 1949; Sones, 1944). According to Burton (1955) illustration in the form of comics is a universally comprehended language which stimulates the senses, transforms the abstract to concrete and suggests an atmosphere of adventure, suspense and often mystery, thus exciting the readers’ imagination. Employing comics in education is an idea supported by the theory of double codification of Paivio, according to which the codification of information is done in double way and learning is more effective when the text is accompanied by image (Paivio, 1991).

In the present reality in education, however, modern trends call for exploiting the possibilities that are offered by the multimedia and hypermedia and more generally the ICT in connection to the redefinition of the educational aims in the society of learning, that is, the encouragement of active learning, the prompting to cooperate, the linking of school to daily life, the emphasis on developing critical thinking, self-regulation and reflection and finally the best use of the individual abilities of each student (Vosniadou, 2006). From this respect, the contribution of ICT is considered equally important especially that of the web 2.0 tools-also in the teaching of cultural diversity and tolerance, as a scientific and pedagogical constitution of the tutors and also as “tools” for learning inside the school classroom and within the framework of school activities. With the incorporation of ICT in education we can observe an increasing interest in the pedagogical use of the Global Web aimed at realizing group of team activities that support the collaborative learning. Series of new internet services, which are closely connected to collaborative learning, allow users to cooperate and exchange data online in a more efficient way. Thus, users can focus more on the process of learning rather than on technology itself (Booth, 2007).

The utilization of comics in the teaching process can offer considerable advantages (Yang, 2003), such

The relevant bibliography (Schulz-Zander, Büchter & Dalmer, 2002) supports that e-collaborative

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------learning is a promising educational means that can meet the individual needs of every child and can also help develop social acceptance skills, ethics and values. Teachers who teach different subjects can design activities based on ICT, applying the PBL, putting into use the modern concepts about active and collaborative learning as well as about cross-curricular approach to knowledge. Τhey can support the student-centered, active, exploratory, discovering and collaborative learning, the procedural knowledge, expression and communication activities which contribute to the creation of interaction between teachers, but also between teachers and pupils through authentic activities (Raptis & Rapti, 1999; Repousi & Tsivas, 1999; Giakoumatou, 2004; kavoura, 2004). On the other hand, eTwinning- the European School Community promotes cooperation in Europe by means of using ICT providing schools with support, tools and services. What we have here is a Digital Community of Learning whose potential for collaborative learning and for social networking creates hopeful and innovative intercultural crosscurricular prospects. Through technology mediated communication it allows the active participation of pupils and teachers in cooperative learning tasks with the aim of achieving common goals (Paloff & Pratt, 1999). Farther more eTwinning aims to integrate a feeling of European identity, as well as an awareness of the continent’s linguistic diversity into the learning process. It has been observed lately in the most educational systems in Europe lately that the use of comics is on the increase. Digital ones in particular can be used in subjects of all grades, both in Primary and Secondary Education.

More specifically, as a literary genre which presents adaptations of all-time classics or even of antiquity myths or of contemporary history, comics can be used in teaching cultural diversity and tolerance at school, as a tool of familiarizing pupils with multilingual and pluricultural society with computers

and of developing cultural awareness and mutual understanding. It is only natural that comics have a vast application range in the teaching of tolerance taking into consideration the fact that their use promotes the development of reading and expression skills on the level of speech and image, the evaluation of possibilities and limit-actions given by verbal means of expression, compared to visual ones, as well as the production of texts in which speech and image cooperate and function together (Paschalidis & Daniil, 2007).

Cultural context becomes more attractive when pupils are asked to create their own digital comics through the use of web 2.0 tools and acquires new interest when these comic creations are incorporated in the eTwinning cooperative projects. Moreover, through a collaborative eTwinning project and the English language, pupils have the chance to communicate to their peers from other countries their own way of viewing social issues. By exchanging views on specific social or historical facts that happened at the same period and changed the course of history in every place, pupils are able to have not just a photo reenactment of these situations, but also the opportunity to “build up” assumptions, to compare arguments, to articulate thoughts. The first step towards realizing an eTwinning project aimed at teaching tolerance through the use of comics amongst European schools is to define the topic, historical or social, within which educators and pupils will move so as to draw the required material. Secondly, goals are set. For instance pupils to be able to:  Identify and recognize elements from foreign cultures as well as conflicts or misunderstandings in specific comics  Understand the fictional characters in them and express their own feelings  Identify national stereotypes  Compare their own culturally determined opinions and attitudes towards the comics  Write their own fictional strips/scenes and discuss the written ones by the partner class taking into account cultural differences between the model comics, their own ones and their own cultural origin

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------We should add to the above goals the practice and use of the English language in oral and written speech through the collaboration and communication with peers from abroad, the extension of the results from this collective effort to the school as well as the local community, the development of ICT skills in a didactical way, the expression of their questions regarding cultural concepts by means of art. Employing this kind of eTwinning project is an example of innovative teaching of tolerance, of English language as well as Literature with the aid of comics, where pupils and teachers will have the chance to develop their abilities in the sector of ICT. Bibliography: Booth, A. (2007). Blogs, wikis and podcasts: the ‘evaluation bypass’ in action?. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 24, pp. 298–302. Burton, D.L. (1955). Comic Books: A Teacher's Analysis. The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 56, No. 2, pp. 73-75. Giakoumatou, T. (2004). When Information met Philology. 5 years later. 2nd National Conference, Information and Education. Retrieved: 23/07/2016, http://www.netschoolbook.gr/epimorfosi/conferenc es/s12_5years_Thess_2004.pdf (in Greek) Hutchinson, K. (1949). An experiment in the use of comics as instructional material. Journal of Educational Sociology, 23, pp. 236-245. Kavvoura, Th. (2004). Historical sources and History learning environments using ICT. In K.Aggelakos & G. Kokkinos (ed.) Interdisciplinarity in modern school and the teaching of history using sources, pp. 193-211. Athens: Metaixmio. (in Greek)

for the lesson of Literature 1st gymnasium. Thessaloniki. (in Greek) Platis, N. (1978). About comics and other afflictions, Diavazo, 15, pp.26-36. (in Greek) Theodoridis, M. & Chalkia, Kr. (2005). Narrative flow types in comics. In O. KonstantinidouSemoglou (ed.) Image and child cannot design publications, pp. 317-327. (in Greek) Raptis, A. & Rapti, A. (1999). The regenerative potential role of the computer as a cognitive tool in the context of Education. 1st ETPE Conference. Retrieved: 23/07/2016, http://www.etpe.gr/custom/pdf/etpe283.pdf (in Greek) Repousi, M. & Tsivas, A. (1999). The history lesson in the computer environment, managing the database. 1st ETPE Conference. Retrieved: 23/07/2016, http://www.etpe.gr/custom/pdf/etpe318.pdf (in Greek) Sones, W. (1944). The Comics and Instructional Method. Journal of Educational Sociology, 18, pp. 232-240. Schulz-Zander, R., Büchter, A., & Dalmer, R. (2002). The role of ICT as a promoter of students’ cooperation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 18, pp. 438 – 448. Vosniadou, S. (2006). Children, schools and computers. Athens: Gutenberg. (in Greek) Yang, G. (2003). Comics in education. Retrieved: 23/07/2016, http://www.humblecomics.com/comicsedu/index.ht ml

Maritinidis, P. (1990). Comics, art and techniques of illustration. A.S.Ε.A.Ε. (in Greek) Paivio, A. (1991). Dual coding theory: Retrospect and current status. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 45(3), pp.255-287. Palloff, R. and Pratt, K. (1999). Building learning communities in cyberspace. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Retrieved: 23/07/2016, http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/resource_l ibrary/proceedings/01_20.pdf Paschalidis, Gr. & Daniil, Chr. (2007). Word and image: The comics, in Teaching. Suggestions

Angeliki Kougiourouki is a primary school teacher in 1st Experimental Primary School, Alexandroupolis, Greece. She is an eTwinning ambassador in East Macedonia and Thrace, and a candidate Master in Visual Culture at Trakya University, Edirne, Turkey.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Media Literacy – An Inquiry-Based Approach by Ana-Maria Ghioc The literacy landscapes have profoundly changed due to the ubiquity of the mediated messages that students encounter on a daily basis. This mediasaturated environment requires an adaptation of the definition of the term “literacy” in order to also encompass the understanding of media texts. Traditional literacy involves the competences of reading and analyzing, as well as writing text messages. However, the predominantly visual culture that we live in demands a shift from only print-based messages to the critical analysis and production of images and videos so that students are fully equipped with the skills that we’ll enable them to function as critical thinkers and informed citizens of the 21st century.

Media literacy is a broad umbrella concept and although there are multiple interpretations and definitions the ones below shed light into the understanding the term. According to the Centre for Media Literacy, “media Literacy is a 21st century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with messages in a variety of forms — from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy.” As the European Association for Viewers Interests puts it, “the aim of media literacy is to increase awareness of the many forms of media messages encountered in our everyday lives. It should help citizens recognise how the media filter their perceptions and beliefs, shape popular culture and influence personal choices. It should empower them with critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills to make them judicious consumers and producers of information.”

Considering the definitions above, media literacy is not a new subject to be taught in school, but an approach, a way of thinking, a tool that aims at instilling in students the habit of evaluating the media messages they access and that permeate every corner of their lives. Studying media critically is necessary since the media not supply us with information, but also shapes our beliefs, our outlook on the world, influences our choices. The multilayered messages of the media must be carefully deconstructed or unveiled so that students make informed decisions. The goal of media literacy educators is to provide students with a set of skills that transfer into real life, outside the confining walls of the classroom, and guide them into navigating a constantly changing world and media environment. Hobbs (2010) identified the types of skills that underpin media literacy: 1. Finding and using media and technology tools skillfully and sharing appropriate and relevant information with others. 2. Comprehending messages and using critical thinking to analyze message quality, veracity, credibility, and point of view, while considering potential effects or consequences of messages. 3. Composing or generating content using creativity and confidence in self-expression, with awareness of purpose, audience, and composition techniques. 4. Applying social responsibility and ethical principles to one’s own identity and lived experience, communication behavior and conduct. 5. Working individually and collaboratively to share knowledge and solve problems in the family, the workplace and the community, and participating as a member of a community at local, regional, national and international levels.

Students need to master critical analysis skills, but at the same time they have to exert creative abilities. By getting involved in media production, they gain a deeper insight into the workings of the mechanisms that lie behind any mediated message.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For both critical thinking skills and creative production skills teachers can resort to an inquirybased pedagogy for effective teaching since being “critically autonomous” doesn’t represent an accumulation and reproduction of facts, ideas and information about media. Kuhn, Black, Keselman, and Kaplan (2000) define inquiry learning as “an educational activity in which students individually or collectively investigate a set of phenomena—virtual or real—and draw conclusions about it.” Banchi and Bell (2008) suggest that there are four forms of inquiry-based learning in science education: confirmation inquiry, structured inquiry, guided inquiry and open inquiry. Rogow (2011) describes inquiry as using “relevant questions to evaluate and analyze media messages and to reflect on the media they create.” She also considers that in order for students to ask questions about media messages and to engage in discussions, teachers have to model media messages deconstruction by asking questions. Media literacy scholars and organizations have compiled sets of questions that can be used in the inquiry process. The Centre for Media Literacy has developed five key concept questions that can be expanded by adding guiding questions and adapted for different age groups. NAMLE (National Association for Media Literacy Education in the USA) has designed another set of questions that can be used when analyzing media messages. Media literacy perfectly lends itself to an inquirybased approach and learning activities can be tailored to all the forms of inquiry listed by Bianchi and Bell. The approach can be implemented for media analysis tasks, but also for production-based activities since students have to ask and answer questions before embarking on the creation of a certain media product. Students could be provided with a set of questions when deconstruction a media text, could be asked to design their own questions, could be offer a list of topics for investigation or they could come up with their own topics. Some suggestions of topics that could be the starting point for investigative endeavours are: media institutions, ownership and control in the media, media regulation (self-regulation, statutory regulation), economic determinants (advertisers, audience-maximizing programs), media and audiences, media personnel. Furthermore, students could probe into the social constructions of race, gender, ability, social groups in different media

products, they could analyze articles from various sources, look into the codes used by different media genres, compare how the same news/event is reported by different media, storyboard an advertisement or video. The nature of inquiry learning changes the relationship between teacher and students. Students are not passive recipients of knowledge any longer, they actively create and construct meaning and knowledge. This entails a redesign of the educational approaches and classroom strategies. Teachers should build on the students’ existing knowledge and experience of the media, both of which are to be valued in the classroom. The teacher’s role shifts from the authority, the sage on the stage, to the one of facilitator, guide, the teacher taking part in the exchange of ideas, learning together with the students. Multiple perspectives are to be encouraged and the race for only one correct answer is to be replaced by a variety of answers that are valid as long as they are supported by arguments. Postman and Weingartner (1969) illustrated the ways in which inquiry-based learning has impacted the classroom dynamics: 1) the teacher rarely tells students a personal opinion about a particular social or political issue; (2) does not accept a single statement as an answer to a question; (3) encourages student-student interaction as opposed to student-teacher interaction, and generally avoids acting as a mediator or judging the quality of ideas expressed; (4) lessons develop from the responses of students and not from a previously determined “logical” structure. Fostering a learning environment that is conducive to the acquisition of the critical analytical and creative skills needed to function in a media-infused society will empower students to build their own knowledge constructs and not to take media messages at their face value. In order for education to be relevant for the challenges of contemporary life, teachers must embrace new pedagogies and develop a curriculum that responds to the needs of their students. Adopting a different mindset and role in the classroom might prove demanding for teachers and they may experience difficulties, but promoting healthy skepticism and encouraging the habit of questioning all media messages (not only those we disagree with) will pave the way for students to incorporate this new way of thinking into their lives not just when they interpret or produce media

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------messages. That will lead to more tolerance and dialogue through a sharing of various experiences, opinions and perspectives. The more media literate, the more socially competent! Bibliography: Banchi, H., Bell, R. (2008). The Many Levels of Inquiry. Science and Children, 70 (7) http://www.miseagrant.umich.edu/lessons/files/20 13/05/The-Many-Levels-of-Inquiry-NSTA-article.pdf

My First Exciting Learning Event: eTwinning and Interculturality by Nilüfer Dinc Demirok When I first heard that an LE (a Learning Event) was going to be held by Daniela Bunea, Cristina Nicolaita and Adil Tuğyan, I got very, very excited, because I have always been fond of self improvement and this was a great opportunity to meet teachers like me.

Hobbs, R. (2010). Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action http://www.knightcomm.org/digital-and-medialiteracy-a-plan-of-action/ Kuhn et al (2000). The Development of Cognitive Skills to Support Inquiry Learning. In Cognition and Instruction https://www.tc.columbia.edu/faculty/dk100/faculty profile/files/opingcognitiveskillsthatsupportinquiryle arning.pdf Postman, N., Weingartner, C. (1969) Teaching as a Subversive Activity. New York, Delacorte Press. Rogow, F. (2011) Ask, Don’t Tell: Pedagogy for Media Literacy Education in the Next Decade. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 3(1) http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1058&context=jmle http://ec.europa.eu/culture/library/studies/literacytrends-report_en.pdf http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/five-keyquestions-form-foundation-media-inquiry http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/whatmedia-literacy-definitionand-more https://namle.net/publications/core-principles/

Ana-Maria Ghioc is an ELT teacher at "Grigore Moisil" National College in Bucharest, Romania. Her interests include project-based learning, creative writing, the integration of Web 2.0 tools in education, project management and media literacy.

At first I was not sure if I could be one of the lucky participants since the LE took place among all teachers around Europe. I always consider myself as a lucky person, and soon my luck has been proved again. It was one of the precious moments of my life for me when I learned that I got one of the seats as a participant! This was my first LE and I had not the slightest idea about where to begin with and what to do. Above all, the LE would last for two weeks between the 23rd of May and the 3rd of June, which was challenging considering we were at the last weeks of the school. However all of my concerns disappeared when I saw the road map Daniela posted. It was clear, well prepared and helpful for all the participants. Step by step we began to know each other and started to have little tasks in our groups (leagues) as we called them.Everybody was very helpful and open. From the first moment, I really felt that there are people all over Europe, giving their hearts to the jobs they are doing. This feeling was amazing! Plus while working in our teams we realized how some cultures are surprisingly similar. One of our tasks was creating an e-book based on a folk story of our own culture. During the task we realized that Romanian folk stories carry nearly and surprisingly the same elements. I chose Nasreddin Hodja and the other character was from Romania named

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Nastratin. Not only the characters but also the story was intercultural. Above all as participants we had a chance to practice many web 2.0 tools, learned to learn and gather amazing cultural information about different countries. Time flew quickly and we came to an end leaving excellent memories and friends all over Europe.

eTwinning /Comenius project, whose title was "I&R - European Industrial technology and Robotics, new educational approaches for creative learning". I received Barbara Ponizy's request to have our pupils on a video conference on the occasion of the Minister of Education Mr. Vincent Pellion's visit to the Poitier Etwinning Central Agency. The proposed activity was absolutely instructive for our students, since they could show each other the robots they had planned and assembled, directly discuss Robotics programming and plan together the radio broadcast event to be performed during the following meeting at LP2I - Poitiers.

During this Learning Event we had the chance to practice the definition of Herbert Marshall McLuhan: “The world is a global village”. With the help of eTwinning we realize that European countries are neighbours!

Nilüfer Dinc Demirok is a teacher of English for 17 years working in Zonguldak, Turkey. She has worked as a Teacher Trainer for the Ministry of Turkish Education and had many trainings about adult education, including summer school in U.S, Massachussetts. Now she is working with the gifted children.

With the help of my colleague Antonio Spano, who coordinates the group of our "Robotics addicts", we prepared the Skype meeting: it had to be at at 2.00 pm, immediately after the bell rings the last period end, not even time to eat a sandwich... "Great, no problem, teachers, we will be there on the fly, all we have to do is assemble the robots on time!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A Video Conference with Our French Partners: An Example of Cooperation, Exchange of Ideas, Good Practices and Fun by Laura Rua Yes, fun and amusement as this is the approach our students had to the activity! Barbara (France), Jesmond (Malta), Leopoldo (Spain) and I were working together for an

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------While waiting for the "D-day", expectations and interest grew and I received a barrage of questions on our Facebook private group: the students offered solutions, directly contacted their French mates via FB, downloaded materials in the eTwinning project site, in other words they became more and more independent in the development of the action...my real goal! On the day of the meeting, everything was ready, our "line-follower robots" were charged and ready at their starting blocks, then the network connection started among lots of "Hello! Bonjour! Ciao! Where is Felix? Where is Simone?". We were all waiting for the Minister's arrival to show him our mutual production, so we had some time to debate and discuss the subjects and meet some very nice colleagues of the eTwinning France.

Upon Mr. Pellion's arrival, the robots started their job on both sides of the Alps to show their best. We teachers were absolutely impressed by the clarity and spontaneity the students had in managing their meeting, it seemed there was no distance dividing them, moreover by how their English language naturally flowed in their conversation.

and colleagues (Antonio), for all you have done to make the visit of our minister of education a success. Pupils and teachers were great, helpful, patient, good willing. Thanks for the time you spent for us. Barbara, Laura, you are engaged and wonderful teachers. As a former history teacher, I was amazed to see the quality of the relationship you have built with your pupils and also how proud they were of their work. eTwinning is lucky to have you! Gratefully, Marie-Christine CLEMENT-BONHOMME Coordinatrice de l'action eTwinning / NSS France coordinator /Directrice du développement international

Laura Rua is a teacher of English at ITIS Pinninfarina in Moncalieri, Italy. A former eTwinning ambassador, now she is in charge of EU Projects and foreign certifications. She is a CLIL advisor and has been certified by Politecnico Milano as a flipped classroom designer. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a very fruitful experience of cooperation, sharing and growth through eTwinning. Here is the thanking mail we received from the French eTwinning NSS: Chère Barbara, Dear Laura, On behalf of the French eTwinning National Support Service, I want to thank you deeply, first of all you both and your pupils, but also your headmasters

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------eTwinning Ambassadors’ Course 2015: Teachers’ Development, My Powerful Development by Maria Nica Do you want to know how I felt after following the eTwinning Ambassadors Course? I will tell you. I felt strengthened, I mean more powerful. No, do not be afraid, this is not a delirium of omnipotence, but only the awareness that the role of an eTwinner, in future scenarios of the European education system, is crucial. So the awareness about this aspect makes me feel responsible for the quality of my training and encourages me to continue on my path of dissemination.

experience means students’ work is real to them, has a direct impact in the real world and the "real world" could still be school, which is a very real place for students. In PBL projects, students feeling free to express their own ideas about a topic in various media might to improve their community, create a physical artifact to display or distribute, consider their own work very useful. The project involves tools, tasks or processes used by adults in real settings in the workplace and they are so engaging for students and allow them to feel like they can have an impact on their world.

As Andreas Schleicher said in his presentation “An international perspective on teacher development” at the 2015 Conference on teacher training in Bonn, teacher development must train teaching as a profession, and it means to recruit top candidates into the profession, improve the societal view, retain and recognise effective teachers. In other words, developing 21st century teachers to prepare 21st century learners must provide to a continuum of support and make learning central, encouraging engagement and responsibility, feeling sensitive to individual differences and providing continual assessment with formative feedback. Furthermore it is necessary to be demanding for every student and ensure that students feel valued and included. The eTwinning Ambassadors Course showed us new approaches behind eTwinning to foster more effective teaching. In particular, I really liked when Anne Gilleran, Pedagogical Manager eTwinning CSS, in her workshop about eTwinning pedagogy, explained how involvement in a project with Problem Based Learning, an approach that helps pupils to promote critical thinking and facilitate their communication, means students receiving feedback on their performance, developing digital literacy skills and fostering entrepreneurial spirit for an active citizenship. PBL, said Anne, helps teachers and introduces them to the reflection and experimentation of different pedagogical approaches promoting their continuous professional development. It’s mean that in a problem/inquiry based project both pupils and teachers are challenged, but this is not foregone procedure because to activate the inquiry procedures and design a problem based project is necessary begin with a non Googable driving question, a question that does not yield an answer to a simple Google or library search. A PBL

To give visibility and share an activity like a PBL project, it is important for teachers to participate in collaborative practices with their colleagues, this means the higher their level of self-efficacy and job satisfaction. Indeed, collaboration among all stakeholders in the school is essential to create 21st-century learning environments, because to realize a 3.0 school it is necessary to develop four dimensions: regrouping learners to give learners, mixed for ages and abilities, a sense of belonging and engagement with widen pedagogical options, including peer teaching; regrouping educators to gain the benefits of collaborative planning, work, and shared professional development strategies; rescheduling learning to allow for and accelerate deeper learning and to use out-of-school learning in effective and innovative ways; widening pedagogic repertoires. This means considering learning as Open Education, that is institutional practices and programmatic initiatives that broaden access to the learning and training traditionally offered. During the ambassadors’ course we learnt that an essential characteristic of open education is the

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------removal of barriers to learning, because open educational practices are not only Open Educational Resources, MOOCs or ICT and technology integration in education, Open Education means widening access to education and learning in general and new ways of learning, teaching, assessing, recognising, accrediting and delivering 21st century competences. Another very interesting topic in the European Ambassadors Course was the analysis of future scenarios that teaching profession could develop. I appreciated the research about teaching profession scenarios in 2030 where many questions were asked: How will teaching be in 2030? What are the positive and negative aspects? What would we like to come true? What is the role of eTwinning teachers in determining the possible future scenarios? With the work of Riina Vuorikari, Ph.D and Yves Punie, Ph.D, presented at ETUCE 2014 Special Conference, in Vienna on 26 November 2014 about Teaching Profession in 2030, we learnt that in the future there will be significant changes about where we learn, when we learn, what we learn, how we learn and with whom with learn, thus affecting also the role of teachers. Imagining the teaching profession in 2030, FIVE SCENARIOS will be possible:

workload, dealing with information overload and complexity, and open Educational Resources; but all that involves weaknesses such as technology dependence and private market solutions only. 4. Diversified Teacher Careers scenario, based on “remote presence from robotics” and personalised learning analytics, encourages autonomous learners through personalisation and taking responsibility, and different teaching professions: teaching in class, teaching virtually, student monitoring. The difficulties are high dependence on use of digital technologies for organisation and administration of learning and the great investment in teacher training. 5. Informal peer camps: Off-line peer learning scenario is based on “information fatigue” and disbelief on badly designed technological applications, that means the face-to-face time is valued, collaboration is embedded in innovating with teaching, open technologies allow new case specific innovation. In this case, the risk is that digital divide between teachers who engage and those who do not and the lack of institutional support leave teachers without formal recognition of their efforts. Among all five scenarios, therefore, we need to think carefully what scenario we are going towards and what would be the best for teachers and students in the future.

