When I started my job I did not know eTwinning. In less than half a year of my teaching carrier I started to cooperate on simple eTwinning projects, which gradually became a little more elaborate. I can say that I “grew” up with eTwinning from the beginning of my teaching carrier. My perception of teaching grew beyond my own class, my little “playground”. It extended further being enriched by new experience and a number of new contacts and friends, which I find most important. First in the Czech Republic and later in Lithuania, Italy, Austria, Germany, Poland and many others. I met lots of great people, who inspired and changed me.
Has eTwinning made me progress? Of course it has. It has made me develop my ICT skills, let alone my communication skills at the international level. Implementation of projects has changed my understanding of teaching and classroom.
In the beginning it is an extra work as it always is when dealing with a novelty. However, project-based teaching adds another dimension to your work with pupils. You begin to cooperate instead of just mentor. Pupils start to use their knowledge in a practical way instead of constantly having to memorise something and being presented potential outcomes. And last but not least, there is the creativity, which has to be present in the work of both teachers and pupils.
A participant of an eTwinning seminar delivered in the German language in Bern in 2012
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Stanislava Menčlová,
Primary School
Modra
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