Category: etwinning

Here are my photos from my three day stay in Madrid at the eTwinning conference.
Hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoy remembering taking them!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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DSCN1256, originally uploaded by lisibo.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m currently in Spain, in Madrid at a bilateral eTwinning meeting for Spanish and English teachers looking for partners – for eTwinning projects.

The meeting is coming to an end today after three days of frantic activity as teachers from both countries really threw themselves into the task of making friends and influencing one another. After a treasure hunt around the sites of central Madrid, numerous three course meals and several copas de vino, everyone has found a partner or partners, and begun to formulate project ideas. So it’s been a very successful meeting – and some of the project ideas that people are sharing as I type are really interesting and creative!

One partnership are going to use digital storytelling and video to share talents between their schools with pupils acting as a Simon Cowell and judging the talents of their partner pupils.

Another group are planning on looking at festivals and cultural events along the lines of ‘similar but different’ – I know that this type of project leads pupils to not only learn about their partners’ culture but also to reflect on their own!

‘One liners’ will be based around a ‘guessing game’ involving proverbs in Spanish and English, with the partners schools exchanging one line each week that will be displayed for the pupils who will work out / guess what it means. The partners hope that this will lead to discussion of the imagery of proverbs and a comparison of similarities and differences. Apparently this idea was formulated yesterday in the middle of the session I delivered on Voki Voicethread and Audacity in eTwinning after I shared the Voicethread highlighted in the previous post called What could it mean? :o)

Another group were inspired to create a NING network in my session (and I only mentioned those in passing!) and are planning on a monthly Voicethread activity about the City of the Future – environment, culture, lifestyle etc.

I’ve had some very interesting conversations over these few days about languages and technology, and also about the use of technology in general. One delegate told me on the first night that he hated technology, couldn’t do anything technological and that his own children were banned from using computers as they are ‘evil’. Mmm! I suggested that he might like to learn how ICT works alongside his children, thus knowing what they were doing and learning at the same time, and we had a discussion about educating rather than banning but didn’t seem overly swayed by my argument! So I took that as a challenge for my session and was pleased as punch when he made a Voki in my session and declared that perhaps he could do something after all. And in the report back, he’s just suggested using online Playstation competitions as a way of maintaining and establishing links between the schools. :O)

Here’s my presentation below – and the notes I made too.
You can’t put Keynote presentations in Slideshare or Pages documents in DocStoc so the formatting is a little odd as I had to export it as .ppt and .doc :O(

Notes for Madrid – Get more Business Documents

After a conversation with a few of us in Nottingham at the UK National eTwinning Conference yesterday, and a crash course in NING building from NING queen Jo Rhys Jones, Oscar Stringer has created a NING network called Animation for Education for those wanting to discover more about animation in education.

As Oscar explains in the site’s blurb, he aims for it to be –
A place to share ideas, thoughts and examples of work. With the aim to help you develop confidence in using animation in the classroom.

So, why not do as Isabelle Jones and SpookingDorf did after reading my tweet about it and join? You’ve got nothing to lose and lots to gain :o)

I’m currently in Nottingham at the NCSL at the British eTwinning Conference.

This morning I went to a workshop by Oscar Stringer on animation – the theory being that it will become ingrained in my brain if I do the workshop enough time ;o)

Here’s the video I made with Jo Rhys-Jones and a lovely lady called Sue based on minibeasts. Hope you enjoy it – we’re very proud.

Earlier this week David Noble tweeted a request for someone to attend a Flashmeeting on 8th May for his Access Network. Seeing it as an opportunity to virtually meet some new people, to help David and to leave school on the bell, I volunteered to share some ideas about using puppets and also some ideas for eTwinning.

On a very hot afternoon six of us met on Flashmeeting with David sharing about using GoogleEarth and also about ScotsEduBlogs. David is much more advanced in his Flashmeeting skills than me and managed to post his URLs using the URL button so they popped up for us – I managed to forget about this facility until too late, and posted any that I used in the chat. I hope that my contribution was helpful – I learned plenty from the part of David’s talk that I caught.

Below are the links I promised to post to my blog for anyone who is interested ;o)

Puppets – the following blog posts might interest you –
Inspired in IKEA part2 – ideas for where to get and what to do with puppets
Diez animales- an idea for using puppets with song to demonstrate understanding and increase motivation!

eTwinning
I quoted some of these sites in the meeting but I’ll repeat them anyway!
Have a look a the post I wrote last week about my talk at Beaumanor Hall for teachers of pupils with SEN in special and mainstream schools – there are several useful links including to the project at Sackville School run by Anne Jakins I mentioned and to a few projects/ideas I mentioned. You can also find the links to the outcomes of Whitehouse Common’s project with Spain.
There are other posts on eTwinning on my blog – use the search feature on the right- perhaps you’d be interested in this one as well.
The British Council site has an eTwinning section and then there is the eTwinning portal where you register your interest, search for partners and can record your project.
And then there is the all important eTwinning Ambassadors page.

I spent this afternoon at the aptly named Beaumanor Hall near Loughborough in the company of teachers of pupils with special needs, drawn from both special and mainstream schools. I had been asked by the British Council to present a case study on eTwinning as part of the afternoon’s proceeding led by Lorna Belsey and Tom Birtwistle, and I was happy to do so.

