eTwinning Visibility Newsletter no. 3 eTwinning Visibility Newsletter no. 3 | Page 69

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2013 Newsletter -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------develop ICT skills . They are held throughout the school years in different cities of Europe and they are planned according to specific topics for selected teachers. On the contrary, National or Local Events are supported by the National Support Service of each country and they are planned all over the country. These meetings are run by eTwinning Ambassadors who are expert and enthusiastic eTwinners such as myself. They usually involve teachers showing them how to surf and explore the eTwinning platform, to discover most of the tools and their effectiveness, to know about best practices so to start planning projects. In conclusion, these are the reasons why it is really useful and it works so well or so successfully for teachers, even at their first experiences, by developing skills, exploiting high quality didactic materials while interacting actively with European colleagues. What does etwinning mean to me? A place where teachers and students meet and share ideas, activities, experiences. The use of different and efficient tools during our projects Collaboration Online meetings with our European partners Participation at etwinning labs in order to learn more about different topics or tools to be used for the projects. Creative Drama in eTwinning projects, Creating Music in eTwinning, Web based video in eTwinning are only some of them. A new experience for me was the participation as a moderator in the etwinning learning event Creative Writing in eTwinning in December 2012. The joy when our work is awarded with the Etwinning Quality Label or, better, the European Quality Label. The most wonderful experience was my participation in the eTwinning Conference in Berlin in 2012 when I could meet some of my project partners from Poland , Bulgaria and Portugal due to a great project, Hide-and-Seek in the Castle, which was nominated among the best of the 2011-2012 projects. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Advantages of Being eTwinners by Valerica Danaila I first knew about eTwinning in 2009 after a Comenius course in Ireland. It was the beginning of wonderful projects and interesting activities in collaboration with great European teachers. I could say I have many friends among them because we get closer year by year even if many of us haven't met face to face so far excepting the videoconferences with our students . What do my students like about eTwinning? My students love participating in eTwinning projects! They have the opportunity of speaking English and talking to their partners via Skype or Google+. This school year my 1st grade students were great during their meeting with the students from Cyprus for our project Twinbus Travel Agency. They talked in short phrases about our town giving information to their partners about our town and places to be visited. They collaborate with their partners. The TTA dictionary made at the end of our Twinbus Travel Agency project is the best example because all of the participating 69