Etwinning

Students involvement as a successful factor of the project

The Spanish NSS has taken part in the workgroup 'how to get students involved in eTwinning projects'. Here you can read some ideas about how to involve them which have been developed in this workgroup.

Students are a very important part in the project because they are going to be the receptive element of the effort changed into learning. Capacities, experiences, abilities and Knowledge development are the result of this participation but to do that, we need to know very well how to involve our studentes. So that, we propose some ideas that can be useful.

It is important to achive the involment of the students before the project, in all the steps of it and  furthermore it is important that this involment continues after the project.

Before the project:

• Explaining the basic matters of an eTwinning project and showing them a finished project or a part of it.
• Telling the general idea of the project.
• Asking about some ideas they would like to develope.
• Spotting their previous interests (topics, tools, languages, subjects, etc.).
• Suggesting the students topics of interest.
• Discussing the most interesting topics which will be developed during the project.
• Taking part in the proposal of collaboration activities.
• Explaining all the subjects that will be integrated in the syllabus.
• Asking the students about their knowledge of others countries and the matters they would like to get to know.
• Introducing the centre and the country they will work with.
• Looking for information about this centre and this country.
• Disseminating the future project in the centre through noticeboards, school Web page (in case it exits), etc. to create a working atmosphere where every student will take part in it.
• Introducing them into the ITC tools they will use during the project and asking which ones do they use and agree a common use of them.
• Showing the TwinSpace and its tools.
• Practising the foreign language to develop self-confidence in students.
• Informing the parents about the project and the roles they can play to get involved in it.
• Provide the planning and the timetable of the project.
• Creating a blog, a forum or a space of communication so the students can tell their expectations about the project.
• Involving others teachers in the dissemination and development of the project, if possible.

During the project:

• To create a students corner, noticeboards or an environment dedicated to the project (icons, pictures, paints, slogans, etc.)
• Exchanging some details by post.
• Dividing students into pairs or mixed groups to ensure that every student/s has a partner/s.
• Making the students’ meeting possible through a chat or videoconference, photos, identifying image (football players, golfers, etc) to recognize themselves.
•  Inviting the students as members/administrators of TwinSpace.
•  Asking certain students to do different tasks such as uploading files to TwinSpace, recording videos, scanning documents, taking pictures, etc.
•  Exchanging messages in a secure environment.
•  Undertaking to reply the messages in a reasonable period of time.
•  Generating a trust atmosphere to achieve partners to ask questions among themselves, clarify doubts and consider work as indissoluble unity.
• Taking part in the forum/ blog and being able to propose discussion topics.
•  Making comments about their peers’ publications (blog, forum), not only in their centre but in their partners.
•  Proposing mixed collaboration activities.
•  Creating a common calendar of events (holidays, sporting events, films, etc.)
•  Diversifying the types activities.
•  Proposing different (concatenated) activities to give continuity to the project so the involvement lasts as long as they wish.
•  Setting deadlines to execute and give in the activities; these dates must be the same as those in the other schools. If not possible, at least, they must be known.
•  Making the involvement of parents possible through the access to TwinSpace or another workspace so they know what their kids are doing and they decide to work with them.
•  Trying to involve all students –independently of the curricular level-, adapting activities to special needs students.
•  Integrating the project in the curriculum, developing it during teaching hours, what shouldn’t mean an extra effort for students.
•  Setting the concrete periods of time spent on the project (TwinSpace, tools, viewing, etc.) in the weekly school hours.
•  Establishing evaluation and qualification criteria related to the project within the report of the Didactic Department
•  Attaching more importance to the process of communication among students than to the grammar of the foreign language.
•  Publishing and disseminating the materials and results of the project at intermediate stages and not only at the end.
•  Developing useful materials for their partners so they can work with them in the classroom, and making the most of the improvements in comparison to conventional textbooks.

After the project:

• Sharing the positive and negative aspects of the project.
• Including students’ contributions into the evaluation.
• Disseminating the project among the Educational Community and other fields.
• Making the most of some project activities to carry out activities in the classroom or in the school.
• Encouraging the student's participation in training sessions, seminars, etc., in which they explain their own experiences.
• Requesting the quality label and celebrating its achievement.
• Keeping on enjoying the communication between  students and partners.
• Suggesting long term activities (birthday congratulations, European sports events, sending videos and pictures…).
• Publishing the fulfilled materials and disseminating them among students for its use.
• Organizing open days with parents to explain them the project, their previous expectations, their conclusions, etc.
• Evaluating the participation in the project and the ways to improve the future experience.

 Fuente Imagen Banco de recursos del ITE cuyo autor es anónimo