Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2026 Newsletter
At the time, I could not have imagined that this decision would become one of the most influential choices of my professional life. I certainly did not know that, more than twenty years later, I would still be involved in eTwinning, looking back at hundreds of students, numerous European partnerships, countless online meetings, collaborative activities, shared products, challenges, mistakes, discoveries and, above all, relationships.
Then: technology was something new and exciting.
Now: technology is everywhere, but meaningful human connection remains the real value!
At the eTwinning Professional Development Workshop( PDW) in Edinburgh in February 2006, I had the opportunity to learn what a Blog(!) is, how someone can create one, use it, etc. This workshop inspired me to create my second eTwinning project( my first one was … a disaster. As everybody knows,“ nobody is perfect!”): " Eine virtuelle Reise nach Berlin während der Fußball-WM 2006- A virtual trip to Berlin during the 2006 FIFA World Cup ". To document and present the collaboration between the partner schools( Peiramatiko Gymnasio Panepistimiou Patron / GR und ISS " Giovanni Falcone "/ IT), I created a blog( it is in German, but as you know, today everything can be translated by everyone very quickly): https:// virtualetwinning. blogspot. com / 200 6 / 02 /.
Like many teachers, I initially saw eTwinning primarily as an opportunity to participate in European collaborative projects. There was something exciting about the idea that students learning German in a Greek classroom could communicate and collaborate with students of their own age in another European country. Suddenly, the language they were learning was no longer simply the subject of a lesson. It became a means of communication. Learning becomes different when it has an authentic purpose and an authentic audience.
I still remember my students asking me every single day if the“ Italians” answered us! We went- teacher and students- from teaching / listening in a classroom to learning with others. Some of my students were so competitive( they wanted to finish the task first, to find the best solution to the question etc.). But they were always eager to communicate and exchange ideas with“ the others”. My“ little monsters”( alias my students) remember until today what they created 20 years ago! It is a sweet memory from the past school years, as a student told me once.
eTwinning changed me as a person, as a teacher, as an educator, and changed the way I teach, collaborate and see education. I learned to collaborate, to share, to present, to evaluate, to reflect, to learn from other teachers, to try new pedagogical approaches. My educational path through eTwinning was from teacher to project partner, to collaborator, to
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