Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 2017 No. 7 | Page 100

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2017 Newsletter
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Collaborative Learning: Underlying Processes and
Effective Techniques, New Directions for Teaching
and Learning No. 59. eTwinning teaches, eTwinning enlarges your
world!
by Nilüfer Dinç Demirok
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning:
Experience as the Source of Learning and
Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. eTwinning can sometimes be underestimated by the
teachers since it is not a way to earn or get money
from. However eTwinning made me and my
students rich only just not in a traditional way. My
school is a school for gifted students and they
question a lot. You have to convince them in the
benefit of something to make them do things.
Piaget, J. (2001). The Psychology of
Intelligence. London; New York: Routledge.
Robinson, K. (2015). Creative Schools: The
Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming
Education. New York, NY: Viking.
Robinson, K. (2011). Out of Our Minds: Learning
to Be Creative. West Sussex: Capstone.
Vygotski, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Wetzel, K. & Brophy, J. (2014). Motivating
Students to Learn. New York & London:
Routledge.
Sophia Kouzouli is a teacher of English. She holds a
B.A. in English Language and Literature and an
M.Ed. in Teaching English as a Foreign Language
from the H.O.U. in Patra, Greece. She has been
teaching English for more than 20 years and is an
enthusiastic eTwinner. She is interested in exploring
innovative ways to integrate technology in the
classroom to foster creativity and promote
collaborative learning. Her blog is at
http://blogs.sch.gr/skouzouli/.
At first it was hard to convince not only but also the
parents why we are doing projects and what is the
benefit of doing eTwinning projects. Then I realized
that if you truly believe in what you do, then
everybody believes in what you do. So I decided to
plant the idea and philosophy of eTwinning to my
students and the parents.
The very first thing I promote was the benefits of
web tools and the opportunity to use English. Once
they realized the endless opportunities throughout
the projects their eagerness boost up regardless of
me. My students are now different from the
beginning of the semester since they know a lot of
web tools to use. They had the joy to introduce
themselves in English, to have the chance to know
different cultures, different countries and same
interests.
We had the chance to participate in seven projects
as my students were so eager to do all the
requirements. One of the projects that most had a
deep impression on them was the project named
Welcome To Turkey and New Caledonia in which we
were partners with New Caledonian teacher
Patricia. New Caledonia is a dependent overseas
territory of France in the western Pacific Ocean. It is
situated in the Coral Sea, to the east of Australia.
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