Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2013 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------An Oscar for eTwinning
by Petros Michailidis
Undoubtedly what characterizes all eTwinning
projects, beyond teachers' enthusiasm, is the
quality of all these projects which are developed
every year all around Europe. A quality certified
with the national and European Quality Labels and
through the national and European eTwinning
contests.
This high quality level makes eTwinning projects to
be able to participate in various other international
and European competitions and to elicit important
distinctions, as happened in the contest Medea
2012.
The project’s name is “… and the Oscar goes to …”
and it’s a collaboration between Petros Michailidis
from 5th Primary School of Alexandroupolis- Greece
and Cristelle Vouillot from Ecole primaire de
Rolambont-France and although it seems to be a
project about movies this isn’t quite true. The main
project’s idea was to incorporate the movies way of
storytelling in everyday teaching practice and
through that to stimulate students so as to be
involved in a higher level in teaching and learning
process. Thus, not only the usual school subjects
such as language learning, mathematics, social and
science studies, art, English and ICT, were taught
during the scheduled activities but the creation of
attitudes on contemporary issues such as how to
handle bullying and hooliganism were addressed as
well. Beyond those, the project not only gave the
students the opportunity to learn how to express
themselves in others beside the usual oral and
written ways but also gave them the equipment and
the necessary tools to do so as well.
Three different eTwinning projects that participated
in this contest succeeded to elicit important
distinctions. The program "Forum of Generations @
School" was distinguished as Highly Commended
project. The program "Schoolovision", which took
the Audience Favourite prize. And "... and the Oscar
goes to ...", which was the big winner of the
competition winning the MEDEA 2012 contest at the
"User Generated Educational Media" category.
The idea for the development of such a project
came by a combination of several factors. The will
to change the traditional face to face boring
teaching practice to one more exciting, the
necessity to provide students with 21st century
skills and their eagerness for hard work and
experimentation and the creation of the
consciousness of being a member of a wider than
the local or national community, are some of the
most important of them. Additionally ,
communication in an other than the mother tongue
and th