Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 8 Visibility of eTwinning Projects Newsletter 8 | Page 27

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2018 Newsletter
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
eTwinning – e-platform for enhancing the
students’ collaboration experiences in Math
research
by Ariana-Stanca Văcărețu
I am a Math teacher teaching high-school students
and trying to encourage my students to engage in
their Math-learning process.
In 2013 I started to implement MATh.en.JEANS/
MeJ (Méthode d'Apprentissage des Théories
mathématiques en Jumelant des Etablissements
pour une Approche Nouvelle du Savoir) workshop
through a bilateral collaboration between Lycée
d'Altitude Briançon (France) and my school -
Colegiul National Emil Racovita Cluj-Napoca
(Romania).
The MeJ workshop
The MeJ workshop encourages students to engage
in and eventually learn Math by discovering and
researching it; it develops students’ creativity,
initiative, critical thinking, problem solving skills,
etc., and gives students the chance to exchange
ideas by working in groups both within their MeJ
workshop and with students from our twin-school.
Moreover, the MeJ workshop allows students to
meet researchers and experience an authentic
Math-research process in school, with both a
theoretical and an applied dimension.
by a teacher. A professional Math researcher
participates in the workshop and periodically meets
with the students in order to discuss the students’
research work and the methodology of Math/
scientific research. Students from twin-schools
share their research results in different scientific
events, and write and publish a scientific article
about their research findings.
Stage 1: “Shy” collaboration
As the MeJ workshop for students replicates
research activities carried out by professional
researchers, collaboration during the research
process is essential. In 2013-2014, French and
Romanian students’ collaboration was “shy”: two
video-conferences organized via Skype, 2-3 chats
on Facebook Messenger, and one face-to-face
meeting.
Stage 2: Sharing
In 2014 – 2016, we continued to implement the
MeJ workshop within the Learning Math and
languages through research and cooperation –
MatLan, a 2-year Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership
project (http://matlanproject.weebly.com/).
Students’ collaboration for the research work
improved a bit as face-to-face meetings and video-
conferences (via Scopia and Skype) were more
frequent; the students used a closed Facebook
group, Facebook chats and emails, as well as a
Chamillo platform for sharing files. In these 2
years, the collaboration moved from “shy” to
“sharing”. Especially, in the 2 nd year of the MatLan
project, collaboration improved, but there still was
place for improvement as only sharing doesn’t bring
a lot of collaboration. Moreover, we faced some
dysfunctionalities related to connection, video-
conference recording and use of Facebook in the
school – in France, Facebook was banned in all the
schools.
Romanian and French students doing research work
In the MeJ workshop, Mathematics research topics
are launched by professional researchers. Small, 2-
3-student groups, in each partner-school, choose
one of the proposed problems and do research work
to solve it. The students have to organize their
work, identify the resources (strategies, knowledge,
experience, equipment, software, materials);
decide how the resources will be used for building
and maintaining a shared understanding of the task
and its solutions. The students’ activity is facilitated
Video-conference (using Scopia)
27