1. European Education Network (eNet) scenario; it is based on the idea of centralised technology where various tools and resources are made available in one place! This scenario, on the one hand, encourages school exchanges and teacher training, ensures secure environment for teachers and fosters interaction between students and the expansion towards more stakeholders, but on the other side creates a centralised governance less favorable in terms of openness, flexibility and interoperability with other networks and spheres of life. 2. MyNetwork scenario, based on decentralised technologies and user-centred social networking approach, is a flexible and personalised approach that promotes federation across networks, but favours market fragmentation and individual approaches, creating difficulties to engage parents and other stakeholders. 3. Intelligent Agents scenario is based on emerging technologies like recommendations in https://www.amazon.com/ that means an avatar does the repetitive activities and reduction of

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Concluding, I can say for sure that my assessment on European Ambassadors Course 2015 is very positive, because it made me and all the Ambassadors aware about the central issues that the teaching profession has to face in the coming years. We have to consider two important aspects: the role of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) and Continuous Professional Development (CPD). eTwinning Ambassadors, with their dissemination work, could help to improve the quality of teaching enhancing through networking, and to support teacher networks in opening up towards new stakeholders. At the same time, they could help solve problems about technology, like the control of data and issues of privacy, security and safety.

contact teacher for the Erasmus+ project in her school, and she is a journalist and media-educator too. Her great passion is the cinema, she is the creator and art director of On Air Festival, international video-contest for schools, and for 10 years now she is a member of the jury at The Giffoni International Film Festival, the largest children's film festival in Europe, and possibly in the world. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Reflections on the Training Course for European eTwinning Ambassadors 2015-2016 by Maria Teresa Asprella Libonati, Emma Giurlani, Francoise Altamura, Anna Rita Recchia, Enrica Maragliano, Brigida Clemente, Cinzia Masia, Sara Brunno, Maria Rosaria Gismondi, Roberta Maria Delle Monache and Alessandra Cannelli In the last months we have taken part in a training course for eTwinning ambassadors, realized in a Moodle environment and structured in four modules, each one containing a certain number of issues dealt with by different trainers and with connected tasks to be performed either individually or in group.

Before ending the article, last but not least, I want to say thanks so much to all teachers and moderators of the eTwinning Ambassadors’ European Course 2015: Mathilde Bargoin, Maite Debry, Anne Gilleran, Benjamin Hertz, Irene Pateraki, Santi Scimeca, Adam Stepinski, Bart Verswijvel – they led our work patiently and carefully. A special thanks to Rute Baptista our great, tireless and smiling support teacher.

Maria Nica is a teacher of Italian Literature and History at Istituto Polispecialistico San Paolo of Sorrento, in the South of Italy. She has master's degrees in Pedagogy, Sociology, Sciences of Communications and Psychology. eTwinning has been her great interest from 2007, and in 2009 she became an eTwinning ambassador. She is the

During the weeks of the course there were many opportunities to collaborate in work groups and in the end we decided autonomously to create this all Italian group for the realization of this final product in which we were asked for an action plan in order to "give an excellent contribution of eTwinning to our country, keeping into account what has been learnt during the course", to be sent to our Italian NSS. Considering the remarkable relevance of the professional development path realized in collaboration with colleagues from all Europe for our training, it seemed a good idea to start a dissemination activity, sharing and communicating on a national level the experience had and the knowledge acquired. The experience in the course has led us to a comparison with colleagues of all the European countries taking part in eTwinning and it has surely enriched and deepened the potentiality of our role in the various national realities. For this reason we think it is important to share and let everybody know what we gained in this training experience. The "human factor" of our European colleagues has supported and encouraged our efforts even in the moments in which school and family activities

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------seemed to overcome our toughest course-mates. We have really tried on ourselves the efficacy of collaborative approaches empowered by the use of LMS Moodle that allowed us to share issues by forums.

Thanks to this approach we have shared and reinforced our belief that digital competencies and social competencies cannot be separated.

Working in groups taught us to coordinate in our distance work colleagues we had never met, to overcome difficulties, to support each other and compare to maintain our engagements. All this has renewed the potentialities of each one but it has allowed us to grow as a European group.

We therefore believe that in this field eTwinning is fundamental both for students and teachers who are involved in a continuous process of training and updating.

Sometimes some inconvenience has created some organization or communication difficulties for some members but just in these challenging moments the importance of a community that supports individuals was highlighted. A new and wider perspective was created in terms of pedagogical approaches through the reflection of euristic-socratical methods of Project Based Learning and Inquiry Based Learning, studentcentred, which helped us to find new professional hints and reinforced our enthusiasm beside enriching our technical-didactical knowledge.

We realized that only planning projects aiming at the development of critical and analytical thinking and based on sharing can allow concrete positive results, fostering the growth of creative individuals and the shaping of diverging thought.

Another relevant aspect, already dealt with by our NSS with webinars and other events, was the study on what is published and is present on internet. In this sense, as teachers and above all as ambassadors we have always to remember that TwinSpace is a place where students can work completely safely, keeping into account their privacy and allowing to publish materials created by them or searched but not subject to copyright. As more and more members are registered and changes are taking place in the schools, we shared the necessity to support new teachers and not active teachers in order to cope with new needs. On this issue some fundamental fields emerged around which we have to focus our planning action for next year, enriching and integrating our regional plans. The fundamental idea emerged from Group discussion is that one about empowering the results supporting the engagements, already accomplished on a national and regional level, with the active presence in the various European groups. We would like to realize, in collaboration with our NSS, the initiative to put our experience in the course at disposal of all ambassadors, old and new. In particular, beyond contents, certainly important, we would like to underline the working method,

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------based on an online platform, webinar, forum and distance group work, that allowed us to easily cooperate, even on a national level, exchanging ideas and practices, reaching a significant synthesis respecting different points of view. We have reflected on the fact that eTwinning is more and more a flexible tool, fit to accompany the changes that are taking place in the Italian School; for example some of us are using groups to support training events not online, in the perspective of improving plan in the school networks. eTwinning program has started to be part of the training of trainee students in University courses for primary School teachers and for TFA students to become teachers of languages in some Italian universities. Therefore eTwinning appears to be an essential pedagogical approach to be used in every day teaching, giving the possibility to create a transnational open classroom where personality, professional competence and know-how contribute to define an augmented humanity, priceless added value both for teachers and students.

the platform accompanying them in an itinerary aimed at the realization of projects (from partner search to the managing and development with the right tools, to the application for quality certificate at the end of the project) with events, in webinars, workshops or learning labs and the possibility to activate blended training courses, as complex training needs can be satisfied only with differentiated training interventions, as face to face learning seems to be the richest interaction among teachers and learners. The training itinerary should be, in fact, blended and plan the integrated use of more communication channels on the basis of a precise strategy of integration of didactic formats, which allows to reach a quality increase in the activated training process: - plenary lessons with teacher/ tutor - processes of collaborative learning inside a community, based both on synchronous interaction , in face to face lab activities, and on asynchronous communication tools, in the eTwinning portal group, and on a distance by chat and videoconference. We have underlined the central role of eTwinning in Erasmus + project of which it is integrated part. As for the second intervention area "Pedagogy and professional Development" we have focused our attention on specific issues of methodological character. Here we have thought about the organization and support of experimentation initiatives, by means of eTwinning, of pedagogical aspects (PBL, CLIL, Competences didactics, managing of group work).

During the course four macro areas of training have been identified, which we have developed in several individual and group activities and which we have agreed to repeat in our events in our territories: A. eTwinning Live B. Pedagogy and Professional Development C. Communication Skills D. Making the Best out of the Net On the basis of this setting, we have developed the specific issues of each area showing clearly what training events we could offer to our NSS. For example, in the first area, devoted to the potentialities offered by eTwinning Live, we have thought of offering our contribution to support old and new eTwinners in the introduction to the use of

We have thought about a proposal of training /information on a university level and local education authorities for the widespread diffusion of eTwinning and the continuous updating and training by means of the creation of projects on the platform. Considering the numerous networks of schools that have been created for the participation to tender notices of the ministry of Education (Digital National Plan, etc) we believed necessary to integrate eTwinning way of working in the proposals to the central schools. Dealing with the third area of our action plan "Communication Skills", here the proposed issues involve dissemination strategies and communication art. On this topic, very much diffused in Europe, not yet on a national level, we have remarked the need of an empowerment of learning events in Italian language.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------We include in this area also training proposals on presentation techniques, multimedia writing, body language and public communication, use of social media for spreading of news and initiatives, whose studies appear to be useful when we speak about eTwinning. Last but not least, the issues about the concluding area, safety on internet, netiquette, copyright and data protection, use of creative commons. Obviously these aspects are fundamental when we are part of eTwinning community and about which we need to train from the first moments the new teachers who are going to use digital tools in their teaching.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Global Networking Webinar by Arjana Blazic and Bart Verswijvel In April 2016, we designed and facilitated our 6th eTwinning Learning Event entitled The Networked Teacher. The focus of this LE was placed on building a Personal Learning Network (PLN) on the eTwinning platform and beyond. We wanted to empower eTwinners to take professional development into their own hands and build lively global learning networks. The participants explored different ways in which educators can successfully develop and maintain their networks. In many hands-on activities they explored different online communities to learn how to support, motivate and inspire their colleagues to become global networkers willing to open the doors of their classrooms and connect their students with their peers from all over the world. One of the most inspiring activities that we organized during the LE was the Global Networking webinar with 7 prominent educators from 6 continents as guest speakers.

Federal University of Uberlândia shared her experiences on how she connects her students with their peers worldwide. Then we crossed the Pacific Ocean to land in Auckland, New Zealand, where Sonya Van Schaijik, ICT Teacher at Newmarket Primary School, was so kind to share her networking experiences with us even though it was middle of the night in New Zealand. After Sonya’s talk, we crossed yet another ocean – this time it was the Indian Ocean and soon we landed in Israel. Karina Batat, ICT Coordinator at Nitzanim Primary School and Head of ICT Training Center at Ministry of Education in Tel Aviv, showed us how to open up the classroom door to the world. From Israel we travelled south to Cape Town in South Africa to be inspired by Fiona Beal, ICT coordinator at SchoolNet South Africa. Fiona shared advice on how teachers can connect in various educational networks to become accomplished global networkers. We ended our travels in Europe where Marie-Leet Bens, French and Arts Teacher at Immaculata Instituut in Oostmalle, Belgium, touched us deeply by sharing her emotional networking story.

You can watch the recording of the webinar here: https://connect.carnet.hr/p8agpj58x5j/?launcher=f alse&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal

In the webinar we took our participants on an inspirational virtual trip around the world. From our homes in Croatia and Belgium and from the homes of our participants in other European countries, we set sail to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Our first stop was the United States of America where Shelly Sanchez Terrell, Teacher Trainer and International Speaker from Austin, Texas was delighted to share her tips and advice on how to connect globally. From Texas we travelled up north to Canada to listen to Joe Sheik, Principal at Thames Valley District School Board in London, Ontario, talk about his amazing international projects. To join our next guest speaker we headed south, to Brazil, where Ana Maria Menezes, English Teacher at the

Arjana Blazic is an English and German teacher at IX. gimnazija in Zagreb, Croatia, and an eTwinning ambassador. She is education technology advisor, e-learning designer, co-ordinator of the Croatian Future Classroom, member of the Croatian Special Task Force for Curriculum Design and member of the K-12 Horizon Report Expert

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Panel for New Media Consortium. Arjana holds a Master of Education from the Univesity of Zagreb and a Course Designer Diploma from the CARNet e-Learning Academy. She is a recipient of the 2014-2015 Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Award at Penn State University, where she successfully completed a ten-month Teaching and Learning with Technology programme. Arjana is founder of award-winning projects and author of online and onsite professional development training courses. She has written articles about teaching and learning with technology and an ICT book for children. Arjana speaks at conferences, hosts Teachmeets and Twitter chats, and leads workshops, seminars and webinars.

Bart Verswijvel is a Belgian educator who was a teacher of Dutch in a secondary school for about 30 years. Since 2011 Bart has had a part-time job at the Flemish National Support Service for eTwinning in Brussels. In March 2012 he joined European Schoolnet. As a Pedagogical Adviser he is involved in several EUN projects like the Future Classroom Lab, eTwinning, iTEC , Living Schools Lab and Enable. He moderates several communities for teachers and he leads the network of Future Classroom ambassadors and the network of Future Classrooms. Bart Verswijvel holds a master’s degree in Germanic Philology and a post graduate in E-learning and Digital Didactics. He is a co-author of several textbooks for Dutch as a mother tongue. He is an international speaker and a leader of workshops. He leads Teachmeets and Twitterchats. Bart Verswijvel was a prize winner in several competitions like eTwinning Awards and Microsoft Innovative Teachers. In 2010 he was awarded the Queen Paola Prize for Education.

Do You Feel Infowhelmed? by Arjana Blazic Connecting with teachers on eTwinning involves not only collaboration, student projects and professional development but also a great deal of sharing. eTwinners strongly believe that sharing is caring so they continually share their ideas and experiences, projects and best practice examples as well as new educational tools and resources. Without a doubt, it is wonderful to have useful and valuable information at our fingertips, however, we may sometimes feel “infowhelmed” - overwhelmed with information overload – and we may find it difficult to keep track of all the amazing content that eTwinners share. As it often happens, when we come across a tool, we most likely do not need it at that particular moment. However, if we do not save it, bookmark it or add it to our reading list, we will probably forget where and by whom it was shared and as a result we simply will not be able to find it among so many eTwinning, Facebook or Google + statuses, posts and tweets. That is why we need a filtering tool that will enable us to sift through the content we find online and help us avoid information overload. Content filtering is also known as content curation. There is a huge number of content curation tools which we can use to collect, organize, share information and collaborate with other users. Pinterest, Scoop.It, Diigo, Educlipper, Symbaloo, Pearltrees and List.ly are among the most popular content curation tools. My most favourite is Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/abfromz/ but I also use List.ly http://list.ly/abfromz/lists and in my latest eTwinning project, we used Pearltrees: http://www.pearltrees.com/truecoloursetwinning To choose your curation tool(s), browse through collections of digital content curated by other educators to see which tool suits you best.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Curating is similar to collecting, but there is a difference though. For example, I collect fridge magnets of places I have visited and my collection can be seen – where else but on the fridge in my kitchen. The value of my fridge magnet collection is personal, and the focus is on the quantity, rather than the quality of magnets.

Check out my webinar recording A Step By Step Guide To Digital Content Curation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iYI6SeXfWA&f eature=youtu.be to find out more about content curation.

On the other hand, my digitally curated collections of educational resources and materials are open and easily accessible. I share my curated collections with my Personal Learning Network (PLN). Therefore I select resources of high quality, evaluate them, add personal insight and engage in conversations with my colleagues. Everybody can become a content curator. Here is a simple step-by-step guide to content curation: 1. Choose a topic you are passionate about, e.g. web 2.0 tools for digital storytelling, online quiz creators, developing critical thinking skills etc. Of course, you can choose as many topics as you want and create collections of resources for each of your interests, needs, topics, eTwinning projects or groups of students. 2. Browse a wide variety of online sources to find information. Filter relevant, highquality content and focus on quality, not quantity. Avoid “filter bubbles” created by search engine algorithms that restrict the information you are directed to when searching the internet. 3. Never forget to credit sources. Add a comment to your content, e.g. who it is for, why you find it valuable and useful. 4. Share your curated collection with eTwinners and interact with other content curators.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ eTwinning and Primary School Students by Cornelia Melcu I have been a primary school teacher for more than 30 years and I discovered eTwinning nine years ago. As I was looking for new teaching methods in order to motivate my students and help them to find classes and subjects more atractive, I started stright away to work in projects. My students were young – 6 years old – and I was wondering how they would manage with the activities, tasks and targets. We found an interesting topic related to heroes and idols and begun the adventure. I was really surprised how enthusiastic and creative my little students were! They found ideas, information and participated in online meetings. They worked in groups and shared their work with their classmates and partners. They visited the TwinSpace and left comments to the other participants and presented the project to the parents and community members. That was a great start in a long journey together with eTwinning.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Why do the young students love eTwinning? According to their opinions, working in eTwinning projects brings school closer to them. The subjects are more enjoyable and related to reality. They learn a lot of new things in a different and and apropriate way and they even have fun while learning. They discover how to use technology for knowledge and personal development in a safe and advanced way. They communicate and collaborate with children from all over Europe and make friends.

http://www.scientix.eu/ Inspiring Science Education http://www.inspiringscience.eu/ GoLab http://www.go-lab-project.eu/ etc. in order to make STEM teaching more attractive and efficient for the students. For example, I choose one of the projects we worked last school year: Open the Gates to the Universe. The project was a great opportunity for the students to discover different aspects of Space Science and Astronomy by working in international groups. Here is the link to the project’s TwinSpace: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/12520/home and to the external blog we created: http://gatestotheuniverse.blogspot.ro/ To find out about the ways that eTwinning can benefit primary school student practices and engagement, join the community!

My students are more involved than ever before in project work as a result of taking part in eTwinning. The project has also impacted the way in which students interact with one another, because eTwinning has had a large impact on improving personal relations among students. I now engage students in small group work more than they did before, allowing them to work on collaborative problem solving. Difficult subjects, as Mathematics, are considered by my students easy and interesting because we integrated math’s concepts in some projects.

Cornelia Melcu is a primary school teacher in Brasov, Romania. Additionally, she is a teacher trainer of Preparatory Class Curriculum, Google Application in Education Course and European Projects Course. She is mentoring newly qualified teachers and trainee teachers. She is also the Scientix Deputy Ambassador in Romania, eTwinning ambassador and an award winner in several competitions (eTwinning Awards and national competitions). She has received European Quality Labels for her eTwinning projects and coordinated one Comenius project. Cornelia is currently involved in Erasmus+ programme, using extracurricular activities and projects to motivate her students. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The ESL eTwinning Group Is Loading for Active English Language Teachers across Europe by Theodora Gkeniou English serves as the medium of communication among peoples speaking different languages globally and particularly in Europe. It has become a lingua franca, the international language. It is also the language of internet, of advertising, of tourism, of business, of science worldwide, assuming an increasingly vital role.

eTwinning projects has allowed me to link other platforms and educational programmes– like ESERO http://www.esa.int/Education Space Awareness http://www.space-awareness.org/en/ Scientix

What is more, interdisciplinary learning entails making connections among various school subjects and leads to deeper understanding across curricular

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------areas. English is often the catalyst, bringing together subjects such as history, literature and first language learning enriched by the use of ICT, as well as science and math, providing enjoyable and challenging learning experiences, in particular within the context of etwinning projects. There is definitely heterogeneity in the goals set and the approaches assumed by English language curricula in the European countries. In some cases there is focus in the teaching of grammar and lexis, in testing and assessment whereas others mostly cater for learner diversity and whole-person development, integrating elements of literature, poetry and theatre. It goes without saying that in any case, when it comes to language learning, an authentic context is needed, a communicative purpose and strong motivation for learners to energize and succeed in becoming fluent users of the language.

In this respect the ESL group has a lot to offer by initiating the intercultural dialogue among English language teachers across Europe and becoming a “think-tank” where passion and enthusiasm is transfused and good practices are appreciated and adopted.

All in all, it is my dream to turn this group into a “cell” of creativity and innovation and a meeting point for educators in the field of English language teaching. We expect all of you to come on board!

English thus opens a window to the world becoming one of the most important school subjects across cultural and national boundaries. The ESL group is here to support and stimulate English language teachers by bringing them together on the etwinning platform and assisting them in interacting and sharing their beliefs, values and practices. Professional development based on hands-on experience and sharing of good practices are the primary goals of the group. Engaging in dialogue, establishing synergies and “learning by osmosis”, that is allowing new ideas and concepts to flow gradually and be absorbed unconsciously by the group members, will serve this goal. Expert talks on a variety of topics, ranging from the use of technology to inspiring and motivating the young and the young at heart, “TeachMeets” where the group members assume the leading role, online conferences and virtual round tables to present and communicate our work and e-publications to publish materials for future reference are only some of the upcoming group events, to which you are wholeheartedly invited.

The group is counting 3,989 members at the end of July 2016. Find us on the eTwinning platform https://groups.etwinning.net/7614/home and the social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ESLetwgroup Twitter: https://twitter.com/eTwinningESL YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYH2gAPXRPI 9Ur0NgjdNT5g Email Contact list: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd45Tr 1JQQGroQvP8AGEj5VeKCxeWKrrJ4xL7hkM61bqCSeg/viewform?c =0&w=1

Theodora Gkeniou has been active for the past 7 years in the eTwinning commmunity, trying to pass on her enthusiasm to her young or teenage students as an eTwinner and to other teachers, as an ambassador for three years now. The new task of the ESL group moderation has filled her with joy and anticipation for the new challenges lying ahead.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Flipped Classroom and Its Applications in Art Disciplines by Gabriela Ileana Crisan The idea of plurality, replacing those of the progress, has determined in post-modern society, permanent changes in education, searches for the best solutions for ensuring the success of students in personal, social and professional life. Thus, since constructivism and continuing with holism or morphology theories, under pressure from the avalanche of information generated by the development of ICT, the boundaries of disciplines become flexible, which causes interdisciplinarity. The subjects are reorganized, new curricula appear and teaching strategy should ensure the connection between the knowledge and skills, often using ICT to make this process motivating.

pronounced similarities between them. A comparison made between the two pedagogical approaches has highlighted differences in terms of space, time, culture of learning, content, the role of the teacher and the students. Both use ICTs in achieving learning goals. The eTwinning portal facilitates, through its applications, collaborative projects and constitutes a proper environment for testing tools and teaching methods. ARTmania is a project in which we tried to establish the role of flipped classroom strategy to increase student performance in the Visual Arts discipline.

Performing the Visual Arts discipline skills

Using the ICT in ARTmania project One of the solutions to the challenges of contemporary education is the creation of mirrorclasses or flipped classroom by changing the role of the classroom. Going through content at their own pace, exercising it in class, reducing the gap between students in terms of rapidity of understanding the information, monitoring students during exercising, collaborative learning, moving in assessing the significance of the grades to knowledge are just some of the benefits that this strategy brings compared to traditional pedagogical strategies. The flipped classroom concept is often confused with flipped learning, especially due to very

Framing the issue of artistic compositions shows, after using the flipped classroom strategy, visible improvements in the inclusion of all the key elements, combining techniques, familiarization with the tools and their proper use, drawing proper cough and understanding the theme. Messages drawn from student work, even if there are difficulties in linking it with theme, have a purpose, feelings are shown and ideas presented. Students become aware that a drawing meets certain rules of composition: they use a variety of lines expressing feelings, proportions are preserved, contours are well highlighted, in spontaneous or developed forms ideas or feelings can be transposed, the colors, shades, evenly distributed, the compositional space can be enriched with elements of ornamentation. The same compositional space presents a balance of elements, where the centerpiece is well highlighted. Originality and creativity of the plastic compositions grow because students are no longer afraid of colour, and express their feelings freely by mixing colors. Flipped classroom is an instructional strategy using Web tools for presenting content. Online lessons

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------for Visual Arts discipline, as well as for other disciplines, can be performed independently by tools like YouTube, Screencast-o-matic, Movie Maker, Camtasia, Knowmia, Prezi or through a project (a concatenation of lessons) using WebQuest Zunal, Wikispaces Classroom or HSTRY for education.

