Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2026 Newsletter
First, collaboration is not an additional activity. It is a way of learning. Second, students should not only consume learning. They should co-create it. Third, technology has educational value only when pedagogy comes first. Fourth, international collaboration changes teachers as much as it changes students. And finally, professional communities can transform professional identities. The fifth lesson is perhaps the most personal one for me.
When I joined eTwinning in 2005, I was looking for partners for my students. Over time, I found something much bigger: colleagues, friends, mentors, collaborators and a European community that continuously challenged me to learn and grow.
More than projects Today, when I look back at more than twenty years of eTwinning, I do not primarily remember the number of projects, digital products or online meetings. I remember the students who discovered that they could communicate with peers from another country. I remember teachers who shared ideas with me and inspired me to try something different. I remember moments when technology did not work as expected and we had to find another way. I remember the excitement of seeing students take ownership of an idea. And I remember how many times I entered a project thinking that I was going to teach something – and ended up learning something myself. That, perhaps, is what eTwinning has meant to me. It has been a
professional journey, but also a personal one. It has taught me that education becomes richer when we open our classrooms to others. It has shown me that innovation does not necessarily begin with sophisticated technology. Sometimes it begins with a teacher asking a simple question:“ What if we tried something different?” Twenty years ago, I joined eTwinning to open a window from my classroom to Europe. Today, I realise that the window has become a door. And that door has never stopped opening. Perhaps this is the greatest gift eTwinning has given me – not a collection of projects, but a continuing invitation to connect, to collaborate, to experiment, to reflect and to keep learning. And the journey is still continuing!
Johanna Chardaloupa is an Educational Consultant for German Language and Literature based in Patras / Achaia, Greece, with extensive experience in secondary education and teacher training. She has served and still is an eTwinning Ambassador, worked as an ICT trainer in long-term national training programs, and contributed as a rapporteur and evaluator of digital educational resources, as well as a subject-matter expert in projects of the Institute of Educational Policy. She has coordinated and participated in awarded Erasmus + and eTwinning projects at national and European level and has an active publication record in the field of teaching German as a foreign language, with a particular focus on the pedagogical integration of digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence in education.
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