Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2013 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------creation of high-quality content, in order to
stimulate and promote the Life Long Learning. It is
important to train teachers on how to design and
develop their own content and generate learning
materials in order to support their students and the
exchange of ideas and products.
Technologies represent for students the world
outside of school, so they are a great opportunity to
enhance and personalize motivational learning
paths. They are rapidly evolving and are passed
from content management to creation of their own
content in a collaborative manner through social
networking sites such as blogs and wikis. This
approach helps both teachers and students in the
creation and collaborative but autonomous
publication of their materials, allowing to each one
a kind of scaffolding, a zone of proximal
development, following the approach of learning by
doing.
For this, technological tools are increasingly used in
the classroom since they allow the use of both
traditional methods of teaching and eLearning
methods, creating what is called Blended Learning.
Encouragement and Praise Lead to Excellent
Results
by Nathalie Scerri
I was first introduced to eTwinning 3 years ago. It
came at a time when I needed a change in my
teaching attitudes and approach. I was on the
lookout for a method that allowed my classroom to
become student-oriented rather than teacheroriented. The change I had in mind was one where
the students learn to be creative, become good
evaluators and analysers, and most important
develop their cognitive thinking. I have to admit
that involving myself and my students in eTwinning
projects has opened the doors to a positive change.
The project that has left a rather positive impact
was the one in which alcohol was discussed. I
worked on this project with a group of students who
most people would describe as academically
challenged. I decided to work with this particular
group, since I was aware that their lifestyle outside
school, most especially during the weekends,
involved heavy consumption of alcohol, at least for
a few of them.
I will try to guide them, or better, work with them
on the reflected use ,for example, of the basic
tools such as podcasts or video / image sharing
software and I will think with them about the role of
the teacher in eLearning and how to elicit creativity
in students doing themselves and creati ng
communities of practice. Teachers need to
experiment and find the best learning path for their
students and technology offers new approaches
such as webquests or flipped classrooms.
eTwinning represents in this sense the basis of any
CLIL approach, as it focuses on the idea of the use
of languages as vehicle to work on something else
in a collaborative environment. Offering teacher
trainees this chance to start their training through
this rich environment is a great opportunity for the
progress of the entire community: we are learning
from each other and we need new ideas and points
of view.
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During the previous scholastic year they had
confided in me that they drunk freely, with a couple
also admitting to losing consciousness and being
admitted to hospital. I faced two challenges: the
first was to make them aware of the dangers of
heavy consumption of alcohol, and the second was
to involve them in an academic project. However,
surprisingly enough, the topic interested them
immediately, and they agreed to collaborate with
the foreign students in an eTwinning project.
In the initial phase, a questionnaire was distributed
to 13 and 14 year old Maltese, Dutch and Italian
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