Visibility of eTwinning Projects Groups July 2019 Newsletter Newsletter 9 | Page 19

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2019 Newsletter
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the current state of the work in a small group
towards a common goal (Clark et all, 1991). This
kind of interaction and active exchange of ideas
within the groups seems to promote critical thinking
and increase the interest of the participant students
as well (Gokhale, 1995).
Nowadays, being a part of a group has a significant
role in the development of a student. And that is
because by working with others the individual is
being put in a situation where thinking, problem
solving and talking in spirit of disciplinary work is
needed. In these active communities rather than
learning through the old fashion way of teaching,
students learn by talking to each other, sharing
values and appreciating that their work contributes
to a larger group goal (Scardamalia & Bereiter,
1994).
The acceptance of the Web and the recognition of
the importance of the distant education overcame
the boundaries of the traditional educational
systems and underlined the increasingly need to
realize the potential of collaborative learning and
computer supported communities. Thus, we are
highlighting online groups of students within which
social interactions achieve individual development
and higher-level cognitive functions such as
analysis, synthesis, evaluation, critical thinking,
argumentation (Vygotsky, 1978).
Feeling part of these online learning communities,
students have multiple possibilities in
communication and exchange of views which can
bring positive changes in knowledge, favor
cognitive exchanges and collaboration between
them. This kind of distant collaboration, which takes
place in an expanded and technologically supported
environment, helps students to gain new knowledge
understanding that their contribution on jointly
designed goals will be on a common knowledge
base. Within these online learning communities,
members interact socially by trying to satisfy their
own needs or the execution of specific roles
(Preece, 2000) having a common purpose that
gives the community speech and entity through
agreements that guide the interaction (Redfern &
Naughton, 2002).
Among different kinds of Learning Communities
stands eTwinning whose potential for collaborative
learning and for social networking creates hopeful
and innovative intercultural cross-curricular
prospects. The well-developed network and the
collection of tools that eTwinning has provided
helps students to benefit from the collaboration
they achieve with schools in other countries
(Angelopoulos & Pateraki, 2014). The concept of
online interaction and collaborative work with
students from different countries which eTwinning
promotes, especially when they are working in
transnational groups, has proven to be very
motivating and attractive to them.
Teachers have found that students, when working
in transnational groups, seem to get used to the
online environment quite quickly and they are
willing to use foreign languages to collaborate with
their peers taking advantage of the provided online
tools. The variety of possibilities that eTwinning
offers, encourage students’ interaction through the
implementation of authentic expression and
communication activities in a learner-centered,
active, exploratory, discovering, collaborative
learning environment.
Students from Greece, attending the 5 th grade in 1 st
Experimental Primary School in Alexandroupolis,
had the chance to work in transnational groups
during the school year 2018-19 and benefit from
the interaction with peers from abroad while they
collaborated to achieve common goals in the
following projects:
Antibullying ambassadors
(https://twinspace.etwinning.net/74471/home):
The first attempt to form transnational groups
within this project and among students from Greece
and Italy (Chieti) was the balloons of friendship. It
is about an ebook which includes colourful balloons
of bouquets inside which students introduced
themselves with an adjective and formed the first
transnational teams.
During an online event before Christmas students
formed the official transnational teams with Greek
and Italians and started describing the bully.
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