Four Years in Vietnam by Jutta Schwarz Vietnam “land of the ascending dragon”, that is where I spent the last four years, teaching German. Four years without eTwinning but lots of other exciting experiences. Why Vietnam? Before going to Vietnam I always had the idea of living and teaching in a foreign country, but to tell you the truth never thought of going as far away as Vietnam. But then when I was offered the job in 2012 it sounded very adventurous and without thinking too long I decided to go.

HSTRY for education Flipped classroom is a new instructional strategy, which means "to make sure that the voice most often heard in the classroom is of the student, not the teacher. This voice can literally be a student who speaks, sharing and processing the information with the class, but can be also students who create something visual or auditory, to show understanding of the material " (Julie Shier, professor, Clintondale Community Schools).

Gabriela Ileana Crisan is a primary school teacher, a teacher trainer for 10 years and also an eTwinning ambassador. She likes sharing practices and ideas with other peers. She has done and published in indexed international research database studies related to integration of eTwinning projects in and outside the classroom. She has designed courses for eTwinning ambassadors and for teachers who want to improve their skills in integrated approaches of the curriculum. She has participated with presentations in many eTwinning workshops in Romania and the Republic of Moldova.

… and never ever regretted my decision. Vietnam is not describable with words, it is a beautiful country with the most charming people, its natural beauty is breathtaking, the contrasts between city and countryside, between rich and poor, between north and south, between history and today … are enormous, but then when people are sitting along the street drinking their tea or beer they are all the same and even Hanoi – this crazy megacity of more than 8 million inhabitants – feels like a village. Life you find outdoors on the streets and it starts early and always with a lot of noise. It is loud, loud, loud everywhere, in the streets, in restaurants, at school, at home. “When it is quiet, I feel strange, something bad must have happened”, one of my colleagues answered when I was wondering why it is so super noisy. Unfortunately there are some other negative aspects too, the air pollution, the pollution in general, dirt, garbage in the streets, rats and cockroaches…

But the people and relationships make you forget everything, Vietnamese people are so open, interested, they are generous, peaceful, warmhearted and emotional, you always feel welcome and safe, only when crossing a road your life is at risk. Traffic in Vietnam is chaotic and crazy – a

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------strange thing Vietnamese people are really proud of. A young student told me one day, “You have to be self-confident to cross a street” (and please never wait for the traffic lights to turn green). Unfortunately I did not manage to learn the Vietnamese language though I studied a lot, Vietnamese is a tonal language and very hard to learn in case you did not grow up in a Vietnamese family. My job During the last four years I taught German as a foreign language in different kinds of schools, in primary schools, in private schools and state schools, in high schools and I even taught university students in a volunteer course. First questions in school (and elsewhere, even in a taxi) “How old are you?” “Are you married?“ “Have you eaten already?” – the answers to these summarize the most important information you need to know about another person.

Students are students everywhere, there are very enthusiastic hard-working ones, lazy ones, very active boys and girls and also some who are always late and always tired and anyway, all Vietnamese students need their nap after lunch. Special about Vietnamese students is their openness to new topics and to silly games, their desire to learn, to improve themselves and their amazement when they realize Germany is not like paradise, not even a perfect place. The last two years in Hanoi I was mainly teaching in Viet Duc high school, a well-known high school in the city centre. There is already a long tradition to open two German classes each year at Viet Duc high school. Important to know: while in Germany and all over the western world there are less children every year, the Vietnamese population is

still growing. This is one of the reasons the size of classes in Vietnamese schools is about 45 up to 60 students, which means 95% chalk and talk teaching. Teachers talk and fill the board, students copy everything into their notebooks and memorize it for the upcoming exams. German classes should be different, therefore we only teach half of the students in one group. This is to guarantee modern and effective language classes and successful students, who are able to communicate in German. Students should not only learn the grammar, but also how to communicate! That is why they need time to speak and to play. Most of the teachers in the German program are Vietnamese but the German foreign office also sends German teachers to Vietnam – like me – to assure the quality of the program and the exams and to offer further training for the Vietnamese teachers.

One of my tasks was to practise German with my Vietnamese colleagues. Normally we met once a week, sitting together for some hours and discussed about different topics or grammar questions. I do not know who learnt more from these classes of intercultural exchange! They often ended in interesting discussions about family, language, politics, history or sayings and in comparison between Vietnamese and German culture. How is school life? The school week begins every Monday morning with a flag raising ceremony. All students and teachers assemble in the school yard and sing the national anthem together. They are informed about the schedule of the week, any changes or news, and sometimes they are criticized because of their behavior (e.g. not wearing school uniform). The Vietnamese school system is quite hard, students start their classes early at 7:15 am and keep on studying for long hours. In the afternoon and evening after school they have extra classes and still a lot of assignments to do and most high school

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------students do not finish their daily workload before midnight.

Time was racing and four years are gone like nothing… I hope I can go back in the future to see the further development not only of the German project but the whole country, which is developing rapidly. For now I am back in Germany and looking forward to teaching here and doing lots of amazing eTwinning projects with you.

Nevertheless our students add extra classes in German as many of them plan to study in Germany after the final school exam. We were happy that we could organize a school exchange with a German school in Berlin and every year got some scholarships for summer courses in Germany. So the students got to know German culture more profoundly and not only theoretically from language books.

During the school year from 15th August to 25th May there are not many holidays, only for Lunar New Year Vietnam stands still. Everybody goes home, shops and banks are closed, and even schools are closed. Tet – the lunar New Year – is the biggest festival and time for foreign teachers to travel and see more of the beautiful country.

If you are interested in getting more detailed information about Vietnam and the German project, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Jutta Schwarz is a teacher of English, Politics and German as a foreign language. Her students are 10 to 16 years old. She used to be an eTwinning ambassador for many years. Next school year she will most probably teach in a new school – German for refugee children and English. “eTwinning is just great, a wonderful tool to connect students and teachers all over Europe.”

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Fostering Innovative Pedagogical Practices through eTwinning: A Training Case by Brigida Clemente

2) a training course in blended mode with action research;

The Provincial Training eTwinning Plan of Foggia was born starting from a proposal to the Foggia’s Territorial Office of School in response to an initiative for the promotion and dissemination at a local level of "European culture" in schools of all levels, state and equal, in the context of the increasing complexity of current education scene. In the framework of the Plan it has been considered the most pragmatic needs of the teachers "aspiring eTwinners' in the eTwinning Community approach as well as to an eTwinning European project, since it has just completed an on-line training course of the Regional Plan 2015, implemented by all the Ambassadors of Puglia who gave their feedbacks. There was, in fact, some important requirements by the new eTwinners as, for example, their need of a greater number of training sessions in presence, the importance of practical-laboratory activities, the presence of a shared virtual environment for a more immediate support, greater availability to the communication from the Ambassadors, the confidence to rely on the person as a Tutor of reference, introducing trials in classes. In light of these requirements, the Provincial Plan was based on: 1) an initial briefing and launch of training;

3) a final conference of reflection on the outcomes.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In this approach, with the Provincial Education Office - and thanks to the collaboration of some School Managers, the City and the University of Foggia and also to the participation by videoconference of Massimiliano D'Innocenzo from the Italian National Support Service) - it was organized on December the 17th, 2015 an information Conference on eTwinning and launch of the provincial Training Course eTwinning entitled "an opportunity for schools to be in Europe with twinning and partnerships," earning wide acclaim and arousing great interest among schools across the territory.

training needs can be met only with complex training interventions that, at least in part it is possible by using the training in presence, as it is the teaching mode that allows an interaction richer and more complete as possible.

The organization of an eTwinning briefing, that for the first time took place in Foggia, was an important opportunity for the dissemination and exploitation of the eTwinning role in teaching practice, "closer" to the many teachers and leaders intervened from all over the province, which have finally been able to "touch" a reality that seemed to be so far. It was a mixed training path and with the integrated use of multiple communication channels, on the basis of a precise strategy of integrated/combined educational formats that have been allowed to achieve an increasing quality of the activated training process: 1) lectures in plenary with the teacher / tutor;

Many, in fact, it has also been the agreements of teachers (about 260) to the Provincial eTwinning Training, started in January the 26th, 2016, with the inclusion of the initiative by many managers in its schools training plans. It means that, in a time of great change for the "Italian school", much trust has been placed in the potential offered by eTwinning like a tool to support the improvement of the teaching process, which allows teachers to implement strategies based on a innovative methodological approach in the teaching - learning processes. For the formation I thought of a blended mode on the basis of the consideration for which complex

2) collaborative learning processes as part of a learning community based; a) synchronous interaction in presence in workshop activities; b) of asynchronous communication tools, in an eTwinning Group, specifically created and structured with Forum, Live Events, shared materials, tutorials, pages with Tasks, learning diary; 3) self-learning activities in the eTwinning portal group with supplied materials.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The course of the eTwinning Provincial Training Plan is structured in 4 modules with various contents: eTwinning Community and Live, Planning, TwinSpace, Tools. Each module began with a meeting in the presence, according to the timetabled program, and it was structured in a monthly term, during which the teachers were busy with tasks and webinars within the eTwinning Portal Group.

the same active school teaching staff in the same project, with European partners, they have created interdisciplinary and collaborative activities shared in a very important action-research process in a constructivist mold. After an initial phase of entry into the eTwinning Community with navigation of the Portal, its functionality and enrollment in the second module to the students the procedure was first illustrated and then requested the design and implementation in the classroom in an eTwinning project with European partners. The last two modules were oriented to the development of skills of the use and implementation of the TwinSpace through a learning-by-doing of teachers, both in the laboratory in the presence and in the performance of tasks at home. At this stage the teachers have also discovered the important resource of the TwinSpace as a documentation tool of the project and thus the process of developing the students' skills. The big enthusiasm and interest motivated by the desire to develop innovative teaching methods and quality through new technologies and digital content, today indispensable to provide students with opportunities to develop skills and creativity necessary for a knowledge society of the XXI century, have been the key words for the great success of the course. In fact, about 180 teachers have completed the training course with amazing results.

The tasks have been an inherent prerequisite of action research in education, since their completion meant that the learners were actors of the educational process and, in turn, were ready to proceed with training and access to the next meeting training, mobilizing and orchestrating the knowledge acquired. It goes without saying that a natural selection was inevitable! Course primary objective was to create a large group in which to communicate, share, distribute, asking, collaborate, meet, finding materials and all that was important for a new community of teachers who overlooks the "eTwinning world”. Within the Group were created sub-working groups,

The main objectives of the course were all pursued about the process documentation, in the Group and in the TwinSpace of projects undertaken, and about the course evaluation questionnaire administered to teachers.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For example: 1) promote the professional development through online resources and peer learning, exchange of best practices and peer support; 2) stimulate innovative teaching practices / learning-based technologies; 3) integrate digital technologies in teaching; 4) enhance cooperation to increase student motivation and the effectiveness of learning. Last step of the Provincial Training Plan eTwinning was the final conference of reflection on the results and experiences sharing, sponsored by the city of Foggia and with the collaboration of the University of Foggia, which was attended by all the teachers at the end of the joints path.

Conclusions The results of this trial are the starting points for a progressive approach to innovative reality of eTwinning for all teachers, with the hope that eTwinning become not only a "European" project to do one-off, but a vehicle to introduce in a simple and natural way of doing education, through the regular use of new technologies, foreign language communication and learning in a multicultural context. The teachers who participated in the provincial eTwinning training have seen increase their professional skills and the key competencies of their students, through the implementation of remote collaboration projects through the use of ICT and the language. Due to its flexibility, sustainability and openness to innovation and the national and international comparison, eTwinning is particularly suitable for the training of future teachers who increasingly will be called upon to use ICT in everyday teaching, to support communication and learning a foreign language, to work for projects involving students actively developing customized learning pathways that favor the development of key skills.

The Conference of May the 9th, Europe Day, was an important moment for the new eTwinners in which they demonstrate that they have acquired the knowledge that incorporate an eTwinning project into the curriculum may become established teaching practice, through which able to "put in place "an active teaching, performing various tasks with new methods, where students are active constructors of their own knowledge and fundamental skills through which to develop the basic cultural skills in the perspective of the full development of the person in an enlarged Europe awareness to the world community.

The Italian NSS (which operates within the Agency Erasmus Plus - Indire) joined in 2013 at the European eTwinning trial "Teachers Training Pilot" with the involvement of some European universities, responsible for initial teacher training, in business eTwinning training on teaching practices through electronic twinning and pilot projects between students from different participating countries. Each country has declined the European experiment according to their context and needs of the actors involved. In addition, through the cooperation of the NSS Regional School Office it is promoting the eTwinning spread among new recruits and among the new professionals in the school, such as digital animators and teachers of the Innovation Team. It should be remembered that many school principals have entered the eTwinning training in upgrade paths for all teachers of their own institutes in the Offer - Plan of School 2016-2019. It will be very interesting to follow the developments of this trial that sees work collaborative schools, universities, USR and the NSS with the common goal of innovating teaching and promote the internationalization of schools through networking, updating professional teachers and circulation of ideas and best practices, with a view

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------to continuous improvement. It is carry the publication of the conference proceedings out.

entrepreneurial skills and to prepare them for their future jobs, for life. Sound mind in a Sound body

Brigida Clemente is a teacher of English and an Italian eTwinning ambassador who loves travelling. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ eTwinning Projects in Vocational School by Eva Toth At vocational school, I use ICT to make my lessons more interesting, to appeal to more of their sense and to fill the void they have in knowledge. I specialize in projects where we can combine many subjects as these kids have never been taught to see the connection between bits and pieces of information. Using ICT in teaching has increased the performance of my students on many levels. First of all, their whole attitude to class has changed. What is more, the fact that we use ICT to work on English topics has given even those who lack confidence the basic skills.

Project links: https://hu.pinterest.com/evatoth547727/soundmind-in-a-sound-body/ http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/soundmind Topic and aim: Our eTwinning project is about health and leading a healthy lifestyle: what kind of habits can you change? What ingredients are healthier than others? Is living a healthy lifestyle really expensive? How is cooking different in your countries: What kind of diseases do you know related to eating and dieting? Subjects involved: English as a Foreing Language, English for Special Purposes, Social Studies, Biology, Food and chemicals (special subject for shop assistants) ICT tools used: Padlet, Linoit, Smybaloo, Google Forms, Meme generator, Tagul, Photofunia, Answergarden, Windows Movie Maker, Mindmup, 21st century skills involved: health literacy, critical thinking and problem solving, ICT literacy, social skills, cross-cultural skills, responsibility, collaboration. During the project, we used the method of expert mosaic when students worked e.g. on different diet trends in groups and had to present their findings to other groups. Participating countries: Italy, Czech Republic Experiences and impressions: The beginning of the project started with a serious intention: each student and teacher (!) had to confess to one bad habit that they would try to get rid of during the project. Even if most of us did not manage to do so, many of my students reported to me in the following weeks saying how the progressed.

Our projects deal with topics that appeal to both their everyday lives and their future jobs, such as beauty, technology or creating one’s own business. The works often include going to companies and interviewing experts (visiting the Christmas fair and a macaron baker in Budapest) so that students can see the links between their learning and the real world and use their communication skills both in their mother tongue and in English.Through our projects, we intended to develop our students’

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------During the project, we once again tried to involve experts to learn about cooking, what is more, we tried to present our culture from first-hand experiences: visiting the Christmas fair in Budapest and shooting a video about our customs. Christmas was on even during the holiday: we kept contact in a facebook group where each nation posted photos of traditional dishes from next to the Christmas dining table.

Participating countries: 31 European countries Experiences and impressions: Students from each country had to present their home country in a short video and create a poster about it. Once all the posters were created, the videos were hidden in each on the form of QR codes and Aurasma. They were to be placed around schools so that all students could have a look and watch the videos using their mobile devices.

The culmination of the project was definitely a meeting with the Czech students where we managed to incorporate the project via a cookie tasting and ingredient guessing competition. What I also liked about this project is that students really took it home: many of them shot cooking videos at home with the help of their family and had a great time presenting some national dishes. Towards the end, we even had the chance to make a digital interview with an Italian student who had eating disorders and answered our questions.

Visit to a macaroni baker and the Christmas fair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5BaGY4X6C4 Cooking videos by Hungary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4Emxg1Oh50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg1mv4b6KJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z8voJ9DqDM Interactive European Pathways Project link: https://hu.pinterest.com/evatoth547727/interactive -european-pathway/ Subjects involved: English as a Second Language, Geography, Social Studies, History, ICT ICT tools used: Windows Movie Maker, creative commons (jamendo, pixabay, flickr), Audacity, QR code generator, Aurasma, SMART Notebook Software 21st century skills involved: creativity and innovation, probelm solving, collaboration, ICT literacy, social and cross-cultural skills, responsibility

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I can honestly say that during the shooting for the main part of this project, a video about Hungary, we had the time of our lives with my students. We held a big Hungarian breakfast, shot the video then ate all up :) It was so good to be together that we had other breakfasts later on too, a French and an American one. All these small pieces of cultural knowledge that I know my students would never forget in their whole lives. The culmination is definitely the video itself, where one of my girls is singing a song about Hungary, another has shot a short video about her dog (a traditional Hungarian breed), the girls volunteered to dress up and dance- all these made the video so special.

Eva Toth http://www.pinterest.com/evatoth547727/ has been a teacher of English in a vocational and technical school in Nagykáta, Hungary for 6 years. She has been dealing with ICT in education to lower the digital and social gap, and she is a winner of the prizes Sulinetwork 2014 Award and Digital Teacher Award 2014. She is the author of many articles and translations about practical examples of ICT use, also a teacher trainer of ICT. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Using an eTwinning Project for Mentoring Teachers by Diana Linford This article will show how an eTwinning project can be used to mentor teachers in using eTwinning and Erasmus+. I was asked by the head teachers of my local cluster of schools to train colleagues in the use of eTwinning and Erasmus+. We decided to use a shared eTwinning project so that everyone could learn through participating. We used a Christmas project, rather than a subject specific project, so that pupils of all ages could take part – and this also enabled more teachers to participate. Our ‘Christmas around Europe 2015’ eTwinning Plus project therefore included a number of my local schools and several international partners. The project was designed with teaching and learning elements for both pupils and teachers as we intended to use the project to mentor colleagues in the use of eTwinning and to find partners for Erasmus+ projects. The project for pupils The project was based around the exchange of instructions for making Christmas decorations. We started with a logo competition – this is something we now do regularly as it helps the pupils to understand the project, and be involved, right from the start. We used the Project Journal regularly through the project.

Here you have Hungary as presented by class 11/2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EDCgA18lBk

For the main part of the project, pupils made videos and wrote explanations for each other about how to make decorations. In each school, we tried some

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------of each others’ decorations and posted pictures of the finished work on the Twinspace: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/11792/home We included a link to the Twinspace on our school website so that pupils could make the decorations at home during the school Christmas holidays. Our whole school took part in the project, with pupils ranging in age from 5 to 11 years. Towards the end of term, we held a video call with Germany and Poland. Our Year 6 pupils (aged 10-11 years) played their violins, having been inspired by our call the year before with our German partners who had all played an instrument. Pupils also showed each other the decorations they had made from the shared instructions.

eTwinning and Erasmus+ Ambassador in Germany, who talked us through the application and answered our questions. We also used the wonderful videos uploaded by the UK National Agency on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZuMJemHHU&list=PLq24jCC8AsjHJnayn6T7JI5Gsn75BWMZB& index=7

Other schools also held video calls with their partners. Pupils exchanged letters and Christmas cards, as well as information about Christmas customs. At the end of the project, pupils reflected on what they had learned and enjoyed. Teachers also reflected on the project. An ebook was compiled by the Spanish students, as a lasting outcome (and very useful resource!): https://www.joomag.com/en/newsstand/crafts-ebook/0786734001459800572?ref=ib The project for mentoring teachers In my local cluster of schools in England, I used the project to train colleagues in the use of eTwinning, and to help them to find partners for future Erasmus+ projects and job-shadowing visits. We held a number of training sessions through the autumn term 2015. Teachers were supported in this by being released by their head teachers in school time to attend the meetings. A number of eTwinning tools were used, including the videoconferencing tool. We had intended to use the project for participants to find a partner school in France, as most of our schools teach French to children aged 7-11. We were not successful in finding partners in France for everyone – but we were delighted to find some great partners in other countries! We used the project as a springboard to apply for Erasmus+ funding for staff training job-shadowing visits. At Steeton School, we had already some experience of the application process, having successfully applied in 2015 for Erasmus+ funding. At one of our meetings, we held a video webinar with one of our project partners, who is an

We included a page on our Twinspace with Top Tips about Erasmus+ applications, which we updated as we went along and has been made public: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/11792/pages/page /70526 Four schools in the cluster applied for Erasmus+ project funding for job–shadowing visits and all four were successful! The success of the project was acknowledged with a prize for ‘Mentoring’ at the UK national conference in June 2016 and the assessor commented: "This is an exceptionally well planned and structured cross curricular eTwinning project specifically designed to engage students but equally to support staff and schools into the eTwinning programme. The focus is simple yet achieves it goals elegantly and the evidence from the well laid out Twinspace does show full and active engagement by all the participants. The comments and engagement of the students from all the schools clearly demonstrate enjoyment, motivation and active learning including creating instructions and instructional videos for their peers. This very precise and structured project has within it the opportunity to be creative, collaborative and to have student voice and engagement at its heart. The opportunity for partners who have built trust and relationships to then move through to Erasmus+ should contribute well to success going forward."

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Web 2.0 Compass Area:

Receiving the ‘Mentoring’ prize from the assessor George Glass, UK eTwinning conference, Nottingham, June 2016 I also used this project as an example in a training workshop for teacher trainees at Leeds Trinity University in 2016. Web 2.0 – Definition, History, Future by Adil Tugyan Web 2.0 is the current state of online technology as it compares to the early days of the Web, characterized by greater user interactivity and collaboration, more pervasive network connectivity and enhanced communication channels. One of the most significant differences between Web 2.0 and the traditional World Wide Web (www, retroactively referred to as Web 1.0) is greater collaboration among Internet users, content providers and enterprises. Originally, data was posted on Web sites, and users simply viewed or downloaded the content. Increasingly, users have more input into the nature and scope of Web content and in some cases exert real-time control over it.

Diana Linford is a teacher at Steeton Primary School and Eastburn Junior and Infant School, Yorkshire, England and a UK eTwinning Ambassador.

