Documents 5.a: What is TwinSpace?

eTwinning is of course about collaboration amongst teachers and - more importantly - about collaboration amongst students. The purpose is to go beyond parallel work, where each partner completes a series of tasks and then compares results, and making students involved in a common task from the beginning can add great value to the project. With this main objective in mind, eTwinning offers a platform for each project where the work can be developed. This platform is TwinSpace, where students and teachers have tools to work, both with their school  mates and their partners.

TwinSpace is a private space, which can only be accessed by those who have been registered by the administrators. It is designed to include people who are not registered in eTwinning, which allows students, parents or other teachers to work in the project or see what is happening.

Further on, we shall look into the details of the possibilities of this platform, but now we shall study the basic organisation. Each TwinSpace is comprised of two areas: general tools and activities. The first one is common to all spaces, and it includes:

1. Links to activity pages,
2. The home page, including the list of TwinSpace members, a calendar, the inbox and a common blog,
3. Teachers' Room (not accessible to students),
4. Students' Corner (where teachers can read but not write),
5. Chat.

View on full screen

Activity and tool pages

All previous sections are private and can only be seen by TwinSpace members, except for the home page, which can be made public. The second area is formed by the activity pages. Here is where most of the project is developed, where students and teachers interact, they work collaboratively and can present the results of their work. The users actually design the number and structure according to the project requirements. Each page can be made public or kept private, just accessible to the members of that TwinSpace.

When we open a page, we can choose amongst several tools and add one or more, depending on the specific activity to be developed. eTwinning is constantly evolving and making progress, so these tools will change and increase with time. However, the available ones at this point are:

Blog A diary where participants write articles ('posts') about the topics agreed or answer to other people's posts. Posts will appear in chronological order, so the first ones will be the most recent ones.

Forum A place for discussion and debate, where messages about certain topics are published and commented. The structure is similar to a blog, but messages can be labelled, so you can read on and follow a specific debate.

Wiki A wiki allows us to jointly create documents without a need for personal encounter. A member writes an article and others can modify it, so the person who reads it only sees the final result and not the modifications made throughout the process. The course you are doing is created in a wiki, with the cooperation of the National Support Service, tutors and the coordinators of the Training Course, who come from all Counties.

Document archive In this library you can upload and organise files, manage folders, etc. Here you can share all kinds of files (text, images, slide presentations...) and decide who can see them.

Image gallery It is a similar tool to the Library, but it has been specially developed to upload images. When you access a folder, you can see the thumbnail images without having to download them.

Web content browser It opens an html editor that allows you to publish web contents or insert net contents (Youtube videos, for instance)