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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