The social nature of Web 2.0 is another major difference between it and the original, static Web. Increasingly, websites enable community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Types of social media sites and applications include forums microblogging social networking social bookmarking social curation wikis

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Elements of Web 2.0  Wikis: Websites that enable users to contribute, collaborate and edit site content. Wikipedia is one of the oldest and best-known wiki-based sites.  The increasing prevalence of Software as a Service (SaaS), web apps and cloud computing rather than locally-installed programs and services.  Mobile computing, also known as nomadicity the trend toward users connecting from wherever they may be. That trend is enabled by the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices in conjunction with readily accessible Wi-Fi networks.  Mash-ups - Web pages or applications that integrate complementary elements from two or more sources.  Social networking: The practice of expanding the number of one's business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals. Social networking sites include Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Google+  Collaborative efforts based on the ability to reach large numbers of participants and their collective resources, such as crowdsourcing crowdfunding crowdsource testing  User-generated content (UGC): Writing, images, audio and video content -- among other possibilities - made freely available online by the individuals who create it.  Unified communications (UC): The integration of multiple forms of call and multimedia/cross-media messagemanagement functions controlled by an individual user for both business and social purposes.  Social curation: The collaborative sharing of content organized around one or more particular themes or topics. Social content curation sites include Reddit Digg Pinterest Instagram

The History of Web 2.0 The foundational components of Web 2.0 are the advances enabled by Ajax and other applications such as RSS and Eclipse and the user empowerment that they support. Darcy DiNucci, an information architecture consultant, coined the term “Web 2.0 in her 1999 article, "Fragmented Future”: “The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfuls, is only an embryo of the Web to come. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens.” Tim O'Reilly is generally credited with popularizing the term, following a conference dealing with nextgeneration Web concepts and issues held by O'Reilly Media and MediaLive International in 2004. O'Reilly Media has subsequently been energetic about trying to copyright "Web 2.0" and holds an annual conference of the same name. The future of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 Some industry pundits are already claiming that Web 2.0 is merely a transitional phase between the early days of the World Wide Web's existence and a more established phase they're calling Web 3.0, also known as the Semantic Web. The creator of the World Wide Web, Tim BernersLee, suggests that the Web as a whole can be designed more intelligently to be more intuitive about how to serve a user's needs. Berners-Lee observes that although search engines index much of the Web's content, they have little ability to select the pages that a user really wants or needs. He suggests developers and authors, singly or in collaboration, can use self-descriptions or similar techniques so that new context-aware programs can better classify the information that might be relevant to a user. Web 3.0 will involve the

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------publishing of web resources in languages intended for data (such as XML, RDF, OWL and XHTML) to supplement them with metadata that will allow software to analyze, classify and deliver content for more personal relevance. The Semantic Annotations for Web Services group at W3C is defining the specifications for the Web 3.0. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge The use of Web 2.0 tools can be a powerful way to help preservice teachers develop a critical understanding of history and their teaching through the critique and creation of new knowledge. On its own, technology does not produce intellectual engagement. Through the effective integration of a teacher’s TPCK students can be purposefully guided through the “regimen of techniques for evidentiary inquiry and assisted in the development of new methodological schema for inter-textual and recursive historical study” (Swan & Hicks, 2007, p. 144). Building on Shulman’s (1986) conception of pedagogical content knowledge, Mishra and Koehler (2006) defined TPCK as “an emergent form of knowledge that goes beyond all three components: content, pedagogy, and technology” to consider all three issues within a “state of dynamic equilibrium” (p. 1029). Cox (2008) went a bit further when she defined TPCK as the knowledge of the dynamic, transactional negotiation among technology, pedagogy, and content and how that negotiation impacts student learning in a classroom context. The essential features are: (a) the use of appropriate technology (b) in a particular content area (c) as part of a pedagogical strategy (d) within a given educational context (e) to develop students’ knowledge of a particular topic or meet an educational objective or student need. (p. 40) In short, preservice experiences should be infused with technology, pedagogy, and content in order to develop a nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between technology, content, and pedagogy for future social studies teaching (Mishra & Koehler, 2006).

Eyejot http://corp.eyejot.com/ - alternative tool: MailVu http://mailvu.com/ ~~~ Kikutext https://kikutext.com/ - alternative tools: SMS Matrix http://www.smsmatrix.com/ Swaggle http://www.swaggle.mobi/sessions/new SendHub https://www.sendhub.com/# ClassPager http://www.classpager.com

~~~

Jing http://www.techsmith.com/jing alternative tools: Skitch https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skitch-snap.mark-up.-send./id490505997?mt=8 FireShot http://getfireshot.com/ Screencast-o-matic http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

~~~

Disqus http://disqus.com/ - alternative tools: SolidOpinion http://solidopinion.com/ IntenseDebate http://intensedebate.com/ LiveFyre http://web.livefyre.com/ Isso http://posativ.org/isso/

~~~

Kahoot https://getkahoot.com - alternative tools: Quizizz http://www.quizizz.com/ Plickers https://www.plickers.com/ Quizworks https://www.onlinequizcreator.com/ PollMaker http://www.poll-maker.com/QuizMaker Socrative http://www.socrative.com/ Quickkey http://get.quickkeyapp.com/

~~~ DotSub http://dotsub.com/ - alternative tools: Amara http://amara.org/en/ Overstream http://overstream.net/ Yapper http://en.englishyappr.com/welcome/Welcome1.act ion

~~~

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Vialogue https://vialogues.com/ - alternative tools: Grockit https://grockit.com/ Zaption https://www.zaption.com/ H5P https://h5p.org/ ~~~

Playir http://playir.com/ - alternative tools: Stencyl http://stencyl.com/ Unity http://unity3d.com/ Scratch

Paltalk http://www.paltalk.com/ alternative tools: GoogleHangouts https://hangouts.google.com/ Pidgin http://www.pidgin.im/ WhatsApp

Pixlr https://pixlr.com/ - alternative tools: Sumopaint https://www.sumopaint.com/home/ Pixlk-o-matic https://pixlr.com/o-matic/ Adobe Photoshop Express

http://www.whatsapp.com/

~~~

https://scratch.mit.edu/

http://www.photoshop.com/products/photoshopexp ress

~~~ OoVoo http://www.oovoo.com/home.aspx alternative tools: Skype http://www.skype.com/en/ Telegram https://telegram.org/ Viber http://www.viber.com/en/

piZap http://www.pizap.com/ - alternative tools: Fotoflexer http://fotoflexer.com/ Picmonkey http://www.picmonkey.com/ PhotoFunia http://photofunia.com/

~~~

~~~

Storybird https://storybird.com/ alternative tools: StoryJumper http://www.storyjumper.com/ Zooburst http://www.zooburst.com/index.php MyStorybook

https://twistedwave.com/online/ - alternative tools: Chirtbit http://www.chirbit.com/ AudioExpert http://www.audioexpert.com/ Soundation https://soundation.com/studio

https://www.mystorybook.com/

~~~

TwistedWave

~~~ Graphix Tagul https://tagul.com/ - alternative tools: Tagxedo http://www.tagxedo.com/ Wordcram http://wordcram.org/ Wordle http://www.wordle.net/

~~~

Weebly http://www.weebly.com/ alternative tools: WordPress https://wordpress.org/ Wix http://www.wix.com/ Ghost https://ghost.org/ ~~~

http://www.scholastic.com/graphix/createcomic.ht m - alternative tools: Bitstrips http://www.bitstrips.com/ Pixton https://www.pixton.com/ ComicMaster http://www.comicmaster.org.uk/

~~~

YouTube VideoEditor https://www.youtube.com/editor - alternative tools: Shotclip https://www.shotclip.com/ Kaltura http://corp.kaltura.com/ Wideo http://wideo.co/en/

~~~

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Projeqt https://projeqt.com/ - alternative tools: Duarte http://www.duarte.com/ Storify https://storify.com/ Prezi https://prezi.com/

Adil Tugyan is a certified teacher of English, an eTwinning ambassador, moderator, trainer and Learning Event expert, a certified iTEC Ambassador (EU Designing Future Classroms), a certified ICT and Web 2.0 Trainer, a EU Codeweek Ambassador, an Erasmus+ project coordinator, a Microsoft Innovative Educator, a Microsoft Master Trainer and a European Maker Week Ambassador. He works at Tevfik Ileri Anatolian High School in Rize, Turkey. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 10+ Useful Tech Tools and Ideas for eTwinning Projects by Alexandra Duarte There are so many tech tools available and different ways to use technology in meaningful and collaborative eTwinning projects with our students that the problem is deciding which is/are the most suitable one(s). By connecting our classrooms and students with others across Europe using technology, we are contributing for our students’ development and growth as learners and global citizens. In no particular order, let us have a look at some web 2.0 tools I have used in different projects.

https://getkahoot.com/ is an educational-based game platform that allows users to create quizzes, questions, discussions, and surveys, which participants can answer using any device. Whether in our classes or in videoconferences, the Kahoot game can be projected onto a shared screen, while

all participants can join the game with their devices and play against each other individually or as teams as they race to the top of the leader board. You can even pair your students with others in different classrooms – a great idea for teaching our learners how to collaborate across countries, cultures and even time zones. Below is the link for a Kahoot game created by teacher Glória Aleixo in Portugal after our partners sent us some questions and students played it during a videoconference through eTwinning live. Feel free to check it at https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/25e97420-bc04-4660bf54-3b0a4cd97d02 - Kahoot has a simple, drag and drop interface for quiz and survey making, so we can also encourage students themselves to collaborate in creating their own Kahoot games. International teams can therefore use a virtual "online event" that is facilitated through eTwinning live to meet and design quizzes for others or challenge each other to complete the Kahoot game they have created. Now that is truly European collaboration! ~~~

https://www.pinterest.com/ is a web and mobilebased sharing site. Teachers everywhere have been making great use of Pinterest boards as a place to collect links and/or pictures about certain topics, lesson ideas, book lists, movie trailers,… and also to connect classes. In and for eTwinning projects, I have created group boards and invited partner teachers and students alike to post their stuff. Have a look at the following: https://pt.pinterest.com/alexteacher/feel-theforest-and-keep-your-school-green/ ~~~

https://padlet.com/ - Padlet is a virtual piece of paper on which users post and organize images, videos, documents, and text. Because Padlet lets users drop content anywhere on the page, students can use it to collaborate around what information

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------should be grouped together, how information is presented, and what information should be discarded. In eTwinning projects, this virtual wall has commonly been used for greetings and introductions, goodbyes, evaluations… One of the latest examples is https://padlet.com/teacheralex_dua/RethinkNews ~~~

https://animoto.com/ is an online video creation tool that produces engaging videos; it is a mash-up of pictures, video and sound that can start with a 30-sec creation in its free version or if you apply for an educator’s account at http://animoto.com/education/classroom you can get a free Animoto Plus Account allowing you to create unlimited videos and have a much wider choice of styles. That is exactly the first step, choosing a style; adding pics/photos, and text and you are done!! If you do not like what you have when you preview your video, you can edit it: arrange the order of your pics simply by dragging them, change the text or even change style. Easy to use and share. An example is https://animoto.com/play/nOTRAOcvyxCy8J4jcFutV A ~~~

http://utellstory.com/ is an engaging multimedia storytelling platform that allows us to tell stories and share topics that can include audio, image, video and words. To create and share audio slideshows couldn’t be easier or more intuitive: -Register, click on “Tell Story” and then on “Add slides”. At that point you decide whether you need to Add Image Slide (from your computer / URL or FLICKR), Add Text Slide or Add Video Slide (from Youtube or Vimeo). -To add audio (recorded or uploaded), click on Slide Audio; if you wish to add text, click Edit Caption. In the example I am including, myself and the student recorded the text and introduced the captions with the text. -At any time you can Arrange Slide Order, add Background Audio and Background Style -Do not forget to give it a title and add tags.

-In the end, one can share it and/or embed it on a website or blog, exactly what myself and my students did with, for example, http://www.utellstory.com/viewstory/view/80eec0d 848ae92db766953a609e42ea6 to show our partners around where they are from. ~~~

https://www.thinglink.com/ is a free and user friendly digital tool that allows us to create and share interactive images. All can be done effortlessly and quickly and one can turn any static image into a multimedia rich interactive graphic by adding video, other images, audio, links to different sources… Ihave used this innovative and flexible tool in many different situations, including using a picture sent from Greece to one of my students after she shared in our class blog she suffered from Lupus. The Greek student – herself with serious health issues – sent the drawing with a poem that all partners agreed to translate into our mother tongues in order to share afterwards. I scanned the drawing, uploaded it to Thinglink to make it interactive adding the collaborative translations. Here it is at https://www.thinglink.com/scene/67510630571468 3905 ~~~

The creation of ebooks is another quite simple alternative, especially when we only have written text available. That was exactly what happened to create one of the products for our project. I came up with http://www.youblisher.com/ a free flipbook creator that turns our pdf into page-turning publications. http://www.youblisher.com/p/1172216-StoneCulture-Rolling-Over-Europe-2014-2015/ is an example of a collaborative ebook I created with materials and resources shared by partners. ~~~

For polling, for example to choose a title for this year’s e-newspaper or the project’s logo, I used https://dotstorming.com/ a neat online platform for brainstorming or for casting votes on ideas. As

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------the creator of a page, we can invite others to share ideas and/or vote through text, posts or images. As this is being posted, participants can vote on the ideas they like best by clicking on voting dots and once you are the creator, you can restrict the number of votes that each person gets. After the voting is complete, we can easily check the number of votes each received. Please have a look, for instance, at https://dotstorming.com/topic/56a0f6354400bbe00 af24d8d ~~~

For this school year’s project with secondary students who worry more about their grades, I decided to award badges (and an extra mark in the end of the term, too) to all students who accomplished all tasks in eTwinning. I used http://classbadges.com/ a free online tool where teachers can award badges to learners for accomplishments or academic mastery. Through our teacher account, we can award badges customized for our classroom or school. Have a go… it works as students engage even more! The simplest and equally attractive (and successful) way to promote eTwinning projects and/or activities is using photo collages. However, for a language teacher, this is the poorest tool as there is no balance in what concerns the 4 skills: reading and writing are extremely reduced and there is absolutely no speaking or listening involved. http://pixlr.com/ http://bighugelabs.com/ or http://pic-collage.com/ (this one a mobile app) are among some of the tools I’ve been using. As for video, besides the aforementioned Animoto, there are literally dozens of alternatives for video creation, editing and publishing, all free. As curious as I am, for this year’s project, I have also used https://studio.stupeflix.com/en/ to create a short video for a school visit to a local newspaper and then uploaded it to youtube as you can check at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeFf77cJzhs - I did the same last year but with a different tool that I am sure you have already come across, too, that is http://www.kizoa.com/ In May 2015 we planned a 10-day celebration for eTwinning anniversary and as I had taken several shots and so had my students, I gathered them to create a video later

uploaded to youtube that you can check at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXsi83mo9EY Needless to say that though some are oldies but goodies, all can still be used not only to enhance eTwinning projects but also for any other educational purposes. Common to all is the fact that these tools are free and simply meant to showcase how we can use them to enhance our eTwinning projects. Already ringing a bell? Happy reading and happier projects!

Alexandra Duarte is an EFL Teacher at a school in Portugal. She is from Coimbra, Portugal, and is currently teaching in a school in Soure, about 30 km away from the famous university town of Coimbra. She has been a teacher of English for over 20 years and has already taught different levels and age groups. She is an avid reader, a blogger and very curious about free tools and their implementation in the classroom. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Kahooting to Empower Learners to Leaders by Helena Serdoura Kahoot was firstly introduced during an Erasmus+ “Keep Invest Donate Spend” meeting hosted in Agrupamento de Escolas de Marco de Canaveses in 2015. Although pupils seemed to frankly engage in the cultural quiz and be highly motivated I regarded it as just another quiz as many others available online, stepping into lessons as an extrinsic motivator, a reward at the end of a class or a way of testing knowledge. @ APPI 2016, Mário Cruz with “Flip the Way you Teach English, Gain 20% of Time and Game On” peeled the layers of Kahoot and brought to light some key features that could make the difference in the teaching and learning scenarios. Gave it a try and some of my 6th grade pupils created a Kahoot “Saving Quiz” submitted to the national competition “No Poupar Está o Ganho” in financial literacy. More than the prize awarded to the pupils work and the visibility given to the eTwinning/Erasmus+ project within school community and amongst the

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------national stakeholders involved in Financial Education, stayed the loop that went from “learners to leaders”. It encouraged autonomous and collaborative research and creation and boosted learners to present and share their work in and outside the classroom to an wider audience! Twisting from Learners to Leaders

I came to realise during the process of having pupils creating the “Saving Quiz” for the national competition that Kahoot was a friendly use tool easily mastered by pupils in their daily gadgets. Instead of inviting them to play a quiz for testing contents or provide formative assessment, the defy relied on project based activities. After setting the goal to participate in the Financial Education Competition 2016, pupils organised in small groups and were challenged to design their own Kahoot questions and multiple choice answers. Each group was allocated with a sub-topic on financial education to research and deepen their understanding and expertise to ensure mastery when sharing their foundings with the classmates.

assessing their understanding through the quality of questions they ask, and how they explain the correct answer in-between questions. Foremost, it was outstanding to eyewitness the uprising of less confidente pupils… suddenly, Kahoot provided them with a non-threatening learning environment, supported by appropriate scaffolding activities that lead to great excitement when playing their own quiz, using their own mobile devices and claiming, at the end, for more Kahoot creations. They did not request to play other Kahoots; they asked to create new ones in order to share with their classmates and at home with friends and family!

When Kahoot "Saving Quiz" won the 1st prize in the National Competition in Financial Education, the less confident pupils asked to be elected to present the project before an audience of 500 people, including the President of the Portuguese Republic who honoured the class and the school by handing over the award in a public session! Something had happened!

Before stepping into Kahooting they were encouraged to create some artifacts to show evidence of understanding and project planning, like memo drafts or simple card games. Then, collaboratively, all groups presented their outcomes and critical thinking skills were embed since decisions had to be made switching control over the questions and answers to the pupils, while as a teacher I acted out as a facilitator considering it was their first Kahoot creation. This experience provided the educational background to understand what it is like to take a step back and witness pupils taking control of their own learning by making decisions and presenting the arguments for and against, as much as

What is Kahoot? Kahoot is a free game-based learning platform that allows pupils from around the world to create, play and share learning games, in classrooms and beyond.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------DOs of Kahoot! 1. creates a social learning environment that encourages students to play learning games together; 2. brings the student at the back of the classroom to the front, fostering joy, selfbelief and motivation to everyone; 3. creates a ‘Campfire moment’ where everyone gathers round a shared screen to play together; 4. focuses on how you learn, not what you learn. All content on the Kahoot! platform is created by the learners themselves; 5. engages the hand, heart and mind - creates a more social, meaningful and playful pedagogical experience.

Tjin, S. Education Blog Teach by Design. Getting More Out of Kahoot! Available at: http://www.suzietjin.com/?utm_campaign=teammo de&utm_content=buffer61981&utm_medium=faceb ookpost&utm_source=facebook#!Getting-MoreOut-of-YourKahoot/c218b/57735ee60cf2f8d6d10f32b1 [accessed on 22/07/2016]

Helena Serdoura is an eTwinner since 2008, a teacher of English as a foreign language and the European projects coordinator at Agrupamento de Escolas de Marco de Canaveses, Portugal. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bibliography K!Masterclass. (2016). Create Play Discover Share. The Kahoot! Guide to Creating & Playing Learning Games. 1st Edition. https://files.getkahoot.com/academy/Kahoot_Acad emy_Guide_1st_Ed_-_March_2016_-_WOA.pdf [accessed on 22/07/2016] K!Masterclass. Getting Started with Kahoot! https://files.getkahoot.com/academy/Kahoot_Acad emy_Getting_Started_Guide_2nd_Ed__June_2016.pdf [accessed on 22/07/2016]

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Gallery of Successful Projects

maker is the perfect study tool for revising and retaining key information. Two other great teachers, Vasiliki Pelekouda from Greece and Irena Rimc Voglar from Slovenia were our partners in this great adventure our students loved! First step of the project was to introduce ourselves. Every team did it in a very original way, describing themselves into a group picture and challenging others to identify each member of the team. We used tools like Padlet, Thinglink and Slideshare to describe ourselves and guess the other teams. Students have chosen a country legend. They have created a card for it. On the front side there was a summary of the legend (one or two sentences), and on the back side there will be the whole retold legend. They published the front page only at first. The other students asked yes/no questions and try to reconstruct the legend. We used Google docs to interact asynchronously and ask/answer the question, but also a series of Skype meetings for the same reason, but for synchronous interaction.

Legend Jeopardy- Celebrating Diversity Using Legends by Cristina Nicolaita This eTwinning project followed a pattern of the game called "Black stories". The gist of the game is that one person has a card that tells part of a mystery and the others try to figure out the entire story by asking yes and no questions. In this project students reconstructed partners’ legends by making yes/no questions. Fun, right? The project’s aims were:  to challenge students to know their own country legends  to challenge students to know their partners' country legends  to find similarities and differences in legends  to use foreign language for communication The idea of the project was of the other founder of the project, Petra Boháčková from Czech Republic, who introduced us a great tool, GoConqr, which we used to create flashcards. GoConqr’s free Flashcard

Another great tool we used for project evaluation was Dotstorming. On Dotstorming you can create a space for people to post digital sticky notes. Those notes can contain text and or images. That part of

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dotstorming is just like Padlet. What makes Dotstorming different is that once the notes are posted, you can have people vote for their favourite notes, or comment on them. As the creator of a Dotstorming space you can restrict the number of votes that each person can cast. For example, you could say that each person gets three votes and once those votes are cast they're prevented from casting any more votes. After the voting is completed, you can sort the notes according to the number of votes they received. During the project I had the opportunity to visit Athens and I met the Greek team, visited their school and had a great time (thanks, Vasiliki!). We arranged a Skype meeting dedicated to diversity, and participated in the eTwinning campaign with a poster and a video.

    

I liked to learn the culture of other countries through their legends I learned a lot about new tools of ICT I met a lot of teachers. I exercised my English language I enjoyed the guessing game.

Thank you, eTwinning, for another great project!

Cristina Nicolaita is from Romania, a teacher of Physics and Computer Science, an eTwinning ambassador since 2013, actively involved in eTwinning since 2008. In addition, she is an Inspiring Science Education Mentor and a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert. 14 of her eTwinning projects received European Quality Label and 2 of her projects were awarded in the national contest Made for Europe in the last 3 years. She participated as facilitator in face-to-face and online workshops and learning events on http://iteach.ro/ (a platform connected to eTwinning) and on eTwinning Learning Lab/ eTwinning Live. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In Teaching Others We Teach Ourselves by Olivera Ilic In Serbian schools, there are different approaches of working with students with special educational needs (SEN): students can either attend classes with students who do not have special needs, with their curriculum moderated, or they can attend special schools or separate classes in ordinary schools for special needs’ students.

Our students’ opinions about the project are very relevant:  I could speak English with children about my age and I liked it.  I can ask questions in English more fluently  I learnt to use Google sheets  I learnt to cooperate with friends from foreign country

I had taught English as a foreign language for years before I was assigned to teach a class of SEN students. Although I had a vast experience of teaching SEN students in a regular classroom, most of which were students with mild to moderate learning difficulties, teaching a whole class of SEN students was a different story. As I didn’t have any official or university training in working with SEN students, I read about it as much as I could, did online courses for SEN teachers, joined online support groups, talked to SEN professionals. However, I still didn’t feel I was teaching the right way. That is when I thought that joining an eTwinning project for SEN students and working

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------side-by-side with experienced teachers would benefit both my students and me as a teacher. And I was right! What holidays do you celebrate? ¿Qué fiestas celebras? is an eTwinning project which was carried out by Primary School ‘Sveti Sava in ’Pozarevac, SERBIA, and Colegio Público De Educación Especial La Quinta from Madrid, SPAIN. There were three classes of students involved in the project – a special needs class from Sveti Sava, and classes EBO C and EBO G from La Quinta. In the project, students presented holidays which are celebrated in their countries or worldwide. Languages used in the project were English and Spanish, and students were aged 9-16.

At the beginning of the project, students introduced each other by drawing pictures of themselves, their school, classroom or teachers. We continued working on the project by doing various class activities in order to commemorate different holidays. Some of those holidays are internationally celebrated, like Easter, International Women’s Day, April Fools’ Day, World Book Day, Earth Day. Others are national or local holidays, such as San Isidoro, Flower Festival, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day. In our lessons, we used various arts and crafts activities, as well as ICT, including apps for tablets and IOS, software for interactive whiteboards and websites. Teachers involved in the project discussed the activities which they would use with their classes, shared resources and methodologies. For World Book Day, class from ‘Sveti Sava’ and class EBO C from La Quinta both agreed to do the same book: ‘A Taste of the Moon’ by Michael Grejniec. We read and discussed the book, and then the students coloured pictures of the animals from the book, cut them, and recreated the story. I used this activity in my class to teach the names of the animals, revise colours, and we also discussed the importance of helping each other. In addition, class EBO G from La Quinta talked about Miguel de Cervantes, his life and work, and they made a poster. Then Class EBO C saw and discussed their presentation and decided to read a book Don Quixote!

