Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2014 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------eTwinning! What an Experience!
by Eirini Tzovla
In 2010, when I first decided to join eTwinning, I
could not imagine what an exciting experience this
could be for both my students and myself. Since
then I have participated in it every single year and
in the following text I will try to summarize some of
the valuable experiences I gained during these 4
years with particular reference to two of the
projects I took part in.
My first project with eTwinning took place during
the academic year 2011–2012. The title of the
project was "Fairy Tales" with 15 partners from
different countries participating in it and
communicating on a regular basis through email
and the TwinSpace platform. The project involved
reading of fairy tales and legends followed by
drawing of their most interesting scenes by the
students and presentation of this work. Most
specifically, each group chose the fairy that could
work on during the month, at the end of which they
had to upload the produced material onto the
platform to make it available to the rest of the
participants. In that way the participating groups
got to exchange experiences and interact with each
other. In addition, the students exchanged
presentations on their countries, cities and schools
in order to present “their home”, become familiar
with new cultures and get to know each other.
My group consisted of 22 students aged 8 – second
grade of Elementary school. We, as a team, chose
to work on the "Aesop's Fables", a subject purely
Greek, easily understandable by the particular age
group and very popular among young students. The
students, divided into small groups, read a fable of
Aesop, and then represented the myth in
computers with the use of Revelation Natural Art
educational software. Subsequently, we created a
PowerPoint presentation that included the story in
English as well as the students’ drawings. That
presentation was uploaded onto the eTwinning
platform to become available to our partners.
The students seemed very motivated throughout
the entire period the project took place. They
expressed a great interest in all phases of the
project and showed a great enthusiasm working as
a team. The fact that the product of their work was
going to be seen by their friends in Europe truly
stimulated them while they were waiting eagerly to
see the work of students from other countries.
My latest project with eTwinning took place during
the last academic year. My students, first grade of
Elementary School this time, and I participated in
the “Wear the Peace - Make a T-shirt” project in
which 30 partners from different countries were
involved.
In the beginning the students, with the use of
proper software, greeted the other partners by
writing the word “Hi” in all languages of the
participating countries. They also created the map
of Europe by writing the word “Peace” in all
languages of the European countries.
The subjects of the particular project were “peace”
and “diversity”. Therefore, all partners made paper
T-shirts, decorated them and wrote their messages,
their motto and/or a slogan about peace on them.
Each project partner chose the design of his/her
own T-shirt and wrote his/her message on it. To
present their T-shirts, the participants took a photo
of the T-shirt, made a short video for the working
process and put these material on a glog on the Pen
pals' Glogster account. All glogs of contributors
were collected in one glogflow and twitted to UN,
UNESCO and UNICEF on the 1st of June, World
Children's Day, as a peace message to the world.
Making a colourful T-shirt was a creative “learningby-doing” activity that students could make in their
real classroom.
Additionally, the project complemented a series of
other activities related to respect for diversity. In
this context the students, through a series of visits
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