After a delicious lunch – my healthy first course of mackerel and salad was followed by not-so-healthy bread and butter pudding – although the bread seemed to be brown so that must be good??- we adjourned to the ICT suite where Lorna explained Comenius and the ISA awards. Then it was by go to present a case study about last year’s project at WCPS – Somos lo que celebramos – and to share some ideas of how eTwinning might work for them, and some ideas of tools that could be used.

You can access the presentation and some of the documents in a previous post, but here are some links that I mentioned that you might wish to investigate.

British Council website
eTwinning home page
eTwinning portal

Whitehouse Common Primary School website
Colegio Público César Hurtado Delicado website (etwinning section)

Voki
Voicethread

Voices of the World wiki of previous months’ activities
Euro 08 project
Animation

David S Stewart’s interview about Special Schools and eTwinning
Nick Falk and Anne Jakins’ presentation about eTwinning at Sackville School (with SEN pupils)

Wishing you all happy eTwinning! :o)

These young people were at the International Opportunities conference today. They are from five local secondary schools and were there to explain their experience of an international project called INDIE – Inclusion and Diversity in Education.

‘Inclusion & Diversity in Education is a project that addresses the challenges migration presents to schools in Europe.’
‘The impact of migration on schools presents similar challenges to school education at all levels in all European Countries. We want to combat social disadvantage and raise educational standards for students with migration backgrounds. In order to succeed, we need to develop effective and culturally inclusive schools. To achieve this we need high quality school leadership.’
(from British Council site)

They explained how they had been chosen to take part in the project as they had shown leadership skills at school and been invited to take part in training in Sutton Park on teamwork and leading people. They were then selected to take part in a conference in Brussels in February with similar young leaders from across Europe to discuss a common charter for Inclusion and Diversity. As part of the conference, they presented in the European Parliament where they received a standing ovation.

The young people above shared their thoughts and experiences today of the project. One commented on the issues they discovered through the conference such as a young lady from Belgium being banned from wearing her headscarf who was working for a change in that area. Another talked about making an effort to understand people who didn’t speak English. And the lad in the middle commented that, whilst in Brussels, he spoke to people to whom he wouldn’t normally have paid any attention – he described one encounter ‘I’m not sure what he was,….some kind of Goth…. and I definitely wouldn’t have spoken to him in Birmingham.’

Although nervous, they spoke with honesty and simplicity – and they inspired us all. Let’s hope that there will be many more young leaders who look to lead the way for inclusion and diversity in this country.

Note – I’m trying to get hold of a copy of the Charter -I’ll post it here when I have it!

Today I took part in a conference in the Banqueting Suite of Birmingham’s Council House about the International Opportunities, presenting a case study as part of a presentation on Comenius and eTwinning along with Simon Graham from the British Council and Paul Higgs from Belvedere Junior School in Burton on Trent.

For those of you who attended the session, here’s my presentation – especially if you attended the first version when I had to fit it all into 3 minutes ;o)
I’ve also uploaded a couple of examples of work that the pupils did as part of the project. More can be found on our school websites – WCPS and CPCHD.

If you have any questions, you’re welcome to contact me.

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4KP Easter ppt (RE) – Get more documents

1HJ Easter PPT (music) – Get more documents

4CT Easter PPT (maths) – Get more documents

questions for cpchd – Get more documents

The ws of etwinning at wcps – Get more documents

example of pancake day work – Get more documents

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Hradcany, Prague, originally uploaded by stevacek.

Tomorrow I’m off to Prague for an eTwinning Professional Development Workshop (PDW). I’m very much looking forward to it as I had a great time on the last one in Nottingham, and also as Prague is a place I’ve always fancied visiting!
I hope to meet up with lots of other eTwinning Ambassadors from across Europe and share ideas and experiences of making cross country links. No doubt I’ll tell you all about next week when I return.
And there is a four hour sightseeing tour to anticipate too as well as dinner on a boat. All work and no play …. ;o)

Photo from Flickr

I spent today in Gloucester at an eTwinning event entitled Working on the Internet with partner schools across Europe . The event was led by Baldev Singh so when I was asked following the Nottingham PDW by the British Council to attend the event as an eTwinning Ambassador and talk about my experiences of eTwinning, I jumped at the chance. As I blogged previously, I had wanted to attend all three of the workshops at the Nottingham event, so the prospect of learning something from Baldev was exciting. And sure enough, I did!

After giving us an overview of how ICT and technology has impacted our world and how it can be used to develop the international dimension, we had a go at using Photo Story 3 to make presentations on a theme of our choosing. I was itching to have a go as I helped other people with their presentations, and I managed to grab a few minutes to make a quick slideshow about ‘Healthy food’. I was really pleased to learn that Photo Story 3 is downloadable free and as soon as I got home I downloaded it – another thing to play with at the weekend ;o) It was really simple to use and you can see the result of my ten minutes (promise you it was that quick!).

Throughout the day we talked about a myriad of tools such as Voicethread, Voki, Animoto, OneTrueMedia, Flickr, and many more as well as mentioning various projects including Voices of the World and Chris Fuller’s Euro08 project – possibly not a good time to talk about footy :o( as looked at the possibilities for eTwinning. I talked to one delegate about a collaborative music project and another about their existing partnerships and how it might be developed. It was good to be able to go beyond my brief too as people asked about my PLL experiences too and I was able to point a couple of people towards online support networks such as Talkabout Primary MFL.

All in all, a successful day for all – and I must have done a half decent presentation as I’ve been asked to go back!

Enjoy the video!