For those of you who haven't heard of eTwinning, it is the European Commission’s partner-finding and online collaboration tool. Schools and colleges (working with pupils and students between the ages of 3 and 20) can register their details, create a profile, search for partners and engage in online partnerships - all free of charge. Teachers and their students can form short or long term partnerships and collaborate on a whole range of curriculum based projects in any subject area using a variety of exciting and innovative ICT tools.
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[/caption]I became involved with eTwinning 3 years ago when looking for a French partner school. I was inundated with schools wanting to set up projects with my school and we set up many successful projects. Since then I haven't really looked back and run 1 or 2 projects every year, not just in MFL but also through PSHE with my lovely tutor group. In additions, it was our eTwinning work that really created the backbone of our International School Award last year.
Today is when schools are celebrating the 5th Year of eTwinning and to mark the occasion, thousands of schools around Europe had some kind of European
[caption id="attachment_440" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Photograph courtesy of Tony Barracough Photography"]
[/caption]Celebration. Many school planted blue and yellow flowers but, always wanting to be different, we decided to have a "balloon release" with a birthday cake! After all of the environmental safety checks had taken place to make sure our balloons were eco-friendly we were good to go on Friday at midday. We released our balloons (blue and yellow of course), with a tag on them asking people who found them to email us to let us know where they found them. It was very effective and the balloons looked very happy bobbing away in the wind. I'm sure the hail storm 10 mins later helped them on their way no end!
Oh and the cake...it was delicious.
You can find our what other school have been doing to celebrate here.
Happy 5th Birthday, eTwinning!
Hi! Have just discovered your blog ... with great interest. Do you have any demand for an exchange with a French lycée? I've tried to set up things in the past but always came up against the obstacle that very few English kids seem to learn languages, not necessarily French, and not after 15! Would be glad to hear from anyone who can tell me otherwise.
ReplyDeleteSorry for not responding sooner :os
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately my school is at an 11-16 school and therefore we work wtih CES mainly. I would tend to agree with you about students in the UK learning languages past 15...we really, really struggle with numbers and it is a constant battle with Heads and the Government to give language learning the emphasis it needs. Having said that I have some contacts with teachers at local schools that have sixth forms and could maybe put in touch with one of them, if you wish. Please let me know and I will email you so that you can give me some details about your school that I could pass on.
Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment :o)
Helena