You can look at the activities we did for World Book Day in videos we created for eTwinning’s Celebrate Diversity event: La Quinta video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpgv1o3E9ec Sveti Sava video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6suzTUzc_g In the project students also presented holidays and events which are celebrated only in their own cities or schools. Students from La Quinta presented Cultural Week, which is celebrated at their school. They showed us how to paint with food, how to make fruit brooches and macaroni hedgehogs. They also created pretty pots with macaroni flowers. They explained the whole procedure of making these wonderful flowers in this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXO1oJczjx4

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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Students from Sveti Sava saw the video, and decided to make flower pots in order to present Flower Festival, which is celebrated in their hometown:

In the project we used ICT as well. For Easter, we decided to use apps for IOS and tablets. Students from La Quinta played an interesting game on IOS called Peek-a-boo, where kids had to look for Easter eggs. Students from Sveti Sava used an app for tablet called Kids coloring, and students coloured Easter pictures. I used the activity for revising colours, and introducing vocabulary connected with Easter (egg, chick, bunny).

For International Women’s Day, students from Sveti Sava created an e-card at http://www.123greetings.com/ and sent it to teachers from La Quinta. They showed the e-card to their students, and together they sent a thankyou e-card back. I used this activity to revise colours and for vocabulary building (yellow flower, pink heart). In the project, there was also a page where students congratulated each others’ birthdays:

Working in this project and cooperating with experienced, knowledgeable and enthusiastic partners who were willing to share their teaching methods with me, has helped me grow as a teacher and get a deeper understanding of working with

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SEN students. What I have learnt is the importance of collaborating and working with other teachers from my school as a team; the necessity of using interdisciplinary approach; to include activities which develop graph-omotor skills, attention, creativity, concentration in my lessons; that digital inclusion of SEN students is as important as their social inclusion. Above all, I leant how to teach so that my students learn in a fun, enjoyable and meaningful way. Here are some benefits of using eTwinning with SEN students I have discovered during the project:  eTwinning provides children with special needs with greater understanding of European cultural diversity;  helps them understand how Internet works, how to use social media to connect with people and how to use technology to bring community into the classroom;  encourages cooperative learning and enables students to work together towards a common goal;  promotes European integration for children with special needs;  helps in adapting conventional teaching methods;  stimulates interest in learning;  enhances learning experiences and helps to improve communication and computer skills. Being a teacher is a lifelong learning process, and working together with like-minded, passionate and dedicated colleagues is the best professional support a teacher can get. I am thankful to my wonderful partners from CPEE La Quinta – Natalia, Maria and Sara, for making me realize that.

Olivera Ilic teaches English as a foreign language in Primary School Sveti Sava in Pozarevac, Serbia. She has been a passionate and enthusiastic member of eTwinning community for over a year. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Our Peace Song by Andrea Ullrich “Europäischer Wettbewerb” http://www.europaeischer-wettbewerb.de/ (European Competition) was organized for the 63rd time this year. Since 1953 students in Germany have had the chance to explore European culture, values, history in a creative way.

Each year a new topic students can work on is presented. There are tasks in four age categories (up to 9), (10-13), (14-16), (17-21) and a special task, which is not linked to an age group. This year’s motto was “Live Together in Peace”. Since 2012 eTwinning has supported the European Competition, thus opening it to other countries. Teams of up to five countries can now work together and create a collaborative entry for the competition. There is just one requirement: you need a German partner, who will apply when the deadline is due in March. Already last year I was approached by European partners to run a project for the European Competition together, but I had to decline as I only join a project when I know I can really work for it. In my opinion it is better to say right from the beginning that you won’t have the time or energy instead of joining projects and letting your partners down later. As a kind of compensation I offered a project this year – in the only category I thought I could handle: the special task. So partners from Germany, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain set out to create “Our Peace Song”, and won a prize.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------creation. You can find all the material on our TwinSpace https://twinspace.etwinning.net/9597/home This project is also a good example of how we can link professional development to our projects. The very first App I have ever created – who has ever talked to me knows I had always said I would never do that – was the result of the eTwinning learning event “Creating Apps for eTwinning Projects” and is an easy game about the languages used in our project. I embraced the challenge, and Marco Neves as expert and all the other participants, who shared the same struggle, helped a lot. That is what eTwinning is about – collaboration and learning with and from our peers.

Looking at the list of winners https://www.kmkpad.org/programme/etwinning/auszeichnungen/ew 2016/gewinnerprojekte-63-europaeischerwettbewerb.html you can see that four of the twelve winner teams had the same idea.

Last, but not least a word about dissemination. Right from the beginning we made sure to spread the word about our project and the “European Competition” on our websites, social media and local press. Thanks again to Anna Tobiacelli (Poland), Lina Pereira (Portugal), Daniela Bunea (Romania) and Alberto Ruiz (Spain!

Andrea Ullrich is a teacher of English and Ethics/Philosophy at Gymnasium Georgianum Hildburghausen. She has been the school’s coordinator of European Educational Projects since 1999, eTwinning since 2008, ambassador since 2014. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We carried out several activities from logo making, cover competition, creating lyrics, composing and recording the song to a multilingual game for lyrics

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Project ”BRIDGING3GENERATIONS” by Vasilica Gazdac Our Project "BRIDGING3GENERATIONS: Timeless Games and Toys" intends to gather three generations (grandparents – parents – children) through games and toys of the oldest generation to help pre-school children learning and playing games and toys of his/her grandparents. In this digitized world, one of the most challenging problems is to establish ties, bonds and bridges between the oldest living generation and post-millennium generation. Today, oldest living generation faces severe problems with integrating to new digital world. However, they are unique source of knowledge and experience in many different aspects. When they vanish from the earth, we will lose the opportunity to learn from them. In this project, we intend to make a journey to their childhood, we will uncover their games and toys. We will redesign and redevelop them with the opportunities of modern age in order to teach them to the newest generation. We need to teach to the newest generation because it is already a fact that they consider games and toys as only software and touch pad that they can play with only finger tips. Communication and establishing ties between the pupils is also an essential requirement of eTwinning Program. We started this project in January 2015 on eTwinning platform then we received grant funding for Erasmus +KA219, call 2015. There are numerous projects already realized on games and toys. Discovery of the traditional games and toys itself will be organized as an opportunity to increase interaction between the oldest living generation (grandparents) and youngest generation (grandchildren) at schools. The Partners of the Project are as follows: 1) Haci Sabanci Secondary School (Coordinator School, Turkey) 2) St Colman’s Primary School and All Saints’ Nursery Unit (United Kingdom) 3) Notre Dame Junior High School (France) 4) International School of Bergen (Norway) 5) State School Istituto Comprensivo via Santi Savarino (Italy) 6) School Tiberiu Morariu Salva (Romania) 7) Nicola Vaptsarov Secondary School (Bulgaria) 8) Grundzales Pamatskola (Latvia) The project will run two years and includes learning activities, study tours, workshops with grandparents and parents of children, designing a curriculum, teaching materials, books, interactive maps, digital applications, games, calendars and learning mobility and virtual mobility of students.

The tasks and responsibilities under the project have been assigned to the partners according to their competences, skills and capabilities reported during negotiations before filing the application form. Each project activity planned has a leading partner who is responsible for coordinating the activity, develops the instructions of the activity together with the coordinator.

First short term joint staff training activity of the Project was conducted in 26-30 October 2015 in Ankara (Turkey). Our all partners deserve special thanks for their commitment and dedication to the project as all partners showed up in Ankara only 15 days after evil terrorist explosion on 10th October 2015. The results of the SWOT analysis were shared during the workshops. The emblem designed by a pupil of Italian partner was selected as official emblem of the project getting majority of the votes. The project anthem composed by Latvian partner was accepted as official anthem of the project for using in visibility and dissemination activities. Dedicated workshops were delivered by volunteer lecturers from Gazi University on “How to Develop an Educational Program” and “Intangible Cultural Heritage”. The project delegation also

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------visited several stakeholders in Ankara that play active role in areas constituting subject matter of the Project (https://bridging3generations.com/c1short-term-training-event-turkey-meeting/).

UK partner and Romanian partner developed: 1) Project web-site: http://bridging3generations.com/ 2) Official Project Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1709628389250 699/ 3) Project Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/bridge_ERASMUS @bridge_ERASMUS 4) eTwinning project TwinSpace: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/5395/home

All platforms established are actively used to contribute visibility of the project and to disseminate the project results. The materials generated during implementation of the Project activities are compiled by responsible partners and published in respective platforms. Our Norwegian partner developed a “Times Games Digital Brochure” in electronic environment (using

https://issuu.com/ and https://www.canva.com/) to use in various visibility activities of the Project by compiling the contents the Partners submitted (https://bridging3generations.com/a2-timelessgames-digital-brochure/). The partners filmed and made photographs of the workshops conducted with involvement of the grandparents and grandchildren as a part of interaction improvement strategy of the Project and these materials were transformed into a Photo Voice Exhibition ”Time for Timeless Games” made by our Italian partner (https://bridging3generations.com/a3-time-fortimeless-games-photovoice-exhibition-withgrandparents/). By the end of year 2015, partners provided illustrations of different traditional games played in different time of the year and the Latvian partner” created a “2016 Calendar” using the illustrations collected and the Partners printed and distributed some copies of respective calendar to use as an instrument for visibility of the Project (https://bridging3generations.com/a4-timelessgames-calendar-2016/).

Traditional Puppet Games activity was conducted with involvement of grandparents, parents and grandchildren (pupils) in all partner schools. The activity took more than two months. Each Partner school selected a traditional puppet game. Several series of workshops were organized by each partner for production of puppets. The puppets were produced by grandparents and grandchildren. The PIT members of the partner schools acted as facilitators and observed the level of interaction between the generations during the workshops. The Partners also interviewed with local/regional puppeteers to learn more about the past, today and future of the Puppet Tradition in the countries. The Partners developed presentations based on their

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------experience and the interview conducted and they delivered their presentation during Short Term Training Activity organized in Bulgaria on 7-11 March 2016. The Partners exchanged the puppets during the mobility in Bulgaria and they are currently displayed in Project Corner of partner schools together with many other items exchanged between the partners (https://bridging3generations.com/a6-traditionalpuppet-games/).

Second Short Term Joint Staff Training Activity of the Project was held in Aytos (Bulgaria). Dedicated workshops were organized to deliver presentations on conclusion reports of Baseline Questionnaire conducted by each partner school and to deliver presentations on conclusions of Traditional Puppet Games Activity completed. Further dedicated workshops were organized on “Puppets and Games in Educational Curricula” and “Need Analysis of Target Group”. It was decided to organize a comprehensive workshop to cover all aspects of developing Societal Curricula during the short term training activity to be organized in May in France. The traditional puppets exchanged are actively used by the partner schools as a part of their cross curricular activities to introduce different cultures to the pupils (https://bridging3generations.com/c2short-term-training-event-bulgaria-meeting/).

Traditional Board Games activity was conducted with involvement of grandparents, parents and grandchildren (pupils) in all partner schools. Each partner selected a traditional board game that reflects the tradition and culture of the country. Several series of workshops were organized by each partner for production of board games. The board games were produced by the grandparents and grandchildren. The partners organized competitions using the board games developed to revitalize a historical traditional game that used to be a part of the culture in respective country. The partners developed presentations on their experience and delivered the same during Short Term Training Activity organized in France on 9-13 May 2016. The traditional games exchanged are actively used by the partner countries as a part of their cross curricular activities. developed during the mobility in France and they are currently displayed in Project Corner of partner schools together with many other items exchanged between the Partners (https://bridging3generations.com/a5-traditionalboard-games/).

Third short term training activity of the Project took place in Billom (France). A dedicated workshop was organized to deliver presentations on conclusion reports of Traditional Puppet Activity conducted by

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------each partner school. A separate workshop was organized on “Integration of Pupils Experiencing Difficulty”. The Coordinator School delivered a presentation on Societal Curriculum followed by a workshop to produce preliminary contents of Societal Curriculum by splitting the partners as PreSchool, Primary, Secondary schools. Further workshops were organized on “Focus on Disadvantageous Groups” and “Methods to Integrate Dyslexia Pupils, Examples of Lessons for Dyslexia Students” with participation of keynote speakers from French authorities. The traditional board games exchanged are actively used in developing cognitive skills, thinking abilities and strategy development capabilities of the pupils (https://bridging3generations.com/c3-short-termtraining-event-france-meeting/).

Canva, Padlet, eTwinningLive, Skype, Facetime, Whatsapp, Google apps, Tripline) that we have achieved visibility and final products (https://bridging3generations.com/visibility/). My team involvement in this project contributes positively to the development of the European dimension of education. We believe that these experiences constitute models to those who wish complete applications for Erasmus +program for collaborative educational projects with various educational institutions in Europe.

Vasilica Gazdac is a pre-primary school teacher at Tiberiu Morariu School in Salva, Bistrita-Nasaud county. She is interested in innovation and technology educational process by collaboration through eTwinning and Erasmus+ projects. She is a methodist teacher of Bistrita-Nasaud School Inspectorate and is responsible for the national project on early ages "Rainbow of Changes". She is also a Romanian eTwinning ambassador 2016 and a Google in education ambassador. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In this project we have innovated participation of parents / grandparents in school extracurricular activities , initiated forms of distance learning with our students, we familiarized students with digital applications (Taxgedo, Pizap, issuu, Slideshare,

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tell Me Your Fairy Tale and Support My Development! by Paulina Grudniewska and Paola Amati Let us come back to our childhood and think about the best moments. Many of us recall telling fairy tales by our parents or grandparents. Is it still popular now? Maybe in some families. But most kids are accustomed to DVD movies, computer games and to cartoons – not to traditional stories. The problem is common all over the world, so five partners: Poland, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria decided to work on it. We prepared an Erasmus+ project because we believe that this is the way to make a very small change in an education system in our schools. The name of our project is: Tell me your fairy tale! So it’s obvious that one of the most important aims is to know our cultures by introducing our national stories. We started in September 2015 and are going to end in June 2017. Our project is an opportunity to discover a bit forgotten, in our point of view, the world of fairy tales. We firmly believe in the sense of technological progress but we want to protect some important things against destruction, creating some kind of compromise. Nowadays children are imbued with popular culture and it’s difficult to get them to read or listen to the stories with the pleasure. We want to show them that the world of fairy tales can be combined with modern technologies. The youngest recipients of the project are three years old children and the oldest teenage students. We are trying to show that the topic of fairy tales may connect students of all ages and backgrounds. In addition, our project is not made only for students. We want to improve teachers’ skills by exchanging ideas what we always do by the Internet and during project meetings in our countries. One of the main effects of our actions will be creating a teaching guide describing the methods of working with fairy tales during the lessons at the end of our project. Our project will be successful when our students will take some books to read of their own accord. We are sure we will do it! During the project we have done many attractive activities and many of them are planned for the next school year. Through our activities we want to encourage our teams of teachers to self-improvement, to introduce innovative teaching methods and to cooperate with the local community. Our actions are going to be based primarily on the exchange of experiences in order to provide the highest level of education.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------During the last school year we introduced our partners through thematic days in each school. From the beginning, we have arranged a correspondence between our students by the form of traditional letters and cards. Students felt so involved in the project by exchanging their drawings, messages and Christmas wishes.

Each partner school organized a Fairy tales characters’ ball: students wore costumes of chosen fairy tale characters and took part in a special ball and parade having a lot of fun.

In order to involve the local community to the project we invited students’ grandparents at school to read some traditional fairy tales in a very special

atmosphere. We also arranged a reading marathon among the partner schools involving special guests as sport champions or famous people ready to read fairy tales to our students.

And next school year we will keep involving our students through many activities as establishing new correspondence among students, exchanging puppets among partner schools, writing a common fairy tale by each country and the final event will be a Fairy tale Festival that will provide plenty of activities and the presentation of the results of our work to the local community.

Paulina Grudniewska is the coordinator of the project. She is a teacher of English in primary school. Paola Amati is the coordinator of the Italian partner school. In doing projects with their students, their main objectives are to contribute to the European inter-cultural understanding, to promote the values of citizenship, inter-cultural dialogue and friendship between peoples, to establish new friendships in educational, personal and social terms, and to develop computer skills related to Internet and new communication technologies.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------My Unforgettable eTwinning Projects by Ana Tudor “A picture equals 1000 words” is one of my unforgettable eTwinning projects. I had good reasons to focus on it as a project founder, together my Greek partner. Students of today living in eworlds receive stimuli lots more from the cyberspace, the tv, the radio and much less from the press and the written material. As a consequence, they tend to become more „optic”. The written expression is maybe superior and eternal, but soul and feeling is just a prerequisite to manage it. Students of today are more passive to messages and less active. In parallel, they are more attracted by the dynamics of the picture that is the easiest to understand and express oneself form of communication. The nature (sea, mountains, flowers, sun sets and sun rises) as well as the psychographies that can be drawn from the depiction of social places such as cafes of the old times and cultural events, or even photos of older people carrying the experience of an entire life, were our favourite themes. We all aimed at opening new vivid worlds of our actual world in front of the eyes of our students. Open windows to the countries in which the schools of the partership belong. Communities to communities. So distant and so close. So close and so distant. We were always aiming at feeling. That’s why, we allowed the students express themselves and see the pics and the feelings of their classmates round Europe. Pictural communication and yes Synesthesia! Drawing! Pics! Photos! Words could also be used. But we have tried to let the dynamics of the picture incite psychograms of the momentum. Expressions of the innerself, shared with all goodness. As Goldman said, the true meaning in life is "To LIVE, to LOVE and to LEARN"! We hoped that within this project through the lens our students learn to FEEL and to UNDERSTAND the feelings of the others. As in schools of today, so much effort focuses on the cognitive part and IQ measurement. Thus, this project permitted us to manage high IQs in the sentimental cognitivism and, why not, to discover among our students the talented brilliant photographers of tomorrow. “Women of the Mediterraanean” is a project whose aim was to show and analyze the social and cultural path that women carried out last century and have been still carrying out, with sacrifice, to reach equal opportunities and rights. We liked all students to know these changes through photos and so we had created a section of our photo exhibition that was also devoted to intercultural education and that has been presented for the 2nd time to public and territorial, regional and provincial

authorities the day of the festivity of women. Many European schools have participated in the 1st photo exhibition, it has been useful for a continuous exchange of personal information among pupils of different countries and all this has enriched their way of learning. Our purposes were to educate people to feel themselves „citizens of the World”, with equal opportunities, in the spirit of legality and solidarity. In this respect, our objectives were to know and value local traditions, to recover historical memory and oral traditions through the history of the women and to start a dialogs and a comparison with other cultures. The activities developed by us focused on searching photos from 1900 to our days that may testify the evolution female role in society, in family and in job, analyzing in depth problems regarding social marginalization, exclusion from the world of work and lack of parity of the rights. Our European photo exhibition and brochure were amazing final project products. “Let's discover a better world” is a project aimed at improving our students’ knowledge of English as well as their ICT skills, by impersonating young discoverers and inventors. They got knowledge about inventions which are still the most important for humanity. They also found out about famous inventors and travellers. Finally they designed and invented their own things which could make their lives easier. Students not only invented things and objects but also discovered people’s feelings, emotions and promoted tolerancy and acceptance among people of different nations. The European students and their teachers who took part in this e-Twinning project have involved other classes and colleagues by presenting them the effects of collaboration which was motivating for others. Students from other classes were invited to prepare their own material in order to be published on our Twin Space. The teachers involved in this project supported their students’ ideas, helped and advice them, decided together. They shared ideas and experiences with teachers of the partner schools, discussed and even made conclusions concerning the progress of the project. For all partner schools, this interesting project brought the improvement of relationships among students, teachers and parents, the promotion of the schools in local communities, the involvement of a big number of students into the project and a bigger motivation to learn among students and to teach among teachers. “Children stories” is another unforgettable project for me, as well as for my students, aged 7-14. It aimed collecting pictures and stories for children written in mother tongue. By sharing the pictures and stories and showing to the partners we liked

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------the same stories, we prove that these stories have a magic power for all European children. Besides, we achieved together a performance based on the same story and a big book with our nice pictures and stories. The pedagogical innovation of the project was to put in value the children’s stories, taking into account those stories known in the universal literature and the similarities between our own stories. Forty-seven schools were involved and this fact gave to this project a huge European dimension. For each of the stories we talked about we gave tasks to our pupils: thus, the little pupils of our team achieved drawings and the older some texts. We had also the opportunity to show to our partners how rich are our literatures and to talk about the most important tellers of our countries. The project “Children stories” was very well integrated in our curriculum. Talking for instance about “Ugly Duckling”, we had the opportunity to send to our partners the transcript of the story and the video and audio presentations in English, as well as in Romanian. We have sent to our school partners other Romanian stories which delighted so many generations of children in our country, such as: “Praslea the Brave and the Golden Apples”, “The Little Bag with Two Pennies” or “The Goat with Three Kids”. The pupils of “Liviu Rebreanu” School from Mioveni Town, Romania were proud to talk to their European friends about Ion Creanga, our famous teller and his marvelous stories, as well as about his well-known work: “Memories of My Boyhood”.

Ana Tudor is a teacher of English and an eTwinning Ambassador 2013. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “Values of Life” - eTwinning Project 20152016 by Kostas Loukas Introduction In the beginning it was just the thought that the center of education is not only teaching numbers and words to children, but life itself. A life based on rules, which are based on acceptable values. And there was our title…“Values of life”. https://twinspace.etwinning.net/12493/home We realized the fact that the primary purpose of education is not only to develop knowledge, skills, competences and attitudes, but also to embed fundamental values like respect, cooperation, dialogue, peace and democracy. These values are common in a European society in which pluralism, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail. In the light of the Paris Declaration on Tuesday the 17th of March 2015 on promoting citizenship and the common values of freedom, tolerance and nondiscrimination through education, we decided to contribute to the protection and strengthening Europe’s spirit of freedom by embedding those

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------fundamental values of life into curriculum and help our pupils - in close cooperation with their parents and families - to become active, responsible and open-minded members of society. Initial hesitation (will pupils accept it as… interesting?) slowly transformed to certainty that this project will open our pupil’s view like they have never experienced before.

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Kostas Kakkavas, Primary School of Portes Ahaias, Greece Magda Czech, Szkola Przyszlosci Niepubliczna Szkola Podstawowa Poland Nihat Bozkurt, Yamanegeli İlkokulu Turkey

9-11 years old pupils meeting schoolmates from all around Europe and exchanging their views in English was not exactly expected by them when the first school bell rang.

Participants 13 partners from 8 schools in 5 countries decided to work (and sometimes meet) together with their 186 pupils.  Kostas Loukas, DIMOTIKO SCHOLEIO ARSENIOU Skidra, Greece  Maria Kapna, DIMOTIKO SCHOLEIO ARSENIOU Skidra, Greece  Porfira Troupkou, DIMOTIKO SCHOLEIO ARSENIOU Skidra, Greece  Antonella Folisi, ICS "Octavia" di Roma Italy  Savvatoula Chorozidoy, Intercultural primary school Neoi Epivates Greece  Magdalena Tukowska, Szkoła Podstawowa nr 5 im. Wł. Sikorskiego w Łukowie, Poland  Marion Tselepou, Arsakeio Primary School of Ioannina, Greece  Sotiris Ntinos, Arsakeio Primary School of Ioannina, Greece  Lara Vassalo, St. Thomas More College, Tarxien Primary Malta  Sharon Scicluna, St. Thomas More College, Tarxien Primary Malta

What did pupils do? After the all known procedure of registering and letting pupils to know each other we stepped to the main dish. In class we showed pupils either an introductory video or a song related to the value we were working on and afterwards they worked in discussion and divided in groups they presented their perspective regarding each value. At the end the most popular scenario of the class was chosen to become our contribution in the project. Our presentations included various versions like dramatization, role plays with puppets, cooperative games, crafts and remixed versions of popular songs. Collaborative poem: Pupils were invited to create a poem based on the melody of “Ode to Joy” by Ludwig van Beethoven, which is the hymn of the European Union. Each class added their lyrics and we finally created a collaborative song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO1d3UQB0M0

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Collaborative story: We decided to create a collaborative story were pupils could show their view regarding various values of life. The concept of the story was the adventures of a young Syrian refugee girl, who traveled to all partner schools and learned some of the European values. Each school added their part on a dedicated TitanPad and as a summarize we created an e-book on cliptomize with title “Values of life have no borders”. http://www.cliptomize.com/Clipbook/View/218722

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developed oral communication and social interaction skills. improved their English as a collaboration tool to communicate information, ideas, and feelings. became more responsible and learned the importance of keeping to timetables. understood the importance of the exercise of group work with others to prepare for future collaborations. trained their skills in using ICT as a strategy for sharing and disseminating results and as a communication tool.

