Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter no. 5 - July 2015 | Page 29

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2015 Newsletter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ a little bit more complicated from an organizational point of view but extremely useful: a period of teaching at the partner school. And here you can see, at least in my experience, the unique role of the members of my many "old" eTwinning projects: we spent years running projects in which we experienced and encouraged collaboration among our students, where we found issues and topics to work together to build an engaging and motivating teaching process. Now it is the time to stop and reflect on ourselves, on what means to be twenty-first century teachers. We need constant training open to Europe, we have to closely observe the “real” school, to build relationships and interactions among teachers who live there every day, with its lights and its shadows. That is why we did not hesitate a moment to plan some activities of job shadowing with our historic Spanish partners (with whom we shared eTwinning projects, multilateral Comenius projects, a common belonging to the community of eTwinning Ambassadors). This ended up in a KA1 project entitled "School without Borders", because after more than a decade of exchanges and European projects (often unfortunately run only by foreign language teachers) we have finally reached a comprehensive view of in-service training involving quite all the subjects and teachers of our school. Is it too utopian to think of a radical change in our school teaching methods in only two years of our KA1 project? Maybe, but when you really enter a European perspective, as suggested by Erasmus+ you do not think so much about utopia (after all, Erasmus himself wrote the famous “Praise of Folly”…) but rather to the innovation that these actions set in motion... And then, not to lose that touch of madness that now characterizes us, in this second year of the European programme, we decided to broaden our horizons and to launch into a KA2 project, coordinated by our unstoppable and active Spanish partners. The protagonists of what we hope is our next three-year adventure are, of course, other old Comenius-eTwinning partners. The title of our project? "Open school", it goes without saying! It means a school open to Europe, to all the components that build it, to new pedagogical and teaching methods involving teachers and students in a process of reflection, construction and experimentation of innovative teaching. Where can we work on all these topics? On the TwinSpace, of course! Since the very beginning of our joint planning between partners we have opened a project where to discuss, negotiate, imagine the development of the new adventure. But you cannot think of a fruitful follow-up of these experiences if you do not provide contacts and interactions even outside of periods of pure mobility: the eTwinning platform, with the opportunity of opening a TwinSpace for the project, provides a place where to find and share materials, ideas and opportunities for discussion to the staff involved in training (and, consequently, to the whole institution), with a view of "extended school", truly multicultural and multilingual, without physical boundaries. Then, if the project is approved, we will have a new TwinSpace, which will be the place where all our ideas will really take shape thanks to the contribution of all the partners involved. The slogan we created few years ago is now quickly adapting itself to the new context: "eTwinning and KA1 to train together in Europe", "eTwinning and KA2 to build together a new Europe"! 29