Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2013 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------eTwinning – An Assistant in the Teaching
Process
by Assimina Lambrakou
Teaching involves creativity, offering,
inventiveness, imagination, effectiveness and
efficiency. At the top of the list lies the
teacher’s freedom.
We have to find the flow of threads that will
be used to weave a beautiful canvas.
eTwinning, along with eLearning courses, groups
and learning activities, helps teachers enrich their
knowledge, develop their imagination and creativity
and use them imaginatively and effectively in the
classrooms.
Ongoing contact and communication of students
with students from other schools sharpen their
curiosity and lead to interactions that promote
cooperation, competition, learning, knowledge
expansion and forming of personalities in a
constructive manner.
Until then, I used to give the students time to
express in writing their opinions and feelings about
various issues, such as sex in adolescence, why
they don’t like studying, how they imagine the ideal
school etc. Their writings would then be published
on the school’s blog. The need to express their
concerns and to be heard functioned as a booster in
this form of communication.
And then came eTwinning!
Despite being timid in the beginning, I took
advantage of my experience in web 2.0 tools and I
helped to develop our first themes which included
general social content, unrelated to the content of
the courses I teach, but relative to the psyche and
values that as a teacher I have to help develop as
part of a teenager’s personality.
Meanwhile, out of personal curiosity and love of
learning, and in the context of my ongoing search
concerning various issues related to the teaching
process and the ways to make it more modern and
attractive so as to get children with no confidence
or self-esteem involved and participate in the class,
I attended eLearning courses in the European and
Greek platforms.
So, the content of the next two projects was
inspired by these courses and the objectives set by
the EU for 2010 and 2011.
As time goes by, reality calls me to accept and get
inspired by new ways of the teaching practice so as
to ensure the interest and participation of students
in my class. Several times in the recent past, I have
thought of non-typical ways to get the children
understand my way of thinking and teaching.
All the plans worked fine but did not keep for long.
I had to find the cause and continuously come up
with something new. These innovations should be
linking dynamically, creatively and beneficially to
the educational process so as not to be misleading
by distracting students to other issues and by
beclouding the set goals, even if that would have a
relieving effect on both the students and the
teacher.
The participation was encouraging, the children
enthusiastic, and the outcome quite encouraging.
For the first time, the school itself came out in
society; the parents were skeptical but helpful; on
the other hand, my colleagues were hesitant. That
year, also for the first time, we developed a theme
which followed the curriculum of one of the courses
I taught. What is more, it was the first time we
tried to get in contact with other schools by using
video calling.
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