Was the project successful? Specify “success”. The fact that pupils were eager to get in contact with their schoolmates and flooded the Forum to show the others their interests cannot leave any teacher untouched. And yes, pupils worked together in “Cooperation” and showed “Respect” to each other. Weren’t these values in the center of our project? But most of all they made friends for life…

“Chatting Nights” Since “only work and no fun makes a dull person”, we met in interesting “Chatting Night” events on planned and specified topics, exchanging hobbies, ideas, and interests at a “late night” level in our Forum. Of course we did not hide our work from the outside world, but we tried to disseminate and show our achievements to schoolmates, families, even the national television! Evaluation In theory even more important things happened than listed below: Pupils:

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gained individual and collective democratic maturity and an awareness of equal social dignity and equality of all citizens. discovered, through comparison, similarities and differences in the lifestyles of individual, family, school and society. met different lifestyles than their own and found out that there are many common elements despite the long distance. experienced deeper their own culture by sharing their way of life. recognized that by accepting everyone’s differences and similarities is going to lead them to live peacefully together and in harmony, regardless of religion, colour and gender.

Kostas Loukas is a teacher in Greece, with an MSc in Environmental Education and a BSc in Pedagogics. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Thanks, eTwinning! by Cira Serio

their skills to others and in recognize their European citizenship.

My students and I, since we entered eTwinning in May 2014, thanks to my colleague Francesca Borrelli, we achieved many goals until we have won in the past year the National Award with the project "A Treasure Chest of Wisdom". This year with growing enthusiasm we developed the project "Just like me", a project of great educational value, extremely timely, aimed at teaching tolerance and respect for diversity, increasing knowledge of countries and different lifestyles.

Students have even learned the principles of the "coding" creating an application with "app inventor 2" that is currently present on Google Play Store. On the occasion of the "Game Day" sponsored by the City of Herculaneum, the school presented to the Mayor of Herculaneum, Ciro Buonajuto, other educational institutions and associations on our territory the eTwinning platform and the project "Just like me", dancing then all together the flash mob with our pupils.

The "Just like me" project aims to improve education through the social, civic and intercultural skills, critical thinking and digital literacy of pupils to promote resistance to all forms of indoctrination and discrimination. The project involved all classes of primary school and is well integrated in the curriculum of Geography, Citizenship Education, Language English, Italian and ICT, encouraging the development of the European key competences such as communication in foreign languages, digital competence, learning to learn, social skills (increasing their awareness of contemporary society), valuing the different lifestyle of each people.

The friendships made, beyond the competencies achieved both at the linguistic level and at the digital level, showing that the objectives that the project had set ourselves have been achieved. However, the project's main merit is certainly that it has begun a process of awareness and long term could help to change the attitudes of an entire generation intolerance, to dampen the distrust towards the "different" and to promote a greater understanding of the richness inherent in the process of encounter and exchange between people of different origins and cultures.

The TwinSpace has become the shared working environment and responsible where each participating nation has realized peer education on the creative enhancement of social skills, communication and interpersonal, transforming learning together into a resource able to pass on

Cira Serio is the ICT coordinator of the Primary School "San Tarcisio" in Herculaneum, near Naples. She is passionate about "coding" while the Robotics is one of her favorite hobbies. She became part of the great shared learning community of eTwinning in May 2014. She won the national eTwinning award in 2015, with the project "A treasure chest of wisdom". She loves her job and she likes sharing it with her colleagues.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The 63rd European Competition – Prepared with eTwinning by Heidi Giese What is the European Competition? Video: https://vimeo.com/101064752 How we knew each other In September 2015 I saw a request from our German NSS on their facebook Germany page stating that a school in Greece was looking for a German partner to participate in a project and to apply with for the 63rd European Competition. This competition is one of the oldest ones in Germany. I didn’t know it before, but I had heard about the possibility to prepare a project with eTwinning for this kind of contest. eTwinning live for planning project work I always enjoy exploring the possibilities which eTwinning offers and so I started this adventure in October 2015 with my ICT teacher colleague Monika, the Greek partners Chara (teacher of German) and Voula (teacher of English) and at a certain stage of the project also with a colleague at my own school who teaches music. We first planned our project by meeting several times via eTwinning live. This is a really useful opportunity - instead of skype - within the eTwinning homepage as it incorporates an adobe connect meeting center where every teacher registered to eTwinning (etwinning.net) can reserve a meeting session from about 30 minutes up to several hours choosing a time slot that suits all partners. We met online several times before starting our eTwinning project and it was always a pleasure speaking to Chara and Voula sitting in Greece and us here about 2000 km away in the middle of Germany. We prepared the project, but we also talked about our families, our schools and how our students work. We got to know and like each other and after our second meeting with eTwinningLive we had clear ideas about what we might achieve with our students throughout the school year.

Collaborative tools We wanted the Greek and German students to collaborate as much as possible and so we looked for ICT tools with a collaborative possibility as voicethread.com, padlet.com, thinglink.com. It is important not to just post the students’ work in the Twinspace. This would be a simple collection of output. In such a way students often don’t get to know each other. And that would really be a pity, wouldn’t it? Mixed European teams Another clue for a better collaboration of European partners within an eTwinning project can be the creation of mixed teams. You need the names of all European partners and can then use http://teamup.aalto.fi/ to form groups. Choose a symbol for each country‘s members. Teamup gives several possibilities to talk about the project work, give feedback ask for help and so on.

Teacher teams We nearly never worked alone in this eTwinningproject. My Greek partner Chara came along with her colleague Voula. Both were engaged in the classes who were actively participating: 5th and 6th class of their 10th Primary School of Karditsa. I asked my ICT teacher colleague Monika to assist me and my students when working in the Twinspace or help them get to know https://www.thinglink.com/ https://padlet.com/ or https://voicethread.com/ Our music teacher helped finding a rythm for the peace song we wrote together and organize the recording with his equipment and know- how. Working in teams is important. When preparing an eTwinning project try to find teacher colleagues at your school teaching in your class and being open to ICT or curious by nature to learn new things, even from students. Why not? Cross curricular Every eTwinning project normally contains several subjects. In our case we included English, German, ICT, Music, Geography. By doing a European

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------project you will nearly always touch some of the subjects of your school. When you are planning your project have a look at the programme of the year. Maybe you teach more than one subject in your class, as I do. I knew that we would talk about Europe (Geography lesson), learn about hobbies (English lesson), need a certain ability to use presentation tools (ICT) and practise music. In this case we teachers agreed to have these subjects and content included into our eTwinning project. The students then had the opportunity to make their own choices about the means and content of the project. Evaluation Don’t forget to ask the students what worked well and what could be improved in further projects. They will be able to give you valuable feedback. Possible evaluation tools can be padlet.com to comment and discuss with the European partners. https://answergarden.ch/ is also a useful ICT tool to just post one word (an appropriate tool for younger students or students who have just begun to learn a foreign language).

Pâques en Europe! Easter in Europe! by Crina Clapou eTwinning projects provide great opportunities to share knowledge and experience in the teaching community. This was also the case in the eTwinning project "Pâques en Europe! Easter in Europe!". We wanted to share Easter traditions with 25 partners from European countries (Romania, Italy and Turkey). The main objective of the project was to know Christian values and ways of celebrating religious holidays specific to the Romanian people or other European nations. Communication was done using French and Romanian and the project involved children aged between 4 and 12 years. Throughout the activities, I helped the children to know and accept differences given by different cultures, to express themselves in an artistic way and to realize the importance of communication, acceptance of diversity and the need to establish affectionate relations among all children, regardless the country where they live. Children, with my help, have used ICT to view all activities posted on the TwinSpace of the project.

Our project I heard about Sway https://sway.com/my in an eTwinning learning event and I now like this ICT presentation tool very much. It is easy to use and a presentation with sway is never boring. You can see more of our Greek-German project work here: https://sway.com/dcRLtVSvDEFCkaCp

In the implementation of the project activities we used small group activities, interactive methods, techniques and innovative work we put emphasis on cooperative learning to awaken and maintain the interest of children. The results of their work were presented in an exhibition with produce made during the Easter themed project.

Heidi Giese is a teacher in a Secondary school (French, Politics, Art), Europaschule Anne-FrankSchule, in Eschwege and an Erasmus+ Ambassador in Germany.

The activities had a strong interdisciplinary character carried out through a harmonious combination of activities such as “reading” pictures or conversations with auditions and artistic activities with themes related to specific national celebration of Easter (dyeing and decorating eggs,

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------stories about Easter and decorations specific for the Passover meal).

language and foreign languages (in this case French). This project had a strong impact in our kindergarten by presenting similarities between different European countries about the Easter holidays. This helped the children and parents know about the international projects, and also the development of kindergarten prestige. Participation in this project made children understand the importance of communication, acceptance of diversity, the need to establish affectionate relationships between all children, regardless of the country they live in. For all the teachers participating in this project was an excellent opportunity to exchange teaching experience.

The project activities were divided over several months (from March until June) and were planned to be common. During the project, all the partners have achieved the project’s objectives and completed all the activities. The main activities aimed “reading” images and thematic discussions, the execution of artistic activities (cards, collages, painted eggs, ornaments and decorations from different materials), organising an exhibition of works created during the project in kindergarten. Project activities and the final results were immortalized by photographs taken during their performance and the children watched images of the other partners on the computer. We used tools like Powerpoint, video, images and drawings to present the work of children.

Crina Clapou has been a teacher for almost 20 years and she likes working with preschoolers and collaborating effectively with other teachers. She has good experience in eTwinning projects since 2008. Starting 2010 she has had wonderful Comenius opportunities by participating in a training course in Europe, a preparatory visit, and by coordinating a multilateral project at Kindergarten No. 3 Bistrita. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By participating in this project the children have developed their communication skills in the national

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“Making a Difference in Our Learning”: Our Students’ Point of View by Cinzia Masia I have been working with other colleagues from different parts of Europe exploiting eTwinning platform since I had the opportunity to know the valid chances it offers. Every school year I involve my pupils because I believe it supports them in developing some of the 21st century learners’ skills such as critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration with others while knowing and understanding different cultures. In fact, one of the aim of our last project “Making a difference in our learning” was to engage our pupils more actively in their educational experience increasing their English communication skills in a concrete and meaningful context as sharing information and experiences.

and completed a provided worksheet in order to present their system of education to their partner schools. After that, the worksheets were shared and the information were turned into a mind map created with Popplet. All those maps allowed students to evaluate the different systems of education and they shared personal ideas and thoughts in Padlet walls created by teachers. “Discovering my Learning Style” was introduced in Module 4 to help students to discover their learning style (Visual, Auditory or Tactile) and help them to learn better. They tried out "What is your learning style questionnaire" (http://www.educationplanner.org/students/selfassessments/learning-styles-quiz.shtml) and posted the results of it in Padlet walls also providing feedback to partners from other schools.

Students had the chance to work together in order to:  describe their system of education and compare it to the partners’ ones  identify their learning styles and reflect on how to improve their school performance  discover how to cope with challenge and difficulty while being involved in the process of learning  develop useful strategies to help them to improve their achievements at school  imagine their dream schools integrating ICT in language learning They were involved in several activities to create, exchange and evaluate materials, sharing opinions and ideas but also increasing their Digital, Communication in foreign language, Social and civic competences. This experience was developed with partners from Greece, Spain and Italy too and all together we planned 8 different modules, tasks and final products to be shared in our TwinSpace. In Module 1 “Getting to know each other” students introduced themselves in the Forum. They started developing the topic of the project answering the question "How can I make a difference in my learning?" and replied to at least two partners from another school. Then, each partner prepared a presentation of the school and uploaded it by using Smilebox or Kizoa Video Maker. According to “Our Educational System” theme of Module 2, pupils had to discover our partners' system of education so to compare and contrast them. Students of each school worked together

“The power of believing that you can improve” was the focus of Module 5 where students were asked to watch two TED-talk videos "The Power of Yet" (https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_powe r_of_believing_that_you_can_improve) and "The key to success? Grit" (https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth _the_key_to_success_grit) in order to facilitate them to discover how to cope with challenge and difficulty while they are involved in their process of learning. This activity was useful to develop their receptive and communication skills watching the films and discussing on them. In fact, students interacted exchanging their views regarding the videos both in class and with the partner mates by using the Forum section. They also took notes of some keywords that referred to the secret of success and created a collaborative wordcloud by using www.tagul.com Furthermore, pupils of each school worked together to make a short animated video entitled the Secrets of Success by using www.powtoon.com

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In Module 6 students had the chance to imagine what their “Dream school” was like by taking into consideration special ways of making a difference in their learning. Referring to how they learn, the compulsory subjects, the ideology of the school, teaching methods, each partner presented its dream school involving learners creating a digital story or a collage or a Power Point Presentation. They could use tools such as Youtell, Kizoa, Youblisher, Genial.ly etc. and upload the final product in the proper Page. After that, each school partner voted for the best dream school based on specific criteria (originality, effectiveness and depth) by using www.tricider.com Finally, students had to listen to the song "The Wall" by Pink Floyd so to collaborate to create a new song entitled "My dream school". Every partner contributed with a verse. Module 7 focused on Dissemination and evaluation. Exploiting Padlet walls, pupils wrote their ideas evaluating the project by writing what they liked about it and what they did not. In groups, they used photos to create final presentations and videos with Kizoa Video maker. While describing our eTwinning experience I skipped Module 3 only because it was about Christmas traditions and so not part of the main topic. However, it was really interesting and involving because students had to describe Christmas traditions to the partner countries and compare them. They shared their Xmas information in PowerPoint Presentations, but also they prepared and sent Xmas cards to each other. In addition, pupils used the Forum to exchange wishes and share photos of themselves while opening the received greeting cards.

According to our planned project, nearly every month our Greek coordinator created a Page for the new Module with the topic, tasks, tools but also giving suggestions how to interact and share final products. Each school partner involved its own students developing the activities exploiting different strategies and approaches in order to reach the common aim. My pupils carried out their tasks during our curricular lessons and throughout the presentation step the topics were generally introduced by a brainstorming activity to elicit previous knowledge and ideas. Sometimes we used videos, pictures, questionnaires to encourage their curiosity. In plenary, pupils were stimulated to talk about their ideas in relation to the module they had to develop. During the production step, divided in small groups they carried out researches, collected pictures and information useful for the given task. After that, they used to select all the collected materials in order to produce the required or chosen final product. In groups they cooperated and interacted respecting roles and rules following the Cooperative Learning strategies. In the end, each group had to present and describe its own material to the class so to choose the best product to share in the TwinSpace. In this project communication and cooperation were important also for the teachers. We exploited as much as possible all the available tools of the TwinSpace so the Teachers’ Bulletin, the Project Journal sustained the improvement of the initial idea of this project. We often utilized the Mail Box because it notified us the emails so it allowed to check immediately the messages. Every month, we used them to talk about the introduction of the new module in order to set the process, the activities and the final products to share in the proper Page. The Mail Box was useful to do some adjustment but we particularly enjoyed Live events because we could meet and discuss directly when we needed to rearrange the activities. Not only, they were really

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------important especially for our pupils because they had the chance to interact directly with their partner mates.

MUST eTwinning Project by Anamaria Corina Golumbeanu

One important part of this project was the dissemination. We decided to organize an eTwinning corner in our school hall. The involved students could update the progress of the activities with pictures, photocopies, and drawings and it was also useful to let pupils of other classes know about this experience. In our school website there is an eTwinning page where we uploaded the project outline and the materials produced by our pupils in order to share them with other teachers and families. Our students’ parents have demonstrated interest on eTwinning projects during different events providing positive comments. During our school Open day 2016 pupils had the chance to describe the steps of the developed activities and talk about their personal experience to other parents and families. Some of them were so impressed that they asked our principal to give all the students the opportunity to take part in such projects. By the end of the school year all the products and videos created were shown to other classes and uploaded in our school website. Another chance to publish this project will be our regional workshops in order to show how an eTwinning project can be a powerful approach in supporting our students developing their competences. In fact, my students appreciated “Making a difference in our learning” because they considered it really interesting since it gave them the opportunity to know their ways of learning actively and to reflect on them interacting with other mates exploiting new ICT tools and programmes and improving their English language skills and competences. That is eTwinning!

If we are teachers at primary or lower secondary it is difficult to use ICT in ours classroom because students are not very good users. But we can improve their skills by eTwinning projects. I used some tools like Google Drive and some other web 2.0 tools. I linked an Erasmus+ KA2 project with an eTwinning project. It is about MUST project - Maths Understanding with help of Science and Technology. The main goal of the KA2 project was to create Moodle quizzes and to train teachers to use Moodle.

Cinzia Masia teaches English in a Lower High school in Sassari where she lives. She is an eTwinning Ambassador and she is interested in putting into practice new strategies and tools involving her students. She likes travelling and reading books.

The main goal of the eTwinning project MUST (https://twinspace.etwinning.net/10290/home) is to understand math and science by using mobile devices.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I blended the traditional methods with ICT. eTwinning projects was a perfect way to do that. First, students collected some data about famous mathematicians. I uploaded their presentations and crosswords in my Google Drive and I embeded them in the page of MUST twinspace. This activity is important for students to understand the evolution of math. Another activity is about using videoclips to investigate some applied math in phisics problems. Students must visualize and discover the connection between math and real life. YouTube has a great collection of motivating videoclips such as those about sports. I used ZeeMaps, a good web 2.0 tool, too. Students choose the stores on the map of their town. They linked real stores with real products and prices. In this activity students have developed math skills and their scientific language in an every day language. Some of my MUST resources have been shared in an ebook. The ebook was published in a page of the MUST eTwinning project, too. I consider that is very important to share and give feedback to improve the materials. The MUST project has won several recognitions by the third prize at the Made for Europe regional competition. And one of the proposed problems on the ZeeMaps has won third prize, too, at the PROMATEMATICA intercounty contest.

Anamaria Corina Golumbeanu is a math teacher at Secondary School „Ion Tuculescu” in Craiova, Romania and a Romanian eTwinning Ambassador. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ eTwinning Project: Allez-y, Go à Rio! by Anne Collet Belgium has got three official languages – French, Dutch and German – and we have the opportunity to have eTwinning-Belgica projects within our three communities. That is what I did last schoolyear with a Dutch colleague. My students had to do the activities in Dutch and my colleague’s students worked in French. They all worked in the foreign language they learn at school. We worked on the Olympic Games in Rio. First we organized our teams: we mixed our students. Then we prepared the activities and the calendar.

In November and December, our students started with getting to know each other. They had to use Padlet to write a short description (their names, their family, where they live, free-time activities) and send a photo. Then they prepared a poster about their hobbies with Postermywall and Thinglink. eTwinning project offer an oportunity to have a good visibility of our resources and activity, to collaborate with more teachers and to enrich our experience.

In January and February, our students worked on the Olympic Games: the history, the sports, famous Belgian Olympic participants and winners. They had eight different subjects and each team

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------had to choose one theme and work on it. They used Titanpad to collaborate. Then they had the choice among different tools to prepare their presentation. Tutorials were, of course, available to help! But they couldn’t use the same tool twice. In March and April, each team had to choose and present an Olympic sport. Here again, they had to discuss together and have a common agreement on the sport. In May, we finally ended by organizing our own Olympic Games. The teams had three different activities. The first activity was about creating a new logo. To choose the best ones we asked our colleagues teachers of drawing to select them. For the second activity each member of the teams had to take as many photos as possible of people practicing a sport. The photographs had to be real, I mean not coming from the internet. At last, they had to write as many words as possible in the language they learn about the Games. They did it with Padlet. After these three weeks, he had a final ranking and the winners got a little gift. We also prepared an evaluation of our project to end it up.

All our students were really enthusiastic about this project. They worked and communicated via the TwinSpace. They also wrote mails, they chatted and some of them had contacts on other social media. We got the eTwinning Quality Label for our project.

Here is the list of the tools our students used in their activities: www.padlet.com - it is a digital canvas to create beautiful projects that are easy to share and collaborate on. It works like a piece of paper. www.postermywall.com - to create custom posters, flyers and social media graphics. Huge selection of templates, easy to use! www.thinglink.com - to make your images interactive www.titanpad.com - it lets people work on one document simultaneously. This is useful to communicate and collaborate. www.emaze.com - online tool to create nice presentations or documents such as PowerPoint presentations. www.prezi.com - interactive tool that enables to create presentations without slides. You can zoom or unzoom, add texts, insert a YouTube video… www.zondle.com - it is a games-based learning app. www.magisto.com- it automatically turns your everyday videos and photos into beautifully edited movies, perfect for sharing. www.learningapps.org - app to support teaching process with little interactive modules. www.canva.com - you can Edit photos, create beautiful designs and professional graphics with www.poll-maker.com - online tool to create online polls.

Anne Collet is a Dutch and English teacher at Institut Notre-Dame Arlon in Belgium and an eTwinning ambassador. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Collaborative e-journal by Daniela Grecu Being a teacher of computer science at Matei Basarab High School, I tried to increase students' motivation to learn my subject through various applications that stimulate their imagination. Thus, in September 2015, I started a project in partnership with Zespół Szkół im.ks J. Londzina, Zabrzeg from Poland. The name of the project was "Collaborative e-journal". The aim of the collaborative project was to collect, arrange, create and publish different digital journals. One of the activities was to create a magazine with information gathered from the Internet which was to be scanned and assembled as a PDF document. Under an creative workshop, 15 students were involved to create a magazine "puzzle" (with information about Romania, Craiova and our school) by combining several materials prepared in groups. Pedagogical methods used were Jigsaw method, conversation, explanation. The workshop was held in the computer lab, students having the following materials available: computers, Internet resources, colored A4 sheets, markers, colors, scissors, glue, scanner.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Through this activity was monitored the ability to assemble a 'product' by establishing positive relationships and communication between participants and through teamwork. Stages of work: • Organising of the class in small groups • Distribution of materials to be used • Communication of tasks • Work in groups for accomplishment of the tasks • Observer activity - assembling materials made by groups • Analysis and presentation of the materials made The activity had a positive feedback from the participants in terms of the relevance of the workshop. Thereby, the composition of teams, the knowledge gained and the connections created, constituted attractive and motivating factors for each participant. Students felt very well because they had to work in groups and have appropriate materials. Viewing magazine - the result of work at the final was a reason of pride because each has contributed something to the final product.

All materials created by students were then posted on the eTwinning platform.

