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

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2017 Newsletter
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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
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