Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 8 Visibility of eTwinning Projects Newsletter 8 | Page 112

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2018 Newsletter
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once upon… two times – eTwinning project
partners become friends
by Heidi Giese
It all began in October 2015. A Greek teacher of the
German language was searching a German school
ready to plan an eTwinning project for the 63 rd
German competition, one of the oldest European
competitions organised after World War II. Unlike
the years before I, being a teacher of the French
language, had no French class, and was wondering
what kind of eTwinning project could be organized
for my 5th graders who had just arrived at my
school.
My students discovered that the Greek letters were
different from what they knew as their German
alphabet. We teachers talked about our family life,
schools and cities. Our project was awarded at the
European competition, we shared a prize and were
really lucky to have worked and won together.
I was “facebooking“, when I noticed the call from
the German NSS eTwinning looking for a German
teacher who would like to plan a project with
Charikleia from Greece. So I contacted her, she also
had a 5th grade.
During the following weeks we shared our ideas via
eTwinning. As she taught German in her class 5 and
I had my 5th graders as a History and Art teacher,
we developed an idea for the project together and
started planning. We exchanged our thoughts and
material in the TwinSpace, did several eTwinning
live conferences and used meetingwords.com to
plan when and what to do together.
For Christmas our students exchanged presents and
we, the teachers Chara and Voula, Monika and me,
also engaged and had parcels travelling from
Greece to Germany and the other way around. Our
first eTwinning project was born and at the end of
the year we knew each other better, both students
and teachers.
The following year we continued our way with
eTwinning and decided to go for the 64th European
competition as well, this time it was a historic
theme to be worked on.
Our students already knew each other better, so
the second project started immediately and had two
legendary figure dolls (the Greek Theoni and the
German Frau Holle) travelling to the other country
and report from there everything they considered
interesting about modern life.
A colourful, inspiring magazine was created and our
students were very proud of their final joint
product. We again received an award in the 64th
European competition, we again were so glad and
lucky and shared another prize.
At that point, our students had written each other
letters, postcards for Christmas or Easter time and
also emails for over two years. And so did we:
Whatsapp, Facebook, TwinSpace, Viber. We
112