Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 6 2016 | Page 62

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2016 Newsletter -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------My Unforgettable eTwinning Projects by Ana Tudor “A picture equals 1000 words” is one of my unforgettable eTwinning projects. I had good reasons to focus on it as a project founder, together my Greek partner. Students of today living in eworlds receive stimuli lots more from the cyberspace, the tv, the radio and much less from the press and the written material. As a consequence, they tend to become more „optic”. The written expression is maybe superior and eternal, but soul and feeling is just a prerequisite to manage it. Students of today are more passive to messages and less active. In parallel, they are more attracted by the dynamics of the picture that is the easiest to understand and express oneself form of communication. The nature (sea, mountains, flowers, sun sets and sun rises) as well as the psychographies that can be drawn from the depiction of social places such as cafes of the old times and cultural events, or even photos of older people carrying the experience of an entire life, were our favourite themes. We all aimed at opening new vivid worlds of our actual world in front of the eyes of our students. Open windows to the countries in which the schools of the partership belong. Communities to communities. So distant and so close. So close and so distant. We were always aiming at feeling. That’s why, we allowed the students express themselves and see the pics and the feelings of their classmates round Europe. Pictural communication and yes Synesthesia! Drawing! Pics! Photos! Words could also be used. But we have tried to let the dynamics of the picture incite psychograms of the momentum. Expressions of the innerself, shared with all goodness. As Goldman said, the true meaning in life is "To LIVE, to LOVE and to LEARN"! We hoped that within this project through the lens our students learn to FEEL and to UNDERSTAND the feelings of the others. As in schools of today, so much effort focuses on the cognitive part and IQ measurement. Thus, this project permitted us to manage high IQs in the sentimental cognitivism and, why not, to discover among our students the talented brilliant photographers of tomorrow. “Women of the Mediterraanean” is a project whose aim was to show and analyze the social and cultural path that women carried out last century and have been still carrying out, with sacrifice, to reach equal opportunities and rights. We liked all students to know these changes through photos and so we had created a section of our photo exhibition that was also devoted to intercultural education and that has been presented for the 2nd time to public and territorial, regional and provincial authorities the day of the festivity of women. Many European schools have participated in the 1st photo exhibition, it has been useful for a continuous exchange of personal information among pupils of different countries and all this has enriched their way of learning. Our purposes were to educate people to feel themselves „citizens of the World”, with equal opportunities, in the spirit of legality and solidarity. In this respect, our objectives were to know and value local traditions, to recover historical memory and oral traditions through the history of the women and to start a dialogs and a comparison with other cultures. The activities developed by us focused on searching photos from 1900 to our days that may testify the evolution female role in society, in family and in job, analyzing in depth problems regarding social marginalization, exclusion from the world of work and lack of parity of the rights. Our European photo exhibition and brochure were amazing final project products. “Let's discover a better world” is a project aimed at improving our students’ knowledge of English as well as their ICT skills, by impersonating young discoverers and inventors. They got knowledge about inventions which are still the most important for humanity. They also found out about famous inventors and travellers. Finally they designed and invented their own things which could make their lives easier. Students not only invented things and objects but also discovered people’s feelings, emotions and promoted tolerancy and acceptance among people of different nations. The European students and their teachers who took part in this e-Twinning project have involved other classes and colleagues by presenting them the effects of collaboration which was motivating for others. Students from other classes were invited to prepare their own material in order to be published on our Twin Space. The teachers involved in this project supported their students’ ideas, helped and advice them, decided together. They shared ideas and experiences with teachers of the partner schools, discussed and even made conclusions concerning the progress of the project. For all partner schools, this interesting project brought the improvement of relationships among students, teachers and parents, the promotion of the schools in local communities, the involvement of a big number of students into the project and a bigger motivation to learn among students and to teach among teachers. “Chi