Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter no. 5 - July 2015 | Page 69

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2015 Newsletter

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------eTwinning for professional development and
to boost student motivation
by Umit Cicek
In this article I want to focus on how eTwinning has
changed the course of my professional development
and increased motivation among my students.
Since I started teaching 9 years ago, I have tried to
be in everything related to my students' education
and eTwinning is my number one educational
platform among others because of the fact
that acquaintance with e-twinning has really had an
amazing impact on my teaching and professional
development. I gave up participating in local
service-in-trainings or seminars after I started my
eTwinning journey since, this is not to boast but, I
already feel self-actualized thanks to the
opportunities e-twinning provides. I must admit I
would be quite a different and -highly possibly- an
ordinary teacher if it weren’t for e-twinning.
Let me briefly explain how eTwinning contributed to
my professional development. On account of
eTwinning, I:
participated in 3 eTwinning learning events;
participated in Transatlantic Educators
Dialogue 1-2-3;
discovered European Schoolnet Academy
and participated in 4 courses provided by
this platform (Future Classroom Scenarios,
Competences for 21st Century Schools,
Games in Schools, Creative use of Tablets
in Schools);
participated in eTwinning projects and was
rewarded European/National Quality Labels;
was selected for the 3 months eTwinning
“Online Moderators Course” provided by the
Central Support Service in Brussels;
set up or participated in many Comenius,
Leonardo, Grundtvig and Erasmus+
projects;
met best of the best colleagues from all
over Europe and exchanged ideas with
them;
discovered tens of web 2.0 tools which I
can use in my everyday classes.

shared sparkling ideas. After the course, one of the
representatives of the Turkish National Support
Service contacted me to ask whether I could set up
and run courses for them, which I had never
imagined until I started my eTwinning journey 6
years ago.

eTwinning platform has not only inspired my
professional development but it also has had a huge
impact on my students. For example, last year I
participated in an eTwinning project, titled “Linking
Europe” with 11 teachers from 9 countries and 16
students from my school involved. The main
purpose of the project was to improve our students’
communication skills in English. It was very
touching to see some of the students with low skills
in English were writing almost one page letters to
their peers involved in the project, which I could
have never imagined definitely. The students who
did not even know the location of the partner
countries have a lot to say about their foreign
peers‘ traditions, lifestyles, cuisines, daily lives etc.
now.
To conclude, eTwinning is the right, for me the
best, platform for teachers who want to extend
their professional development and find more
involving and motivating ways of engaging students
into the process of education.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was great experience to be involved in all the
courses, projects, events I listed above; however
“Online Moderators Course” has been the best
possible way of extending my professional
development. I had the chance to learn strategies
to prepare content for and deal with online groups,
read through many engaging materials, attend
webinars and be involved in discussions in the
forums, where moderators, experts and colleagues

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