Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2018 Newsletter------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How eTwinning helped my professional development by Ionela Camelia Lazea
My activity on the eTwinning platform started in October 2010 after a colleague of mine introduced it to me. At the beginning both of us attended a lot of online webinars, online courses and Learning Events. In the meantime, the platform provided a way for my colleague to meet with other partners and develop a Comenius partnership from 2011 to 2013. I am glad to say that I was a member in the team of this project and the experience was very important to me and to my future work.
As time went on I began participating on my own in eTwinning projects. It was not until 2015 and 2016 that I participated in my most successful eTwinning projects:“ Welcome to my magic kindergarten” and“ Small Scientists discovering the sky”. For both of them I was rewarded with the National Quality Label and European Quality Label in the autumn of 2016.
After receiving the quality labels for the“ Small Scientists discovering the sky” project, along with some of the partners, we decided to participate in the National eTwinning Awards in our native countries.
The first one to receive appreciation was one founder from Bosnia and Herzegovina, presented the project at an eTwinning Conference in her country in October 2016.
In November 2016 in Portugal, our partner won First Prize in 2016 National eTwinning Awards in the Preschool education category with our project. Also, one of our Turkish partners was invited to present our project at the Turkey eTwinning Conference in Antalya.
In December 2016 in Romania our project won the First Prize for the Preschool education category. In Croatia we were the runner-up in the Preschool education at the eTwinning National Awards.
In May 2017, the Turkish founder of the project was invited in Antalya to the Second International Symposium on Social Studies to present our project.
As a matter of facts, the science project, turned out to have a greater impact on my career than I would have imagined. The project lasted from January to June 2016 and partners from 11 kindergarten and 8 European countries [ Poland( 2 partners), Romania( 2 partners from Bistrita and Scornicesti), Turkey( 2 partners) Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Latvia, Portugal and Croatia ] conducted activities which focused on enhancing and improving communication between pupils in different cultures, encouraging communication in a foreign language, using computer and ICT tools and carrying out scientific experiments that stimulate students ' creative thinking.
And in June 2017, we received our third First Prize in the category 3-10 years old from Poland at the gala for the eTwinning National Awards.
These are the awards we received for this project, but, like I said before, it represents only a part of the story. As we began to see the success of this project, along with a few on the partners we decided to develop the eTwinning project into an Erasmus + project. This would allow our project to have greater impact if we were to study other themes such as air, water and fire and have access to meetings during mobilities and create auxiliary materials. So, in March 2017 we admitted our application and in August 2017 we received the answer that it was approved after being evaluated
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