Etwinning

eTwinning weeks: new school year, new projects

Welcome to the new school year with eTwinning! With this in mind we have prepared a special programme of activities which we hope you will find interesting. From 24th September to 10th October the National Support Service  and the Central Support Service will publish on their portals online training proposals, calls for candidates for prizes, competitions and other initiatives. Visit them regularly because every day you can find new and useful ideas for beginning a collaborative project or for improving the quality of the one you are working on. Get moving and participate! 

Here is some advance information about the ones that have already been programmed:

• eTwinning 2.0 on-line training course. Another edition - and it is the 14th one - will be given from 4th October to 4th December. It has a very attractive new feature: the participation of teachers from Sweden, the Czech Republic, Germany and Portugal, with a double aim: training in eTwinning and establishing contacts to begin an eTwinning collaborative project in Spanish. 

• Learning event: Joining the dots. This is a training activity which will last three weeks; it will begin on the 8th October and end on 28th October. It is aimed at the teachers registered with eTwinning and will deal with learning about the tools and collaborative 2.0 storage areas intended for the creation and edition of multimedia activities in the classroom. This learning event aims to analyze the teaching possibilities offered by these resources as a support for the development of an eTwinning project using a methodology based on play activities, interaction and collaboration among the participants. It will be given in Spanish and the announcement will be published after 1st October on the eTwinning Desktop, so access it regularly and register. 

• 2013 eTwinning Prizes. The call for candidates for the 2013 National eTwinning Prizes will be published in the second week of October, and all the Spanish teachers who are members of an eTwinning project can participate. On 17th October the call for candidates for the 2013 eTwinning European Prizes will be published and all the teachers who are partners of a project which has been awarded the European Quality Label can participate. 

• The Partner Search Fair.  This online fair will take place from 2nd to 10th October. It is aimed at teachers registered in eTwinning who work with students from 11 to 19, with the purpose of helping them make contact, get to know each other and agree on a project for the coming months. No eTwinning experience is necessary to participate in this fair. The NSS can advise the participants on the design and development of the projects. There are 250 places some of which could be for you and your future partner. Apply to participate by clicking on this link!

• 2nd eTwinning event for teachers in Spanish: Getting a team together. On 25th, 26th and 27th October a multilateral event in Spanish is planned at the CRIF Las Acacias School in Madrid, in which several European countries: France, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom will take part as well as Spain. The objective of this event is to offer those attending training in eTwinning actions, the opportunity to meet possible partners and time and space in which to exchange ideas, negotiate and plan projects in Spanish. 

• eTwinning Webinars  Web conferences which permit the attendants to interact with each other and share documents and applications. The plan is to hold several sessions in which members of the NSS will moderate and actively participate. We will shortly be announcing the topics to be covered, and the dates and times at which they will take place, as well as the way to participate. The first event will be on 18th October. 

 ¡And there are still more things for you all! We will be announcing the following proposals and giving details on each one in the next few days:

1.- Dissemination of collaborative activities. Aimed at the teachers/partners of a project in the last or present school year. The NSS offers you the opportunity to publish and disseminate a collaborative activity which, as well as demonstrating a continued relationship among the partners, is innovative, includes unfamiliar ICT tools, or is well integrated into the curriculum, etc. 

2.- Do you use your mobile in your eTwinning project?  A mobile phone has many teaching applications in an eTwinning project. With this call for suggestions, teachers and students can send us proposals for working projects which we will publicize on the NSS portal. 

3.- Others also count. There are some projects in which, as well as from the teachers and students, there has been an outstanding contribution from other members: the librarian, the families, the town mayor, the pharmacist, the doctor, an entrepreneur, or others. Teachers and students will have the opportunity to tell us what the impact of these experiences has been in the educational community. We will publish these accounts on the NSS portal. 

4.- eTwinning and me. The students can send proposals for topics which they would like eTwinning to deal with in next year's campaign. 

And lastly, a little advice which is it is important to remember at the beginning of the year: 

• Up-date your personal profile on the eTwinning Desktop. It will be easier to find a European partner and agree on a project. 

• Subscribe to the National eTwinning Newsletter. You will be well  informed about all that is happening in eTwinning. 

• Participate in “Voices of eTwinning”. This section of the NSS portal is at your disposal for publicizing your ideas, experiences, concerns, training. etc. Everything that you send will be of help to other teachers. Send your experiences or impressions to   This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (Section Voices of eTwinning).

• Social networks. If you are a user of a social network, when you write comments on eTwinning Weeks, use the hashcode  #etweeks.

We are waiting for you!

Source of images: Photo compositions from free use images from Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain licence) and the INTEF sound and Image bank (Recognized Creative Commons licence-Non commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Spain).