eTwinning Visibility Newsletter no. 1 eTwinning Visibility Newsletter no.1 | Page 24

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2011 Newsletter -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------One Should Be the First By Paulien du Fosse Paulien du Fosse is a Biology teacher at CSG Willem van Oranje in Oud-Beijerland, Netherlands and a Dutch eTwinning ambassador. When I registered on eTwinning, no one on my school was able to tell me how it worked. So I just started pushing some buttons on the eTwinning site and gradually I made my way. Within a short time I did not only find partners for my own project, but I also joined some running projects of the others. I have one good example for the project ―Buon Compleanno Italia‖: we presented a trailer (it is here: http://www.universalsubtitles.org/it/videos/6f5P58a gq9Sd/) and we are very happy about the visit on our project. When you know how, the site is user-friendly and an easy way to make contact with teachers from all over Europe. Because it is so much fun to do projects on European level for students as well as teachers and it also adds an extra dimension to the lessons, I wanted to make my colleagues enthusiastic too by showing them the results of several projects. As a result, we will use the recipes from different European countries (from a project about eating habits in Europe) in an European project on our school. And in addition, we will let our students design bags made of old clothing during an environmental project (based on a Romanian fashion show of ecological clothing). This is a technique I learned during the last Learning Event I followed. I thank you very much, and I advise you to have a look at the suggestions you can find on the eTwinning site, at the project kits there, the Teachers‘ Rooms, the Groups and the Learning Events - you will easily find them on the homepage of your desktop eTwinning. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So, just because of my enthusiasm other teachers got indirectly involved with eTwinning. As the students like this way of getting acquainted with youngsters all over Europe too, I expect it won‘t take long before the first colleagues will ask how they can find a partner or project on the eTwinning site themselves. I will gladly tell them which buttons to push and how to make contact and their enthusiasm will spread from one teacher to another. Consequently, more and more teachers will get involved in eTwinning. And as the first eTwinner of our school I proudly laid the foundation of that. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 24