Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2014 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Good Ideas, Hard Work, Much Patience
by Nicoleta Dinca
I discovered eTwinning a few years ago out of pure
curiosity. I wanted to do something new, unique
and so I started to learn how to use – step by step
– all the facilities of the platform. At first I felt alone
because many teachers from other countries were
not very interested in Romania, but, as people
communicate, everything has started to feel closer.
Since then, I have been trying to exploit all the
opportunities for learning that were offered, to
develop projects, to play and to live-and-learn
virtually with our partners and with my students.
When my partner first responded to one of my
messages, I was very happy. Not believing what
has been heard from left to right, that the
Romanians do not really have credibility, slowly,
slowly we have shown that it is not so. We have
developed many projects and won eTwinning
prizes. I started writing projects and so I managed
to attract many partners. It is so that I won. With
ideas, with hard work and a lot of patience.
The word “collaboration” has turned into
“friendship”. Relationship with partners has had an
upward trajectory. I exchanged ideas with lots of
teachers so that the horizon of my teaching activity
has widened considerably. Our experiences have
led to common learning and also personal
connections. All my projects were useful,
fascinating, exciting, full of energy and optimistic.
I think that I have learned from each experience.
We got acquainted with new technologies and,
above all, I became a member of the great family
of teachers in Europe.
Together We Can Make It
by Françoise Altamura, Paola Arduini, Antonella
Ciriello, Maria Rosaria Fasanelli and Elena Pezzi
We are a team of Italian Ambassadors living far one
from the other but strongly collaborating online to
spread the eTwinning’s word in different ways…
For our group the Italian eTwinning ambassadors’
National conference at L’Aquila, in Sept. 2012,
marked a sort of milestone.
We had been asked by the National Support Service
in Italy to present the Teachers’ Toom “eTwinning e
la realtà”, which had been founded by the
ambassador Laura Maffei in December 2011 and in
the meantime had become the second most active
TR after the Helpdesk – in less than one year it had
collected more than 1200 posts.
Cooperatively, on an online shared document, each
of us tried to put together the reasons for that
success as an example of sustainable good practice.
In L’Aquila, for the first time, we all met in person.
One of the first results of our collaboration in that
Teachers’ Room has been the publication of seven
ebooks (their title? eTwinning e la realtà ebooks!)
about eTwinning projects, methodology, eTwinning
and Comenius, online collaboration, hints and tips
for new eTwinners, international cooperation, etc.
We succeeded in involving some of our Italian and
European colleagues and the results were really
satisfactory!
During that same first meeting at L’Aquila we had
another idea: why not share our skills and
competences in webinars for new eTwinners? We
soon understood that it could be a great chance
since we would have the opportunity to spread the
119