Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------focused on children, on their well-being, to meet it,
and together with it to become the school builder.
Since forever I dreamed about a school made of
new spaces and new horizons, and always felt that
the school we have is too small and limited to the
present days...
Until four years ago...
In 2009, the best thing that can happen to a
teacher happened to me. During an ITC training,
the trainer, an experienced eTwinner, spoke of her
experience in eTwinning...
Hearing her, I thought that this was the dimension I
want for my students and my school...
At the end of the session I asked her to speak to
me more about eTwinning. It fascinated me. So,
that Saturday night, when I got home and sat at
my computer, I made my registration on the
eTwinning platform, without really knowing what it
was, without knowing what to do, without even
imagining that there was an NSS also here in
Portugal.
confidence in themselves unusual for this age. It's
great to hear this! For example one of the teachers
was amazed because students 6 years of age
already know that there are time zones and the
hours are different from country to country. And the
good thing about this is that they know this not
because someone “taught" them, but because they
experienced it, they learned in practice, when they
made the video conferences with partners in other
countries and they had to get to school early or
stay late in order to find their friends.
And in the school? Well, after many years of
struggle, finally we have begun to breathe
community and collaboration. However, there are
no other eTwinners yet, because the ICT and the
foreign language still frighten many teachers, but
we are working on that too... Teamwork has
already started, and I think in the next year it will
be possible to start a project involving the whole
school, or even better, all the school community. It
is impossible not to. The children who have already
experienced this European dimension, can no
longer be closed again within the four walls of a
school that can never be the same again. And step
by step we enlarge our horizons and grow together.
I discovered that day that eTwinning is for everyone
and therefore could also be for me.
And I fell in love.
That year, in May, there was a meeting in Warsaw
and I was able to participate. There everything
changed. Besides the fascination that led me, I felt
myself at home, happy, and made me commit
myself even more. There I found partners who
wanted to share this great adventure with me. And
we recorded our first project, "Twinkle, Twinkle
Little Star", which won national prize 2010 in
Portugal and second place in Poland. And other
projects followed. "Our River" in 2010 marked the
International Year of Biodiversity, "An Adventure
with Chemistry" marked 2011 as the International
Year of Chemistry, "Kindergarten without toys"
marked 2012 as the International Year of Active
Ageing and Solidarity between Generations, and
there were some more… But the best thing of all
this, is to see that, even with an age range as small
as preschool students, with eTwinning performance
improved dramatically. eTwinning gives them
security in the performance, makes them more selfconfident, more interested. And my colleagues in
the 1st cycle, receiving “eTwinning” classes, began
to say that these classes are better prepared, with
children more mature, more informed, with a
This is the new school I always dreamed about!
To eTwinning, which has brought a new breath to
my practice and allowed me to start building my
dream, a huge thank you.Using the words of
children: "A gigantic thankyou, a thankyou from
here to the moon, a thankyou of the size of
Heaven!"
Thank you!
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