Etwinning

Who's on the other side?

We know that variety and richness in interaction amongst participants is one of the most influential aspects in the quality of a project, and that’s why we also think it is important to pay attention to the first activities students deal with. If we can motivate students and awaken their interest by using these initial exercises, we will have taken a step forward in the project we have just begun.

As a source of inspiration, here are some of the most attractive presentations we have found amongst the large number of eTwinning projects:

• In Europe: Reading is also the Future they show us, like in a film made by the real Metro Goldwyn Mayer, how Italian and Spanish students - aged only four - worked in pairs. I am sure that age and distance are not an obstacle for children to recognise their new friends immediately.

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• With the activity “Your School & City” in the project A short Latin Movie, although it has no products yet, you have the chance to use three tools: Voicethread, Wiquet and Vcasmo which can be used to share the most relevant features of the participating schools and the cities where they are; they intend to create a rich variety of material to make the participants of this project get closer: the secondary school students from Spain, Italy, Turkey and Germany. They have already introduced themselves through Vokis and Glogsters, but the teachers’ offer is broader. Check it out!

• As well as introducing themselves individually, also using Voki and Glogster, Romanian, Bulgarian, Dutch, Italian and Greek students working in the project A Taste of Maths (ATOM) have represented the typical initial conversation between two strangers by using attractive animations with Dvolver:

This other presentation is also important to the project itself, whether it is to search for partners or to summarise it at the end of its development. This topic was dealt with in the eTwinning Project TrailersTeachers' Romm, which was active from November 2010 to January 2011 and is still visible today. In addition, as a result of the success of this Room, an eTwinning group, has been created, under the same name, where you can register to share and learn about other peoples’ ideas and suggestions. As an example, here is the summary made by a Portuguese teacher, usingScreenr, of the project Europe through Videoconferences, where a Spanish school also took part.