And now I will share with you a list of online tools that can be used to create an e-journal or to communicate with students: 1. https://www.smore.com/ Smore makes it easy to design beautiful and effective online flyers and newsletters. Example: https://www.smore.com/ay474

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. https://www.canva.com/create/infographics/ Infographics make complex information eye catching, shareable and easily digestible. Most importantly, they play a crucial role in the increasingly visual world of marketing. Canva’s infographic maker includes hundreds of free design elements, allowing you to experiment with data visualization like a pro. Example: https://www.canva.com/design/DABkXEzzTiw/gyzW tQHeiCj0eS6bYYfPOg/edit 3. https://titanpad.com/ TitanPad is a free web 2.0 tool that enables users to work collaboratively in a single document. Similar to Google Documents, this online tool allows many people to work simultaneously on the document. Users can chat while working on the document, can import existing documents to work on and also export documents from TitanPad. Webography:  http://proiecte.pmu.ro/c/document_library/ get_file?p_l_id=14661&folderId=18026&na me=DLFE-1201.pdf  https://ro.pinterest.com/ncarrw/teambuildinggames/

Daniela Grecu has a degree in computer science from the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Department of Informatics, University of Craiova, Romania. She has been teaching for 16 years now, she is currently a teacher at Matei Basarab Highschool in Craiova. She has attended several training courses through the Lifelong Learning Programme’s Comenius and Grundtvig and now Erasmus+. She is the organizer of two events at county level: a county contest entitled "Quality Education in a United Europe" and a county debate "Education to European Standards". She has published articles, studies, project lessons, educational dissemination pieces on different platforms and electronic journals: www.didactic.ro www.iteach.ro "Focus on Education", "InfoEd". Her personal web page can be found at http://ticgrecu.weebly.com/

eTwinning and the Competences for a Democratic Culture - Living Together as Equals by Maria Teresa Rughi The project titled “Hostel Europe” allowed a significant reflection and debate on the urgent theme of exchanges among individuals and broader migration movements, which are a great challenge in the new horizons of intercultural relationships in Europe. We strongly believe that if young people learn to value human dignity and human rights, cultural diversity and democracy, then these values will be used as the foundation for all of their choices and actions, and they will willingly pursue their lives in a manner that respects the dignity and human rights of other people and the principles of democracy. The choice of the topic came out directly from the students who witness a growing presence of immigrants in their communities, who hardly find acceptance and inclusion from the local inhabitants. We experienced different realities linked to migration and students had the opportunity to put their competences of active citizenship in action. In fact they collaboratively agreed upon proposals to better the immigrants’ conditions, and sent these written documents to all the local administrators of the municipalities involved in the project.

The cross curricular topic allowed to practice different competences. Actually every competence has behavioural expressions, and all competent behaviours are a product of deploying one or more underlying competences. Behaviours are not separate competences in themselves, but are instead a means to assess whether or not individual competences have been acquired, so that behaviours themselves are the external outcomes of applying competences to meet the demands,

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------challenges and opportunities presented by specific situations. The topic, in our specific case, required the students to adopt the proper behaviour to face the challenge of acceptance and inclusion. At the beginning it was not easy to decline the theme in a way that could capture young students’ interest and motivation. So we decided to start from their common life, with the question “Why do people move?”. This question led them to talk about their school trips, their favourite sport and open a forum on how sport can be a powerful means of acceptance and integration. Then we compared data and statistics about migration in our different European countries and played with Kahoot to see how much young people know about the European Union.

But the most significant impact was the meeting with two young refugees, from Burkina Faso and Nigeria, who told us their frightening voyage to Libia first and then to Italy (https://youtu.be/gf61TsUNW-I). All students were really touched and moved by their stories. We shared the video with our partners and with a tricider and other shared videos proposed possible solutions to help; an investigation on existing humanitarian associations and NGOs followed. We also read an article, with a video inside, on the Syrian refugees, and realized the strict link between the war, the climate change and the lack of water. Some of the most striking sentences were selected and shared. Then students went back again to their private life and jumped back in history, telling stories of migration in their families, perfectly understanding that we are a nation of migrants, not only to other countries but also from South to North. The final step was a collaborative activity, in which 6 transnational teams, of 6 students each, debated

and agreed on proposals and suggestions to be sent to local authorities of each single municipality of the partner countries. The value of the project is mainly the enthusiasm and the interest the students showed in the various phases. They worked hard until the very end of the school year with a high level of personal and group involvement. Moreover the project turned out to be a favourable context to practice not only values, such as human dignity, human rights, cultural diversity, but also attitudes and skills. Among the attitudes we could mention openness to cultural otherness, respect, civicmindedness, responsibility, self-efficacy, and tolerance. They had the opportunity to learn sensitivity towards cultural diversity, views, beliefs, values and practices which differ from their own; curiosity and interest in discovering and learning about, other cultural orientations and other world views, beliefs, and practices; emotional readiness to relate to others who are perceived to be different; a sense of civic duty, a willingness to contribute actively to community life, a willingness to participate in decisions concerning the affairs, concerns and common good of the community, and a willingness to engage in dialogue with other members of the community who have a responsibility.

Students could also practice some transversal skills: analytical and critical, weighing up the pros and cons of the available options, resource analysis and risk analysis (understanding and assessing the risks associated with each option and how they might be managed); skills of listening and observing, paying

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------close attention to the behaviour of other people; flexibility and adaptability, overcoming anxieties, worries and insecurities about meeting and interacting with other people who are perceived to be different; linguistic, communicative skills, that is to communicate clearly in a range of situations expressing their opinions, explaining and clarifying ideas, advocating, promoting, arguing, reasoning, discussing, debating, persuading and negotiating; co-operation and conflict resolution skills, taking action together with others in a reciprocal and coordinated manner, identifying and setting group goals, pursuing the goals of a group and adapting one’s own behaviour for the purpose of achieving these goals, appreciating all group members’ talents and strengths, and helping others. The project helped all of us gain a basic knowledge and understanding of critical human rights challenges in our world and we strongly hope that through eTwinning we can give a hand to young people build up a better future.

Maria Teresa Rughi is an English teacher in upper secondary school in Italy, an eTwinning ambassador since 2012 and a pedagogical referent for the region of Umbria since 2014. In her experience eTwinning projects represent the added value to education. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Better e-Safe Than Sorry by Deyana Peykova TwinSpace: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/4386/home

The project This eTwinning project included schools in six countries – Bulgaria, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain and UK. We aimed to equip children with the skills and knowledge they need to use the technology safely and responsibility, managing and recognizing the risks, wherever and whenever they go online; to promote safe and responsible behaviours. The aims All the students use ICT in a lot of different ways: creating slideshows, taking pictures, making videos, doing research, writing emails, etc. But do we know how to use them safely? The aim of the project is to try to:  Implement good ICT practices in our schools by creating or improving our Acceptable Use Policy  Raise e-safety awareness  Improve our pupils' English skills.  Help our pupils to work/to do research collaboratively Activities When we started the project we applied for an eSafety label. Our school got the bronze one.

Each school got an action plan – different activities the school has to do in order to become safer. The students present their schools presenting the equipment they have at their disposal in their school (multimedia room, laptops, wifi, tablets, etc.) and explaining what action of their action plan they want to focus on and why.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Our video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHBOQ5EJvuc &edit=vd Each student also answered an online survey about e-safety done by the teachers. The results are here: https://docs.google.com/a/stmichaelcollege.nl/form s/d/1VJiC7B1jQAyrfOZl80IhUX5T4XA3QLeThTS8PM o6rds/viewanalytics

Students got to know each other by writing emails to each other and by describing each other orally using Fotobabble, etc. In intercultural groups students did research about topics: Social Networks; Smartphone Use; Addiction to Video games; Cyberbullying; Plagiarism; Sexting/Grooming. Everything was gathered on a collaborative Google doc per topic. They produced their own survey and ask students at their schools to complete them. The results are analyzed; posters and infographics were made.

Deyana Peykova is an English teacher in Hristo Smirnenski Primary School, Rakovski, Bulgaria. She has been registered on eTwinning since 2010. eTwinning is a very special place for her because she has met her Comenius and Erasmus+ friends here during these years.

Small Scientists from European Kindergartens by Ionela Camelia Lazea The project “Small Scientists discovering the sky” started in January 2016 and it had 11 members from 8 European countries: Poland (2 partners), Romania (2 partners), Turkey (2 partners), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Latvia, Portugal and Croatia. We used English to communicate during this project and all the children involved were between the ages 3 – 7. The objectives the project focused on were enhancing and improving communication between the pupils from different cultures, improve their English Language skills, begin to use computer and ICT, do science experiments which improve pupils’ creative thinking.

The innovation in this project was mainly from its theme "Small scientists discovering the sky". During this project we used various methods and techniques especially experiments, to learn more about our theme and to attract children and motivate them. For a 6 month project, the activities were plenty, interesting, well planned, in a logical succession and succeeded in drawing us closer together. Every task planned in this project could be carried out by the partners only through intense collaboration and serious commitment. In January: Partners voted the logo, presented their group, school, city and country on Twinspace and made a board with the partners. The children were presented the project name and partners and we searched for partners’ countries on the map of Europe and made a project board. They were also presented the pictures and videos taken by partners with their kindergartens on Twinspace and they watched with great interest. In order for children to learn more about the other countries present in the project, in February we prepared a series of games where children could learn more about different cultures, flags etc. Each partner had to think and propose one game in the

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computer, art and drama categories and apply 3 games, one from each category with children. We also organised on line meetings where children could interact live with each other and they could introduce themselves, sing songs, and recite poems. During 6 weeks in March and April: Each partner had to prepare 6 experiments performed by children, the teacher only guided them. I presented the children the theme of this project and explained that we had to do experiments on a specific theme involving the sky. The children came up with the idea about water, so all our experiments are about it: Cleaning water – filtering, Ice melting, Mini water cycle, Walking water, Water absorption and Water level - freezing. The children took the lead in applying the experiments; they were almost independent in these activities, I only gave them the instructions. During another 6 weeks in April and May: Each partner chose 6 experiments from ones the partners presented and applied them with the children. We chose: The volcano, Blowing up a balloon with vinegar and baking soda, Water and balloon, Hot Air - Cold Air, How Does it Rain? and Make Your Own Rainbow.

In May we also sent letters with souvenirs to other partners. Children participated with great interest in sending these letters to the other children as well as they were very curious each time we received a letter. They each brought a little souvenir that they picked with their parents. They were very excited to know where the souvenirs were going and why. The children were actively involved in filling the envelopes, sticking the stamps and delivering the envelopes to the post office.

From our activities and from the partners activities, by using different techniques exploring the sky, the children learned more about rainbow, water, rain, air, etc. and they enjoyed trying new techniques and using new materials like food colours, freezers, timers, balloons, bottles etc.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In June we created an e-book with the experiments entitled “Science Experiments for Preschool”. The children made drawings of their experiments and some of them are found in the book. This last month we also had a survey for the evaluation of the project.

so we have their parents’ consent to use their photos. We used ICT tools in many of our activities throughout the project: - the children used photo cameras to capture images required for the presentation of the kindergarten and its external environment or snapshots of classroom activities; - the children watched on the project’s TwinSpace posts about other partners and representative images of their countries; - the children had fun learning more about other countries when playing the computer games prepared by the partners; - the children participated in online video conferences via Skype; - I used special software for image and films processing and presentation: Padlet, Vimeo, Cyberlink Power Director, Collage Maker to present children's activity and evaluation; - I used StepMap to create a virtual link between our countries on the European map; - I used a special tool to create computer games: Learningapps.org; - the teacher administrators special software to create the e-book “Science experiments for preschools”; - the teacher administrators used Weebly to create a website for the project. Participating in this eTwinning project was a great opportunity for me and my students to play with experiments. They really enjoyed it and told their parents about the experiments they liked and also did them at home.

All throughout the project we collaborated very well with the partners, especially the administrators. Although the time was short and we had many activities, we where all very interested and helped each other in accomplishing all the project activities. Children participated in all the activities and followed with great interest the participation of the other children. From games to experiments, the children and partners had to propose and then chose from the partners’ proposals and apply the same number of games or experiments. This was a great idea, one that encouraged us more to see that we were not working in parallel, but working together. In order to achieve the project’s pedagogical objectives we used many ICT tools. Firstly, we made sure the children are safe in the virtual space,

All my students’ parents were very glad that I introduced this project in the classroom; they congratulated me for the idea and thanked me for the opportunity. My students told them each time we had a meeting or did an experiment and the parents were very interested to find out more about the partners and experiments. They always checked for new additions on the eTwinning board. Some of the parents also did some of the experiments at home with the help of their children. As a general opinion, they were all very pleased to see their children so interested and eager to participate in this project and congratulated us all (all the partners from this project) for our initiative. My headmaster and colleagues appreciated all the experiments as a good way to implement good practices and also the students and their parents’ reactions and experiences during this project. They believe that the methods and techniques used offer innovative and creative kindergarten education. They also agreed that the students develop their foreign language, communication and also

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------collaboration skills when participating in an eTwinning project. It offers the opportunity to see how kindergarten teachers from other countries work, to adapt those practices in our work and also enhances our abilities to collaborate, improve our language and ICT skills. My kindergarten benefits from prestige and popularity in the community after the completion of an international project.

GOOD PRACTICE: The Use of the Methodology Based on Projects by Francoise Altamura

The most successful result of this project is that at its end, my students know more about water, air and sky since the beginning of the project. I think the project was very well planned and it offered the opportunity for collaborative work in almost all the activities, this way all the teachers and students felt involved and part of a great project.

What is PBL It is proposed to the class a target, a final product, something to create, something tangible and visible to realize in a certain time.

Ionela Camelia Lazea is a pre-primary teacher from Bistrita, northern Romania. She has been teaching for 8 years to children between 3 and 6. She has been active on eTwinning since 2010 and she has participated in many Learning Events, webinars and eTwinning projects. She also had the opportunity to be member in a Comenius project in her nursery school. She enjoys very much the challenges eTwinning provides teachers with, and she loves applying them into her work. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Personally, working with PBL has facilitated a lot my teaching of French conversation, managing to engage students actively to participate in their education.

Features of the PBL Working in small groups, each student is commissioned to produce something according to his/her tastes or to his/her skills. Each member of the group helps the others to produce an outcome. Project planning You have to plan the project in detail: the timing and the activities to be carried out by the different groups of students, and supply worksheets that will help the organization of the group work Assessment It is important to provide both group and individual feedback in order to avoid discussion. Each member produces his/her own part that converges in the work of the group. Visibility At the beginning of the project it is fundamental to plan how to make outcomes of the class visible: on the school website, during the party at the end of year, making exhibitions etc ... I think that the most important moment for students is when they become part of the community, when they feel proud and satisfied of their product. Example This year, I proposed to a second class to produce a cookbook. The food topic is part of the French program of the second year. After a brainstorming session on the food that is being wasted, the students collected the family recipes made with leftovers. First, they made a presentation of the recipe with https://snapguide.com/ Then they created intelligent games with the lexicon used for recipes with https://quizlet.com Everything has been collected on a digital wall here https://padlet.com/sefralt/recetteantigaspillage2n2 016 Finally, some students have produced an ebook with all the work published on the school website http://joom.ag/kBpQ

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Through the recipe book and the games, students have successfully achieved objectives concerning the book topic with all high marks in tests that were: the oral presentation of their recipe and a lexical control.

eTwinning Contact Seminar in Croatia by Zeljka Zagorac The Agency for Mobility and European Union Programs organized the Slavic contact seminar from 15-17 October, 2015 in Dubrovnik entitled "eTwinning projects in kindergarten and first grades of elementary school".

I think that emotionally involving the students is something not to be underestimated in the learning process. In my experience, I have noticed that the more students enjoy the activities that I propose, the easier it is for them to learn French. In May-July 2016, the European Commission and SchoolEducationGateway offered training on pedagogy of projects through their online course Introducing Project-Based Learning in Your Classroom http://academy.schooleducationgateway.eu/it/web/ developing-project-based-learning-in-yourclassroom/home

Francoise Altamura has been a French conversation teacher since 1996, in a secondary school near Rome, Italy. She has always tried to involve her students in activities in which they could practise French in an authentic way. She started with eTwinning projects and video conferences in 2007. Her project "BLA... BLA... BLA..." has become a kit on the European portal. In 2013, she launched the idea of the creation of the eTwinning Italian page on Wikipedia. Since 2008, she has collaborated in delivering face-to-face seminars, and webinars for new eTwinners in Latium and from 2014, at national level: Basic webinars and TwinSpace. Since 2009, she has been an eTwinning ambassador for her region, Latium, and she participated in the online training course for eTwinning Ambassadors in 2015-2016.

This form of short-term professional training gathered about fifty teachers and educators registered users eTwinning portal from Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovakia, Czech and Poland. The aim of the seminar was to bring together educators and the first grade teachers in order to design and launch new projects together, learn how to successfully integrate eTwinning projects in the curriculum and how to use some Web 2.0 tools in the classroom and projects. Upon the completion of the seminar 11 new international projects were launched. Although I am a long-time user of eTwinning with 12 realized (completed) projects, I decided to check in at this seminar. I did the application form and motivational video in which I described why I want to be a part of this seminar, why my students and me want to participate in eTwinning projects. During the seminar I found some colleagues interested in working in the school garden. We opened the project “Vrtimo se u vrtu" and designed the objectives, tasks, activities and expected results. In the project involved participants are: Primary School Borovje-Zagreb, Primary school Fran Krsto Frankopan Zagreb, Varazdin kindergarten and Primary school Domžale and Primary school Dolenjske Toplice, both from Slovenia.

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The project relates to the development of low beams in school gardens where students will get to know various kinds of seeds and plants, follow the process from seed to mature plants, introduce value of organic garden and organic food, participate in all work relating to the garden and finally enjoy the fruits. Since the teacher from Slovenia has rich experience in this field, with her knowledge she mentored the other colleagues and students "beginners". The course of the project could be followed at school Web site of the participants (http://osborovjezg.skole.hr/nastava/projekti/vrtimo_se_na_vrtu). In my school, school garden was created just before the seminar, as one of the activities of the Erasmus + project "The healthier, the happier." During the school year we have joined another eTwinning project "Mislim zeleno, čuvam Zemlju (Think green and take care of the Earth” so the activities in the garden were frequent and abundant. Participating students: from 1st to 7th grade. We planted the seeds of old varieties of tomatoes and lettuce, peas grown in the classroom, planted spice and horticultural plants, keeping the garden clean and tidy. Younger students painted wildlife in the garden and created garden ornaments, while older students created seeding calendars. We exchanged seeds with students of other schools. From January 2016 we started to publish the journal of the project, which can be viewed also as an online edition. The journal is published every month, and in it we publish materials which present our gardens and gardening activities. The journal also has entertainment content (crossword puzzles, games, quizzes, etc.).

Feedback of the project is extremely positive: students were very motivated, were informed by the ways of purposeful planning of time and space, have had to face the occasional failure, and understand the reasons why a plant dies or is going badly, enjoyed practical work using garden tools, but also tools of woodworking in making garden ornaments. As the project progressed, the great ideas for decoration have occurred. Students were very happy when the first fruits of the garden appeared small cherry tomatoes and zucchini and pears on the tree.

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Željka Zagorac works as a primary teacher in Zagreb. She is a long time eTwinning user with a rich experience. She was the coordinator of the Comenius Project “Europe mix” 2012-2014, and now she is deputy coordinator of Erasmus+ project "The healthier, the happier." She uses web 2.0 tools in her classroom and as an extracurricular activity does Informatics with her students. She also edits the school website. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hello to All eTwinning Members! by Daniela Ružić Mrak I work in a small mountain elementary school in Croatia. School "Kneza Branimir" has 136 students. For several years, I am honoured to be a member of this team of teachers who selflessly participate in various projects, national, European and beyond. My beginnings are related to Eratosthenes measure the extent of the equator. I never imagined that the children with so many interests involved in this, as well as in projects that followed. I learned a lot from my colleagues, and especially in the field of information technology, and I received an eTwinning Quality Label.

We planned meetings at which teachers, students and parents would visit the gardens of other participants and share experiences, but unfortunately we could not realize it. The project will continue to go on in the next school year. We plan to enrich the garden with new plants, increase the amount and introduce students to entrepreneurship by organizing sales fair. We will create garden furniture from wooden pallets and make this place a garden oasis where we will be happy to spend time.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I must point out cooperation with Greece, France and Romania. After Eratosthenes next project was national, Pollution sound. There we met a highly developed technology to measure the volume, along data, learn about the dangers of noise.

Of environmental awareness, we continued with our colleagues from Romania with the project The Harmony of Nature. We had the opportunity to present Croatian national parks, as well as protected species of birds. Children have a lot of exploring and match presentation.

It is such a great pleasure to be a member of this group of teachers! We hope new and interesting projects through which we will continue our friendship.

Daniela Ružić Mrak is a teacher of mathematics and physics. She has graduated from the Teacher's Academy in Split, Croatia. She is also a vocation counselor physics, thus attaining the highest level in the teaching profession in her country. She has been working for 34 years. For the last 24 years she has been working in PS Kneza Branimir, a small school with 136 students now. She teaches mathematics and physics. She has been involved in eTwinning for 3 years and has taken part in projects. Her English is not perfect, but eTwinning has helped her to renew her knowledge of the language. She has been a member of ISE (Inspiring Science Education) for 4 years. She has participated with her students in the Science Festival (held in the whole of Croatia in April) for 10 years. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Italian Plan for Digital School via eTwinning by Paola Arduini, Laura Maffei, Marilina Lonigro and Elena Pezzi In Italy, eTwinning is not the pioneers’ way anymore: it has been officially recognized by the Italian Ministry of Education as “good practice” in the field of didactics in the “Piano Nazionale Scuola Digitale” (PNSD).

Now we joined the project, which are the initials of France and Greece - Mr Bean Mrs Lentil & their tiny peas. Nice project, in which children can develop in many areas of ecology, photography, computer science, languages, cooking, growing plants, physics and so on.

The PNSD - National Plan for Digital school - is a long-term education policy launched by the Italian Ministry of Education in October 2015. It is a comprehensive innovation of the Italian school system; its vision is to promote 'innovation in pedagogy in a digital age.' During the last school year, the plan was implemented in every Italian school, with a budget of 1.1 billion Euros. The digital plan consists of nine parts, with 35 key actions, which encompass everything from changes to buildings, learning environments and facilities, to improvements in students’ digital competencies, new pedagogical tools, staff training and the use of new digital administration systems.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In the introduction, the plan tells the story of the Italian "digital movement", including those individual teachers and entire schools that promoted and organized projects based on innovative methods for teaching and for transforming learning spaces. Projects such as eTwinning (...) were innovation-training grounds for the most advanced areas of digital technology in schools (such as learning spaces and scenarios, inclusion, collaboration and scientific culture).

forerunners of PNSD first, and can now be the teachers of the digital era as envisaged by the Italian Ministry of Education. Once the LE was launched, we reached the maximum number of members (300) in two hours. We had more than 1000 applications, many of them submitted by new eTwinners, which shows the level of engagement and interest of Italian teachers in innovation and digital opportunities.

The plan was discussed in schools and greeted with enthusiasm and hope in innovation that is felt as a basic need by teachers and stakeholders. At the national level, the first action was to choose a Digital Ambassador (Animatore Digitale) in each school, a teacher who has a strategic role in spreading innovation in schools. Many Italian eTwinners are Animatori Digitali in their schools, as they already know and believe in this kind of activities. Against this scenario of big changes and new perspectives, in a group of 4 eTwinning ambassadors we had the idea to propose a Learning Event for Italian teachers who looked for cooperation & innovation via eTwinning and the PNSD. The title eTwinning, PNSD e AD - il valore aggiunto della coprogettazione digitale nell’innovazione della scuola italiana (eTwinning, Digital Plan and digital ambassadors - the added value of digital cooperation in innovating Italian School) wanted to enhance the links between the vision of PNSD and the concrete innovation carried on in the last 10 years by eTwinning.

For this reason, a second session was soon planned and realized a month later, with a very large number of eTwinners who successfully completed all of the activities. Here are some numbers of the first session: 1,150 applicants; 306 accepted; 154 uploaded their final work (more than 50 did it collaboratively); the posts in the forums were 2,230. Our aim was to show that the “eTwinning way” is a brilliant way to put into practice the guidelines of PNSD - which means that eTwinners were

In the two sessions there was a balanced mix of new and experienced eTwinners, since many teachers, getting to know on different socials about

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------this Learning Event, joined eTwinning for the first time, so they could attend a specific course to meet their needs of training about the challenges posed by the PNSD.

Finland, with Enzo Zecchi, professor at Bologna University, expert of PBL.

