Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 2017 No. 7 | Page 13

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2017 Newsletter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ some tools that promote collaboration are incorporated. “It was realised that eTwinners used the platform to do much more than beginning projects and then working in pairs (or in Twins). It was found that teachers logged into the platform to exploit the potential of a community of thousands of colleagues. The level of interaction among eTwinners had turned multidimensional. (..). For instance, the dimension of peer and rapid learning was quickly growing in importance.” (Crawley, C., Gilleran, A., Scimeca, S., Vuorikari, R. & Wastiau,P., 2009, p.5) In 2013, the survey made to 190000 teachers, students and headmasters on ICT in Education (EUN, 2013) emphasized the importance of teachers having the opportunity to learn in community and made recommendations to stakeholders. In September 2015, with the launch of eTwinning Live, the platform became more dynamic and now allows more interaction between teachers and the creation of spaces of collaborative learning. The eTwinning platform promotes Professional Development at two levels. On the one hand teachers can participate in the formal teacher training opportunities promoted by the CSS, where Learning Events and Online Seminars are included. On the other hand the platform provides opportunities of learning created voluntarily by teachers that promote peer learning, namely the eTwinning Groups and Events. This article focuses mainly on Online eTwinning Events and teachers perceptions on its use and impact. eTwinning Live replaced the Desktop and brought new features that reinforced the platform as a social network. With eTwinning Live teachers can meet their peers to collaborate, learn, work and interact more effectively. Projects are still the main core of eTwinning but the proposals for autonomous and peer work is consolidated with the introduction of eTwinning Live. Teachers soon started to appreciate the new tool “eTwinning Events”. eTwinning Events – Teachers perceptions “I find it endlessly fascinating to being able to contact, learn and get inspired by people from all over the world! Events opened us countless opportunities for developing and grow as teachers.” Manuela Correia, Portugal At the date of this article no study was made on the impact of events and this article intends to find out about teachers perceptions of the value of this tool on their professional and personal development. From the beginning, these events had a big participation of teachers. In the first year (September 2015 to September 2016) 3307 events were created with a total of 16231 participating teachers. To find out about teachers’ perceptions on the tool “eTwinning Events”, a small survey was launched on Facebook. This survey was posted on 3 Facebook Groups of eTwinners. (Somos eTwugas; eTwinning and Open eTwinning) 59 eTwinners from 17 different countries answered. It confirmed the numbers of the CSS concerning the attendance and creation of eTwinning events. There are more teachers participating on events than those creating. In the survey 61% of the teachers answered that they have created events and 96,6% say that they have participated in eTwinning Events. Creating eTwinning Events “Powerful tool to share experiences and develop competences.” Ana Cristina Tendinha, Portugal Teachers can create online and onsite events. 84,6% of the teachers answered that they have created online events and 53,8% created onsite events. According to their opinions the onsite events registration are a good way to promote activities and practices. Teachers had to choose which kind of online events they prefer to create. There is a great tendency to the “Sharing Practices” (48,7%) and “Training Session” (41%). Teachers could choose more than one answer. In order of preference, from the highest to the lowest these were their choices: Sharing Practices, Training Session; Workshops, Lesson, Seminar, Promotion / dissemination; Presenting a project; Presentation of school/classroom, Partner finding. One the whole teachers that have created an event are very happy with the tool. They highlight how user friendly it is, they value the chance to “meet” others face-to-face, to meet new people, the 13