Documents 6.b. Teacher and student profiles. Visitor’s profile.

The role of a TwinSpace user grants some permits to carry out certain actions or not. For instance, a certain role can allow us to create activities but another role may not. Depending on the role, we may even see TwinSpace options that another role does not allow us to see. Once registered in the eTwinning project, we will have our TwinSpace ready to be used.

This is a list of the profiles that a user can have to access the Project TwinSpace:

Teacher-administrator. They have control and full access to every place in TwinSpace. can accept new activities and users and - in general - carry out all possible actions in TwinSpace, except publishing in the Students’ Corner. Amongst other things, they are the only ones who can decide what parts are kept private and which ones are made public. Founder partners of a project automatically become teacher-administrators of the TwinSpace.

Teacher-member: They can take part in different tools, collaborate with images, documents, add messages to blogs, wikis and forums, once all these tools have been created by an administrator.  Cannot accept new users. They will also take part in the Teacher's Room and other spaces created for this profile, which will be discovered later on. When an annexed partner is added to the project, the system awards him/her the default role of a teacher-member in the TwinSpace.

Even if they have some privileges in comparison to student-members, their work is similar.

Student-administrator. These students can add new activities, modify the elements of the students' room, etc. The main difference with the teacher-administrator's role is that they cannot register new users.

Student-member. Those students can participate in the Student's corner, answer in forums and take part in chats as well as upload files and images.

Visitor. By using a username and password, this kind of visitor can access all the contents available, even if they have not been made public. Then, we can restrict the access to the 'visitor' areas we do not want them to see. This user has no rights to publish or edit in any section of the TwinSpace. Sometimes, working with ICTs and mainly through the Internet can lead to a certain feeling of mistrust amongst parents and other colleagues. Through this profile, parents can see what their children are doing, how they work and what the project is exactly about. It is also an advisable profile to present the project for a Quality Label; this way, evaluators can see all the work done and the process followed.

Assigning user rights

Before adding participating teachers to TwinSpace, we must decide what profile to give them, depending on the work to be done. If necessary, these profiles can be modified any time.

Some advice:

• We shall be giving teacher-administrator rights to anyone we deem appropriate, especially if they take an active part, as long as there is a clear idea of the responsibility behind the access to all the tools: edition, creation, elimination... So administrators must have some basic knowledge to manage TwinSpace and learn about the functions and possibilities, in order to avoid possible conflicts and mistakes.
• We must grant administrator rights to those teachers who develop organisational functions in the project or who direct groups of students and we want them to manage them. In projects with many partners, it is advisable to have several teacher-administrators, to avoid a small group from taking on too much work and share responsibilities.
• It is advisable for teachers starting in eTwinning and TwinSpace, especially if they do not have too much experience using ICTs, to have an initial teacher-member profile. Then they can expand their functions and responsibilities. Having a member profile does not involve having fewer functions in the project; it is a preliminary step to taking on full responsibility in the management and achieving good results with commitment in the work designed.
• The member role can also be a suitable profile for teachers who are going to make specific contributions to the project but not participate entirely.
• The interactive animation below shows what actions they can perform each of the 5 profiles we have spoken:

• Teacher-Administrator
• Teacher-Member
• Student-Administrator
• Student-Member
• Visitor

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