The LE was from the very beginning a great opportunity to spread the eTwinning way in groups of teachers and schools that had not been so interested yet. We organized the LEs in three steps: 1) Introductions based on the individual starting point of the users, as teachers, eTwinners, professionals in different kinds of schools and different parts of Italy. 2) Analysis of the 35 actions of PNSD and reflection. The users had to reflect on the innovations introduced by PNSD and imagine the school of the future. 3) Users where asked to “adopt” one of the actions of the previous step and think of how to put it into practice in their schools. They were also encouraged to create groups in order to work on the final assignment: a practical reflection on how to implement one of the document’s actions in their school/net of schools, also via eTwinning. During the two sessions of the Learning Event we hosted several webinars: with expert eTwinners from all over Europe introducing their projects, with Daniele Barca, MIUR representative and Tiina Saarisalmi, introducing the digital pedagogy in

We also had some “eTwinning cafes”, live meetings in the platform where we discussed with groups up to 30/40 people some specific topics, as BYOD practice, or how to plan eTwinning projects, etc.

The majority of users showed a deep engagement in the topic, a considerable motivation and a sincere desire of collaboration with the other colleagues who participated in the LE.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Being aware of that, we created a forum section called “Let’s work together” where they could create groups of partners both to work on the final task and think about future cooperation. This section collected 350 posts, which demonstrates that teachers need to share ideas, experiences and projects with colleagues (as we did - in fact - in our team: together is always better!). This was the most positive aspect of our LE: teachers working cooperatively and discovering during their work in the platform aspects of PNSD & eTwinning that they did not think of before. This way of training teachers was proposed as a model of training: working in groups to realize a project and sharing results and best practices. Some groups prepared their final assignments as a planning for new eTwinning projects consistent with PNSD – some examples: coding in primary classrooms, Bring Your Device projects or STEMfor-girls approaches. Moreover, working in a team as experts was for us a great asset - and participants felt the collaboration and cooperation behind the scenes, and appreciated it. Hopefully, this will encourage them to try the “eTwinning way” for themselves: which means, start working collaboratively into eTwinning. We also think that our LE represents a “teaching model” we offered to participants: a group who offers training, working in team, can be considered a possibility for training organizations in all European schools.

Paola Arduini, Laura Maffei, Marilina Lonigro and Elena Pezzi are teachers from Italy and eTwinning Ambassadors. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Why I Have Chosen eTwinning by Iuliana-Florentina Ispir In the summer of the year 2011 I did not have a clue about eTwining activities. After being chosen as the coordinator of educational partnerships by the council of teachers, in the first local meeting I had on my town, I heard for the first time about eTwinning, even if the discussions were mostly about Comenius, Leonardo da Vinci and Grundtvig. From that small corner I was sitting in I was listening in peace, and I finally understood that I can learn and do more. Curiosity guided me and today I have in my personal map nineteen projects. In two of them I did not work, for two other I have not received the certifying card yet because of the poor communication, but I have fifteen eTwinning Certificates of National Quality and two of European Quality. I managed to involve three other colleagues in projects, and next year I will try to involve two more. What benefit did I get? I met great friends around the world, I improved my English skills, I understood that I can learn to work in a sector that was unknown to me until then and the introduce the new knowledge in my daily work with kids, I promoted many online courses that made me evolve and by learning new things at home, using the computer, I discovered new communities like I-Teach, Teacher Academy, School Education Gateway. But the biggest benefit was that I improved a lot the communication with my students and their parents, by evolving them too on the projects I have developed. What really satisfied me were the respect and the appreciation of my colleagues who have been working on Erasmus projects. They all were impressed by my personal work, which was sustained financially just by me. Finally: why e-Twinning? For a better development of the teaching process, for not getting isolated as a teacher in a world that has no perspective, for meeting new educational partners and finding out new things like the tradition of planting trees every year in our backyard in the project "Plant a Tree for Peace".

Iuliana-Florentina Ispir is a teacher in Rm. Valcea, Romania. She has been working in the educational sector for the last eighteen years. She is a firstgrade teacher, and her educational activity is meant to prepare the younger students for school, by teaching them to socialize, to communicate and to learn new things about life and nature. She wants her students to learn by exploring and discovering on their own and not by simply accumulating the information that she gives them.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“Africa, Hello!” on 3 Continents by Svetla Popova

We decided to invite students from different countries. We were pleased to see that African theme is interesting for young people of three continents: ASIA - students from LEPL Simon Skhirtladze Public School, town of Oni - Georgia and students from Primary school N19, town of Vanadzor – Armenia; EUROPE - students from 6ο Δημοτικό Σχολείο Αγίας Παρασκευής, town of Agia Paraskeyi - Greece and students from ICS "Vannini-Lazzaretti" - Plesso Primaria "Luigi Santucci" town of Castel del Piano (GR) - Italy; and AFRICA - students from Ecole Primaire PRIMAT, Reunion island, a french territory.

The common products - real and virtual that we have created are 14 – real eTwinning calendar 2016; virtual “Wall of friendship”; film “Friends of 3 continents”; interactive picture “Our intercontinental team”; virtual wall "Interesting Facts about Africa” with the help of parents; real competition for a logo of the project; real competition for an anthem of the project; a common Speaking English eBook with African animals, plants and birds - after work in 3 international teams and online voting. Each partner created handmade reader's native language with African animals, plants and birds. In this funny way the children learned the alphabet of the native language, illustrated with their own drawings. We wrote a common story "Kelvin" and created a virtual book with the storyline. The students collaborated simultaneously in the online platform http://cosketch.com/ to draw illustrations for the book. We were divided into 2 international teams. We created and played wide variety of games - 16 in number. This fun creative activity helped students to know better Africa, African traditions, flora and fauna. We met one another "eye to eye" 4 times in online video conferencing and students practiced their English. We found with the help of parents and published a lot of educational materials for Africa - for its nature, music, traditions ... We handmade African instruments with the help of parents and played various African songs with them.

Thus began our adventure in the world of eTwinning. We set ourselves various goals: Laying the foundations of literacy Studying African nature, music and culture Building a belief that books and computers can live together in the modern world.

Children from Bulgaria sent a letter with gifts handmade by themselves. We cannot wait to get surprises from Africa. And they were not late. Our friends from Africa were sent gifts - the most impressive were the drawings active volcano in Reunion.

For registration of project activities we used 35 ICT tools - all free, with the exception of one of them.

Bulgaria and Reunion publicly presented together the project "Africa, hello!" in Bulgaria. It was very

Motto: “Young children who start speaking early with children from other countries will be able to live with them in a world of peace and tolerance.” Bruno Colavin – project partner, a teacher from Reunion Island, France, Africa In the summer of 2015 I and the children that I worked with in kindergarten visited Shumen Regional Library and borrowed many books to read. The most interesting were African tales. Thus was born the idea of 6-7 year olds to offer partnership for an eTwinning project to children from Africa.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------complicated technically to realize this kind of performance. But the result was perfect. It was very exciting for all attendees in the hall. I met amazing partners from 3 continents in eTwinning – Teona, Katerina, Antonella, Nicoletta and Bruno. They are my friends now and forever. This project is a wonderful example of cooperation and responsibility to achieve its goals. The project finished. I can fix it with one word as joyful experience - for both students and teachers. Now children from Bulgaria beg their parents to take them on a trip to Africa...

Sveyla Popova has been a member of eTwinning since 2009. She participated in 26 projects so far, 7 of them were her idea. She holds 5 European Quality Labels. She participated in the European eTwinning Conference in Rome, 2014. She has participated in various European and national conferences and seminars. She has received several special awards from the NSS in Bulgaria. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Door Always Open to the World by Francesca Minaudo SUMMER! ... "Mental" rest time for the students, suspension of the didactic activities deserved holidays for the teachers and non-teaching staff, but ... also time to assess of everything that took place throughout the school year: verifications, evaluations, certification for competences, state examinations and more. And eTwinning? YES, eTwinning has been the backbone of the entire educational path with National and European Projects, Webinars, Seminars, online conferences, training courses for eTwinners to Ambassadors and meetings Training Information and Dissemination as an Ambassador at schools which required my presence. Developed projects have all been immersive both for me and for both students and parents who participated actively in the Live links. I believe that the parent-school partnership is the "main pivot to keep the ever-open door to the world" for the integral development of the personality of each individual. A project of social character that has aroused particular interest was: LBM (Light of Blind Man) aimed at knowing the problems of the blind and partially sighted persons in all its facets and how the "problem" is seen and experienced in the various countries European fundamental .The objective of the project was to use exciting educational strategies and fascinating exploration and audio read discovery of Braille and the Montessori method for the discovery of the world of things, comparing them of their territory with the others.

The unusual use of the communicative potential followed flexible pathways, which have provided

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------different strategies creating experiential contexts that have aroused curiosity in the students-rich situations.

participation. The implementation of the project has also allowed the creation of vertical continuity between the different "types of schools." The project has found productive educationally and has not weighed the workload of teachers work.

Our goals in this project were: 1) to help the younger generation in the know even par with the same problems and "get, for ablebodied, in a challenging environment of those who see less or blindness". 2) The interaction among peers and collaborative efforts for a healthy social lifestyle. 3) The creation of a database full of "sound library multilingual etc. After this great experience, "work in eTwinning" made us reflect on what we and especially children have learned and internalized by collaboration with other children their same but different in language. Specifically, the students have been started to raise awareness and knowledge of other realities regarding those who see us less and the various forms of blindness, and the observation of how the same subject, in the exchange of initiatives and activities, and may inspire other suggestions learning. This exchange of initiatives made it possible to develop new activities and educational proposals with implications of knowledge and common interests but also different, always in line with the reference matrix. Common strategies adopted to document the path were: videos, records, recordings. Verification and assessment allowed us to detect the recurrence of pupils’ knowledge. We also aroused interest the initiative to involve parents in reading fairy tales, stories and video recordings and observe, at the end of experience, the various initiatives arising from this shared

The result was that: we had become aware that you can not only work while locked in their classroom and have no comparison with other colleagues out of context and the children made friends with other foreign children. eTwinning is the journey that every pupil and every teacher should do in the course of his life. Everything passes, but the experience you do with eTwinning remains indelible in time. We are confronted, friendships are formed, we discover new worlds and new ways of communicating. All ... to have a share of united Europe in peace and solidarity among similar to build a BEST WORLD! ... And finally I would like to quote a phrase from the novel "The story of a seagull and the cat who

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------taught her to fly": - "Fly only those who dare to do" and with eTwinning you fly higher and higher.

Francesca Minaudo is a teacher in kindergarten. She has participated in Comenius, Arion, UNESCO, eTwinning projects. She has several specializations: Montessori, Polyvalent, Expert in language teaching infant Hocus and Lotus. She is an eTwinning ambassador in Sicily.

test (the whole communication-collaboration process of our project was going to be carried out over the internet, so it was essential for us – teachers – to inform and show our students about some pros & cons of the internet use, that they might not be aware of) and our last meeting was in May celebrating the Diversity Day! That day (09.05.2016) was really special because teachers and students from six (6) European countries were visiting the Greek school, who participates in an Erasmus+KA2 project (KULTURKIOSK). So some teachers and students from the other countries were willing to be part of our last online meeting, celebrating all together the eTwinning DIVERSITY DAY! Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiRObcwnUY8 the video of that day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ütekuun: Together (EN) – Gemeinsam (DE) – Mazi (μαζί / GR) – Koos (ES): An eTwinning Project through Skype by Johanna Chardaloupa Peiramatiko Gymnasio Panepistimiou Patron (Greece) and Põlva Põhikool (Estonia) have a history in collaboration through eTwinning Projects. Since 2013 the two schools are communicating, collaborating and creating (mainly) through skype during the ordinary school lesson period (in German) [1) 2013-2014: DaF- Webschule/: https://www.tes.com/lessons/waHq_dOnJDFjJg/daf -webschule 2) 2014-2015: DaF-Digistunden: https://www.tes.com/lessons/EukAUNjPQQe8qA/da f-digistunden?redirect-bs=1 3) 2015-2016: ütekuun: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/16091/home ]. The school year 2015-2016 we wanted to celebrate this 3-years-collaboration and that is why we named our project “Ütekuun” (= together, in the Estonian dialect). This school year we were able to organize ten (10) online “highlight”-meetings (that is how we call them!) through Skype. In my classroom I have a PC with internet connection (and WIFI). My colleague in Estonia had also the same equipment. Sometimes we were using the PClab of our schools. Communication language was German and in the project were participating students from the 7th, 8th and 9th class of both schools. The project was part of the regular teaching hours of the German classes. Our 1st online meeting took place in February 2016 celebrating Safe Internet Day 2016 with a Kahoot-

Although we could organize these online “highlight”-meetings (for students and teachers) only for one or two hours per week and for 3-4 months during the whole school year, we were able to use different Apps for the presentation of the

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------students (i.e. padlet, google docs), to compare the two countries and search for more information about them, to present our cities/schools etc. BUT we had also the opportunity to prepare a theme to teach our students (Valentine’s Day – carnival – school subjects – health – body parts – weekend activities – diversity) / to discuss a theme by using an App (i.e. couple) / to present the results of a task / to play (Kahoot!) / to evaluate in the end our online meetings by using different Apps every time (strawpoll – answergarden – mentimeter – tricider – surveymonkey). We also reused materials from our previous projects (i.e. e-Ecken).

Here everyone can virtually “see” the process of our project. The realization of this project was not easy. Communication and organization were – in my opinion – the key words and the driving energy for such a project (and for any project)! Almost endless skype meetings, continuous E-Mail exchanges and regularly FB discussions helped me and my colleague, Aimi, to successfully complete the project!

Thank you Aimi Jõesalu for the “magical moments” (“Sternstunden” in German) you and your students offered to us!

For the Graduation Day of the class of 2016 I prepared a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt4HZixQKns) dedicated to the students with whom I worked together for 3 year on the eTwinning projects with Estonia (with Aimi and their students). It is in Greek but it shows how we have used various Apps in the classroom and a number of activities we have implemented. I used Animoto to create the video.

Johanna Chardaloupa is teaching German as a Foreign Language at the Experimental High & Senior School of the University of Patras/Hellas (Peiramatiko Gymnasio-Lykeio Panepistimiou Patron). She has been a passionate eTwinner since 2005 and loves to involve NT & Web 2.0-Tools to inspire & motivate her students in her foreign language classrooms.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Let’s eTwin ER&MVO: eTwinning Departments of Education and Schools of Two Areas of Italy and Spain by Marta Pey How can we, eTwinning Ambassadors, best spread the word about eTwinning? How can ensure that newbies benefit from our experience, making them interested in carrying out projects in their schools? How can we help improve the quality of eTwinning projects? All in all, how we, eTwinning Ambassadors, can collaborate in order to make all this possible? In this article, I am going to explain my experience in the eTwinning course/project “Let's eTwin ER&MVO”.

network of schools, based on peer learning and to identify good practices in the role of eTwinning ambassadors in advising teachers and schools. The participants are 36 teachers (17 Spanish and 19 Italians), and 2 eTwinning Ambassadors: Elena Pezzi (Italy), and Marta Pey (Spain) with contributions from 2 Spanish Ambassadors (Florenci Sales and Alicia López). This course/project consists of: - An in-site training course (30 h) in each country, with these contents: introduction to eTwinning (portals, Live), registration, the TwinSpace, how to set up a project, how to find partners, examples of collaborative activities, dissemination, evaluation... - Online collaborative activities in the TwinSpace: geolocation, collaborative presentations of schools, forums. Thus, 3 webinars were scheduled: “Let's get to know each other”, “eTwinning and Science”, “eTwinning and Erasmus+”.

The project aims to bring together schools from the two participating countries to collaborate, share teaching practices and design projects together. All this with the advice of two eTwinning Ambassadors and teacher advisors from the Departments of Education of the eTwinned areas of the two countries: (ER=Emilia Romagna in Italy and MVO=Maresme-Vallès Oriental in Catalonia-Spain).

The project has its own TwinSpace. The ambassadors-advisers of the areas where these schools are located are responsible for supervising, guiding and training in the implementation of the joint project. The ultimate goal has been to create a

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The result has been very satisfactory. 3 projects have already been agreed and set up between Italians and Spanish, and a follow-up of the course/project is going to take place next school year. You can see all the work done in the TwinSpace of the project: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/17187/home

Marta Pey is currently working as Coordinator of Foreign Languages Programmes for the Department of Education in Catalonia (Spain). She has been an eTwinning Ambassador since 2011. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

School Libraries Can Play a Key Role in Building eTwinning Projects by Manuela Maria Baptista The eTwinning project “Express Yourself!” was boosted by librarians teachers (Manuela Baptista from Portugal and Jasna Sojer from Croatia) in partnership with teachers curriculum and special needs teachers (from their schools and from German and Turkey schools) focusing on methods and techniques of bibliotherapy and dramatic expression, involving students in the regular curriculum and also with special educational needs, with the goal of providing children and young people the opportunity to develop communication interpersonal, to extend the life experiences to enrich the skills of reflection, decision and choice and provide creative problem solving (such as the difficulty of self-acceptance, peer acceptance, insecurity, conflicts, etc.) and the adoption of an appropriate social behaviour. Throughout the school year, each month has been selected and worked one problem in the daily life of children and young such as stereotypes, prejudice, virtue, empathy, friendship, conflict resolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlKae5NGxK4 Students had the opportunity to work collaboratively not only within their group as well as children and young people from four European countries involved, creating strong emotional ties afforded by the frequent moments of reflection and sharing documents (videos, drawings, texts, etc..), by conducting joint exercises and even drama together and the possibility of interaction through videoconferencing. They understood that children and young people in different countries face similar situations found shared values, such as acceptance of differences, tolerance, knowing the virtues privilege regarding defects, the value of friendship, how to solve conflicts, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gA1A3STnGQ In our project we used literature of authors from different European countries but also the national ones. We chose books that deal with contemporary children’s problems, analyzing them and discussing the problems, searching for possible solutions in the acts of main characters. In that way children developed their language and verbal skills, critical thinking and learned from those experiences. They used both, mother tongue and English, developing in that way foreign language skills. Playing through theatre they learned to express their feelings, communicate with others, improve

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------their social skills (self-knowledge, self-esteem, cohesion, team work; art skills like body expression, improvisation, performing and also mental skills like thinking, inventing, imagination, critical thinking.

National Support Service Portuguese, as part of the celebrations of Europe Day. If you want to use some of our lesson plans, please send an e-mail to [email protected]

Also, working on TwinSpace they developed their digital competences through using different webtools for presentations, communication, shooting videos and working on montage. Also, great diligence was put on internet safety.

Manuela Maria Baptista is a Portuguese teacher librarian and she also teaches mother tongue and French. She has been an eTwinner since 2012. “I think eTwinning is a real value to my daily teaching. The eTwinning community allows me to keep updated with latest educational trends and I love it.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Learning by Playing with eTwinning by Irene Confalone

With this project students learned to deal with the problems of everyday life and got ideas to solve them, to express themselves through drama activities, to make a positive change in themselves and to accept others better, to be better with life. Students "grew" with the project and improved their self-esteem and self-confidence.

This past academic year was a very intense year, full of challenges and difficult tests but, on the other hand, I was offered an opportunity for professional growth and creative development. A school that is constantly changing, you cannot stand still and wait. eTwinning will not allow you to stay still!

As a teacher it was extremely rewarding having the opportunity to work collaboratively with my European partners and provide an experience of development of the whole group of students from different countries who participated in the project growth. The project was highly visible in our schools and gave visibility to the value of eTwinning, especially in Portugal, where it received the National eTwinning Award. The project has received the following awards: - Portuguese National Prize 2014; - 2nd place in the German competition "European Award 2014" in the category "School of the Future"; - Winner unanimously Contest eTwinning Cards: Creativity Innovation, spurred by the eTwinning

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This year I discovered the awareness of appreciating the organization of some online events, being able to share with European colleagues and co-workers my experiences. I overcame my fears in English. I understood that I can learn from everyone, from teachers who know more than I and teachers just signed up on the platform. Each of us has got something special to share. During this school year, I worked so hard!

I participated in many projects, I followed many training courses and I passed some really difficult tests. Each project has developed new facets of my professionalism. One of the projects that I preferred is called "Paint a song."

I discovered with my students how a project can be pleasant and funny at the same time. We appreciated the chromatic beauty and the creativity of the children drawings. We received beautiful packets full of paintings that represent famous songs in English, studied during the school year.

It was so nice to receive these pictures with the names of the students with age, and school and country! In this way we compared different ways of living, different countries and different worlds. Each picture had a new life style. We learnt to read images, new songs, words, rhymes, and after that we produced our designs, representing the songs in our own way. Then we sent our designs in different schools of Greece and Spain. We had an important experience. In May we were invited by a private television to talk about our relevant innovation school and we introduced our eTwinning world. We talked about our project "Paint a song" developed with CLIL methodology with a native English speaker. We produced some videos that the audience appreciated a lot. We found out how to be happy with the new songs, music and the colours, and how to feel close to friends who live far from us. We are so similar and so different at the same time! Tired but happy we learned by playing.

Irene Confalone is a cross-curricular teacher in a primary school in San Giovanni La Punta, a town near Catania, in Sicily. She loves her job and she loves children. She was involved in a Comenius project between 2002 and 2005 with Belgium, France and Portugal. She has been an eTwinner since 2012 and from then she has been involved in several projects, groups and learning events. In 2015 she was the Italian coordinator of a multilateral project with eight European countries. She received the eTwinning Quality Label for her project called "Forgotten Values". eTwinning is part of her teaching.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------eTwinning Tree Campaign by Natasha Djurkova

When we act united, we can achieve our goals and make a difference!

Students from different European schools planted a tree in their schoolyard in October–November 2015 taking part in the campaign dedicated to eTwinning program and to eTwinning 10th Anniversary.

Every tree is important. Every school is important. Every student is important. Every teacher is important. Special thanks to all teachers from the participating schools in the eTwinning tree campaign, for their enthusiasm and will to organize tree planting in their school yard and to promote the campaign idea among their students and schools community. For me the eTwinning program is very valuable and unique source of inspiration and continuous professional development and I am proud to be part of the eTwinning society since 2008.

In my opinion, every person – old or young – could have an influence and change the world. Every little deed a man does in order to make the world a better place has its purpose which makes it useful and important. Therefore, I created the eTwinning event – “eTwinning tree campaign” and invited all my eTwinning partners and friends. Together we planted 100 trees in the schools’ yards in different countries in Europe. We wanted to show the students that the world could be changed and it is all in our hands and will. This campaign is devoted to the 10th anniversary of the eTwinning program, thus, each planted tree will be given the name – eTwinning tree. The link between the eTwinning program and every planted tree is the positive and constructive impact they have on the nature and the schools in Europe. 86 schools from 31 European countries joined the campaign and from the 9th of October to mid-November 2015 , until the campaign lasts, many eTwinning trees were planted – each being part of the positive change.

Link to our eTwinning tree campaign: http://etwinningtree.blogspot.bg/

Natasha Djurkova is the coordinator of the eTwinning tree campaign. She is a psychologist, a deputy director of SOU Ekzarh Antim I, Kazanlak, Bulgaria, and a teacher of Psychology. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Editor-in-chief: Daniela Bunea Designer: Anca Borza Photo editor: Diana Chirila Proofreader: Helena Serdoura Editorial assistant: Cristina Nicolaita More information on eTwinning, the EU Programme for schools is available on the Internet: https://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm The views expressed in documents by named authors are solely the responsibility of these authors. The pictures in this newsletter are original photos of contributors, photos used with permission or downloaded from the free websites http://www.freeimages.com/ and https://unsplash.com/ The content of this newsletter is licensed under Creative Commons – Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives.

Contact For more information, please contact Daniela Bunea Address: Colegiul National Gheorghe Lazar Sibiu, Str. Gheorghe Lazar nr. 1-3, 550165 Sibiu, Romania Telephone: +40269212896 E-mail: arghir [dot] daniela [at] gmail [dot] com

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ISSN 2247-6881 ISSN – L 2247-6881 Online edition only.

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