Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2013 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------eTwinning at First Sight
by Artemiza Lovin
eTwinning at first sight
My relationship with eTwinning started a few years
ago, quite by chance. I was using the platform to
look for partners for a Comenius project I wanted to
apply for. I had an idea about poetry and ICT and
while looking for possible schools willing to join, I
ran across a project founded by a Greek teacher,
Evi Belogia, with the title ‘Yo ung Poets’ Society’. It
was eTwinning at first sight. The project had
already started for about 2 months when I hopped
in and, though I couldn’t convince Evi to join a
Comenius partnership the following year, I said to
myself I must get my students involved in such a
project based on creativity, innovative use of ICT
and online collaboration.
Being my first experience, I needed to be walked
gently through the paths of the TwinSpace and
introduced into the magic of poetry writing. I am
not a poetry fan, but this was not a project for me,
but for my students. Now it would be a good time
to tell you about my students. They are great, they
love English just because I have always proved to
them that learning can be easy and fun if you are
committed to it and you are given the freedom to
choose the ways.
My students have always been my partners in
teaching. They understood the need to learn those
‘impossible’ irregular verbs by heart and other
grammar structures and made me see the benefits
of karaoke, drama and games in studying a foreign
language. My students need to be challenged and
offered such opportunities of collaborating. It was
already December by the time we started working
on our first task. I remember it was a special Friday
afternoon when I asked them to meet me for
another half an hour to talk to them about a new
project. The afternoon was not special because of
the topic of the project, but because it was the first
day of snow and they were all looking forward to a
good snowball fight. I feel a bit guilty for making
them wait and touched by the fact that they agreed
to join me. The whole experience was incredible.
They all enjoyed working on this project and it was
a challenge that they willingly accepted. I feared it
might take too much time to work on this project
and do the things we are supposed to do in class
according to the curriculum, but it was quite easy
as the students were motivated and everything was
very well-structured on the TwinSpace. The
students got their usernames and passwords and,
to tell you the truth, they could find their way quite
easily there, upload their materials, communicate
with their partners and do all the tasks. Without too
much of my help.
The most challenging activity, which proved to be
the most interesting and rewarding for them, was
the collaborative writing task: the students were
paired and then asked to write a poem on any topic
they liked, following any of the structures they had
already worked on and then send it to their partner
to be continued. More than that, after having all
collaborative poems written, groups of students
could choose any that they liked and turn it into a
video. Imagine the excitement of watching a video
inspired by a poem you wrote – it felt like looking at
yourself in a mirror through somebody else’s eyes.
I confessed to my students that I was both proud
and embarrassed by their work on this project that
brought it to the eTwinning shortlist in 2012. Proud,
as I was impressed by their ease and sensibility in
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