European Commission - Youth and Education - For Schools - Classrooms without borders: The fun of eTwinning

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Classrooms without borders: The fun of eTwinning

by Victoria Holdsworth

eTwinning logo Fancy making friends in other countries and showing your teachers a thing or two about how to use the Internet!

That's what eTwinning is all about - a fun and safe way for you to meet kids from 28 countries across Europe by sharing ideas and learning together over the web.

It can be as simple as emailing pupils from another school and discussing your hobbies, or as complex as designing and working together on a subject using different tools like blogs, websites, and videos.

eTwinning started in January 2005 with the idea that schools across Europe would twin up with 'partner' schools and pupils could link up on projects, while at the same time, improving their ICT and language skills.

Since then, eTwinning has really taken off with a wide range of schemes involving very young learners, right through to secondary schools, sixth-form and further education colleges as well as students with special needs. Everyone can be involved. The great thing is that pupils can work in teams and plan and produce their ideas alongside their teachers.

Some schools stay in touch even when their project is over, start new projects together, or extend their work to include other schools. Pupils can also get an eTwinning quality label for excellent work - and can win prizes like webcams for their school.

Talking Through Time - Cauldeen Primary

Last year's European eTwinning award winner was a school from the Highlands in Scotland, whose project 'Talking Through Time' was inspired by work their students had done for the Imperial War Museum in London. They hoped to get a better understand of World War 2, which they were studying in history.

Year 6 pupils at Cauldeen Primary, together with their headteacher, George Glass, decided to interview grandparents and war veterans who lived near the school in Inverness, to find out about their thoughts, feelings and experiences during wartime.

A school in Gozo, Malta took up the project and the children exchanged information based on their interviews. Malta was badly bombed during the war, and it gave the children the chance to learn about another European country and compare the experiences of young people during the conflict. Another school in Malta and one in Poland also joined in.

Over three months, the children used emails, Powerpoint, digital videos and cameras to put together their website, which you can see on:

http://www.ww2inthehighlands.co.uk/etwinning/index.htm.

For the pupils, it was a very exciting project: They had the opportunity to meet older people in the community and gained a lot of confidence while making a real contribution to documenting the history of that time. One of the veterans still visits the school and comes to their concerts and sports days!

'Chocolate and Chips' - Scotland

Their prize was a holiday camp in Lanzarote, where they were able to meet the other children who worked on the Talking Through Time project. They also learned new ICT skills like how to make digital videos.

Now the Year 6 students have moved onto secondary school, but they are still working with nine other schools in their local area to teach both pupils and their teachers about eTwinning and how to use web tools.

And headteacher George Glass has continued the work on other eTwinning projects, including one called 'Chocolate and Chips', comparing the foods his pupils eat with those in Malta.

'Chocolate and Chips' - Malta

eTwinning has certainly helped make school subjects a lot more interesting, says Susan Linklater, who is the head of eTwinning in the United Kingdom. "On many occasions, children know a lot more about the different technologies than their teachers! Children are given a chance to show their teachers what they know.

They become very confident and inspired when they have such an important role to play; getting together, making decisions, learning about other countries and creating something which other children can see."

Some more adventurous and creative ideas

Year 6 students at Wells-next-the-Sea Primary and Nursery School in England teamed up with seven schools to write a story called the Red Balloon. Pupils used words and photographs to document the travels of a red balloon as it moved from school to school across the map of Europe, with each school writing a chapter. Not only did they discover similarities and differences about themselves, but they also learned a bit about other languages and were able to edit it themselves and download pictures. Their project won a national eTwinning award! See: http://www.wells-next-the-sea.norfolk.sch.uk/barnaby/redballoon.html

Kavasilla Junior High School in Greece, linked up with the Česká Lípa grammar school in the Czech Republic so that they could learn and share traditional games from their countries. Their PE teachers sent each other emails with the rules of a Czech game called "Beating out" and a Greek game called "Faininda". The pupils then played these games during PE classes and made Powerpoint presentations showing how the games worked. Now the children are showing the games to their fellow pupils.

A maths teacher at a secondary Church School in Malta teamed up with a maths teacher in Poland to try and make the subject more fun and relevant to the everyday life of their pupils. They used a weblog to host the students' project, which was learning about symmetry. Pupils took photographs of everyday objects showing symmetry, using a digital camera. The results can be found on: http://www.etwinmaths.blogspot.com/

The Christian Brothers School in Dingle, Ireland twinned up with a school in Kobern-Gondorf, Germany on a project, which aimed to find out about the shared history of both countries. They looked at the Celts, who lived in Central and Western Europe more than 2000 years ago. Not only did they learn about their common ancestry, but it also improved their language and ICT skills. See their website: http://www.etwinning.ie/projects/commonroots.htm and lhttp://www.regschule-untermosel.de/Kerry/index.htm for the results!

In one project, ten European schools got together to look at electronic learning (e-learning) tools, including ejournals, webquests, weblogs, websites and video conferencing. http://e-competences.blogspot.com/

Scottish primary schools have started a "Ticket to Space," online event, in which children can take a virtual tour of the solar system, link up to websites and ask experts questions. Various schools have participated with their own blogs. Now, thanks to eTwinning, other schools in Europe will be joining in soon. http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/cs/blogs/tickettospace/

Next steps

To join up, your school must register its details on the e-Twinning website: http://www.britishcouncil.org/etwinning and from this site, your teachers will also be able to find eTwinning partners, using the eTwinning map. You can choose which country you want to work with, what age group and which subject area. You can even make your own suggestions.

It's also a free and safe way to use the Internet. Children access the eTwinning tools through their teacher, so email accounts and web pages are safe areas.

From here on, you can make use of twinspace, which is a free, online workspace with a range of tools, including a shared calendar, forums, chats and bulletin boards. You can use this private space to upload and share resources as well as to build your own web pages.

eTwinning logo

Over 1600 schools have signed up for eTwinning in the United Kingdom. In November 2006, a British school, St Vincent's RC Primary in London became the 20,000th school in Europe to join. That's a lot of children interacting with each other and learning about the lives and cultures of their European classmates!