Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2013 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Introduction
by Anne Gilleran
By being part of projects that extend knowledge
and capabilities, European students work within
eTwinning with ever greater passion year after
year. The pieces of writing in this newsletter are
their teachers’ thoughts and emotions during this
endeavour. Each contributor has their eTwinning
Dssktop photo and description, so getting in touch
with any of them is at hand.
You are kindly presented with recipes for success,
emotional testimonies, glimpses at the future,
challenges, feedback, and much more.
Enjoy, thank you and good luck!
Anne Gilleran is Irish and has many years
experience in education as a guidance counsellor,
teacher, school principal, teacher trainer. She now
works as an education consultant. She has
specialised in Information Communication
Technology in Education both in practice and
research, and is currently the Pedagogical Manager
for eTwinning Central Support Service, run by the
European Schoolnet (EUN) in Brussels, Belgium.
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Trees, Roads and Projects – The Complex Path
of Teaching
by Daniela Bunea
There are trees on the road. They provide people
with shade and are places to stop, relax, and
reflect. The elaborate path of teaching retains its
share of trees – the road is elaborate and the trees
are well needed. And , at times, these trees provide
us teachers with the opportunity to conceptualize
and design learning activities that are more
engaging for students and offer a more interactive
mode of learning.
The social dynamics within my class of 30 students
aged 12 has changed with the introduction of
eTwinning project work. The classroom is a social
environment in which relationships are the context
and the vehicle for learning. Cooperative learning is
what guided the type of setting I envisaged.
April 2013 saw the beginning of an amazing
eTwinning project on farming in my school. With
partners from 5 other European countries, three
teachers, who were already a very close-knit group,
shared planning for their sixth graders for the last
three months of the school year and developed
their pedagogical orientation towards collaborative
learning.
The students had already been used to travelling on
the roads of learning by working in groups during
small-scale projects assigned by each of the three
teachers at the end of certain learning units – and
this had been going on for more than a year and a
half. The students, the three teachers, the students’
parents, the librarian in the school, the IT
administrator, the headteacher were all participants
in the ‘cooperative learning network’.
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