Visibility of eTwinning Projects Groups July 2019 Newsletter Newsletter 9 | Page 50

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2019 Newsletter
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http://yildirim.meb.gov.tr/www/ogretmenler-icin-
teach-with-europeana-projesi/icerik/990,
http://6nisananadolulisesi.meb.k12.tr/icerikler/teac
h-with-europeana-projesi_7556748.html
https://yildirim.meb.gov.tr/www/europeana-
projesi-avrupa-okul-agi-european-schoolnet-
konsorsiyumu/icerik/886
Işıl Gülmez is a deputy head teacher and a computer
science teacher in Bursa, Turkey. Her student ages are
between 11 and 14. She is also Scientix and Europeana
teacher ambassador. She holds a Master degree in
computer science and is currently a Phd student in
educational administration. She enjoys attending courses
and workshops. She likes collaborating for new teaching
practices and is interested in projects about educational
administration, leadership, teaching programming to
children with Scratch, robotics and using social media in
education.
The importance of eTwinning in CLIL teaching
applied to STEM
by Enrica Maragliano
eTwinning is the largest European platform in which
teachers and educators can get in touch,
professionally update and collaborate by involving
their classes in projects that allow students to
significantly improve both their knowledge and their
skills and to feel part of a virtual community by
enlarging the size of their class, removing the walls
and reducing the distances.
For this reason, when more than ten years ago,
quite casually, I approached eTwinning as a tool to
find partners for a Comenius project, I immediately
fell in love with it and started to develop projects
involving my subject in interdisciplinary contexts,
allowing to my students to better understand the
aspects they had to study and analysing them from
different points of view.
I am a Mathematics and Physics teacher in an
Italian Classical and Linguistic High School and for
my students my subjects are usually not among
their favourite and have a relatively low weight in
terms of teaching hours in their curriculum. I also
have a classical education even if I chose to
graduate in Mathematics because in high school I
discovered that theoretical subject that I was
studying amused and intrigued me. I would have
never thought of becoming a teacher: my goal was
to become a software analyst, a job I did for some
years, until, again in a quite random way, I
participated in a competition to become a Computer
Science teacher and I won it. As for my previous
job I had the opportunity to speak English as I was
in constant contact with US colleagues and for my
good computer skills, the meeting with eTwinning
was a thunderbolt and now I would not be able to
conceive my teaching without this methodological
approach.
eTwinning and the CLIL methodology are a perfect
example of synergy and I strongly believed in this
before that CLIL became a compulsory part of the
teaching in high school’s last years: a teacher who
for years showed up in class talking in his/her
mother tongue is little credible when, due to a
didactic obligation, starts speaking another
language in front of his/her students. Very different
is the approach of those who, carrying out
eTwinning projects from the early years and
integrating the curricular teaching with the one in
L2, continue to do what they had always done and
to which the students are well accustomed.
Nowadays, thanks to the technological support, it is
easy to organize online chats and videoconferences
in which students and teachers can communicate
directly and asynchronous work sessions in which,
thanks to careful planning, students use, process
and complete the work of foreign partners. In this
way CLIL teaching is not confined within a few
hours with the feeling of sacrificing essential parts
of teaching to fulfil a ministerial obligation: with
eTwinning the teaching opens up to new
contributions and the students feel more involved,
no longer distinguishing between what it is CLIL
teaching and what it is not, learning to appreciate
the points of view of classmates and foreign
partners, working in international teams. This
methodological approach, in addition to allowing a
practical and intensive use of the L2 language, also
promotes contacts with peers from different
cultures, with knowledge and educational
background that is very various both from
scholastic and social point of view: students have to
get used to these aspects for their future careers
and sometimes they have to grow up and try to
understand and sympathize with their partners to
interact to the best.
For teachers this is an opportunity for professional
and human development of incredible value:
learning from others, opening the virtual door of
their class and allowing foreign colleagues to
suggest new teaching methods and tools, new
approaches and new problems is sometimes not
easy and it is certainly unusual in a profession such
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