In the Northern of France, we help teachers to learn about Etwinning and the European partnerships. On some Wednesday afternoons, during 3 hours, we explain Etwinning to volunteer teachers, we show them what we have done or we are doing on different projects. Then we help them to use Etwinning and to create a project and to find partners. We also help Etwinners by phone or by mails if they have questions. And you? Florence from France
In London - UK, we promote eTwinning through workshops taking place in different venues and at different times, after school to a group of 15+ teachers, also through webinars and flashmeetings. After helping teachers register, we provide continued support on how to find partners and how to use TwinSpace and anything related to eTwinning. Of course we also promoted Comenius and Connecting Classrooms. Now we will promote Erasmus - KA1 and KA2... UK eTwinning Ambassadors keep in regular contact through Ning. We also have an annual conference and meet regionally from time to time, to share ideas and good practice, to evaluate previous activities and create new ways of helping the dissemination of eTwinning.
In Flandres I give several startersworkshops on Wednesday afternoon in the different parts of Flanders. I also help starter teachers with them projects. I'm also speaker on meetings with headmasters and Inspectors.I'm a speaker in several Teacher Training Colleges, to promote the value of internationalization and take some of the students in my projects so they can work with the same assignments. I'm also workshop leader on the seminars for Primary teachers in Belgium (Hasselt, Antwerp and maybe Leuven) I bring pratical project Ideas and usefull communication and ICT tools. I'm also speaker and promotor on Comeniusworkshops and Taccle courses. We will use also with some partners a Twinspace for our KA 1 projects. I'm speakers on partnermeetings of an existing Comeniusprojects or on preparation meetings.I promote also etwinning among my own partners. Philippe
In Cyprus, we organize several workshops on district and national base. We work in pairs so we can apply at the same time directions to beginners and advaned teachers in etwinning. As we are a small country some times we can have a face to face contact in an infrormal way and answer any questions uprised during a project. Nikos
In The Netherlands we also create several workshops, meetings for teachers to be updated about new developments in eTwinning. In the part of the Netherlands were I live ( the eastern) eTwinning is not that much welknown, so I try to make them enthusiastic by helping them to start a project. I'll join the end of October a meeting wich explain Erasmus+ and KA1 and KA2 projects. I try to join MOOC's as it's the future for e learning! José
I always publish what we do in our eTwinning projects on our school's webite, on facebook and in our local newspapers and our activities are also broadcasted on our local TV channels. I also help my colleagues at school to work on etwinning projects. I try to promote eTwinning as much as I can. Elizabeta Filipova, FYROMacedonia
In Greece are 12 of us each for a region. I'm on the North - East on the border with Turkey and Bulgaria. We are organizing seminars ( last year I organized 5 of them) and webinars ( I organized 3). We cover and help the whole range of etwinners, starters and expirienced. I use to use social media to promote etwinning. I also created a blog for my region eTwinners where they can find help and tutorials for several eTwinning issues. I also created and a teachers room in eTwinning. The only problem I consider as the most serious is the lack of time. As we're volunteers we have to work a full time week in the school and to prepare the whole etwinning work for our regions. Petros
Hi All,
In Turkey there are 81 provincial eTwinning ambassadors. We help teachers to learn about Etwinning and how to collaborate project with the European partners. We present seminars at list 3-4 hours and explain Etwinning projects to the new etwinners. We explain them desktop and how to use twinspace with sample projects. We help them to use Etwinning portals efficiently. How to create new project and find partners. We also guide new etwinners by phone or e- mails too. Nowadays alot of schools invite me to their school to present etwinning briefings , I provide them guidence about how to find partners and create an Etwinning project. Nurcan, Izmir-TR
Hello again!
In Holland, my role as an ambassador is to let people join eTwinning by giving them information about how to use and so on. I also give teachers and students examples of good, simple projects.
Helen
Hello it is the same in Iceland as in Holland. Elin
In the Canary Islands, Spain, we promote eTwinning through workshops taking place at teacher´s inset centers and through on-line moddle for Canarian teachers. Some times we use webinars with our SNA in Madrid but they preffer face to face in their first steps.Some changes are coming with the new Erasmus+ and there will be more ambassadors, one per each island, to make it easier to promote all European projects. Spanish ambassadors keep regular contact through their blog for Spanish ambassadors and also eTwinning project for Spanish ambassadors. Every now and then we meet through webinars organized by our SNA.
Cecilia
Lithuanian eTwinning Ambassador leads training - workshops, writes articles, advises teachers. That's the last article after the project trip.
The first eTwinning – Nordplus meeting in Latvia
Last school year our young pupils enjoyed working on eTwinning project “Primary students experiment, observe, investigate and create“ and had partners from Spain and Iceland. This project was so interesting, modern and useful that we decided to expand it and became as eTwinning-Norplus Project. Schools from Estonia - Tallinna kindergarten and Latvia - Skujene Pamatskola became our partners and project activities are done now not only online but in reality too.
Before the first meeting in Vest Skujene School, Latvia, we, teachers and pupils, got introduced each other on skype and eagerly were waiting for the real meeting. With the help of pupils‘ parents we went to visit our Latvian partners. The journey was long, children admired the wonderful nature. When we finally reached our journey destination, we saw Latvian‘s school headmaster and some pupils dressed in Latvian national costumes waiting for us outside the school. The school headmaster Anda couldn‘t remember when was the last time when so many people were in this small school: 50 Latvians – teachers and pupils, 4 Estonian teachers, 42 Lithuanian pupils and 7 their teachers. In Latvia pupils from Latvia and Lithuania performed a wonderful concert, they sang, danced, talked to each other, played various games. The hosts prepared for children a very interesting entertaining program. We visited one of the oldest Latvian town Cesis, its mediterranean castle.
The most impressive for children was the visit to educational centre ZINOO (http://www.zinoo.lv/). It seemed that this centre was held just especially for our project. There the children got acquainted with the various laws of nature: felt the taste of gravity, understood and felt the force of friction while running special karting, saw and felt the power of lightining. Children learned that in order to lift 1 tonne rocket into the air, it is necessary to use 20 tons of fuel. Wow. But even more impressive was when children made rockets themselves and put them in a 5-storey height of the house. Strenght. The children weren‘t able to believe what was going.
Only late in the evening Lithuanian pupils went home. Teachers Diana, Aurelija and Ingrida stayed there for 5 days to work on project activities. They conducted lessons, shared their pedagogical experience with project partner teachers. The Vest Skujene School is located between the forests and fields so it was very difficult to reach this school from the hotel (35 km) because there are no public transport to this village. So our teachers had to hire a car, to upload GPS programs on their phones and learn how to use them.
Lithuanian teachers conducted lessons to Latvian pupils, made paper, did some experiments with it, with flowers and colours in the milk, proved that a human being has electricity, made dolls and candles. Teacher Aurelija taught other partner teachers how to use the newest Twinspace, its tools. There was held a project presentation and all partner school presentations to Latvian school community. As the symbols of the project were chosen a hand-lens and a butterfly net.
The next project meeting we are planning to organise in Estonia in spring. Now all partner children are working on creating a project Logo.The first project meeting was successful and it was very difficult to say goodbye. We are very glad that in these modern times we can meet online. We have to continue working on planned project activities. Aurelija
I tried to give my help to the new etwinners and whenever they ask me to give a little talk about eTwinning I do it. I also put in the school blog and the English blog of school all the activiites we do. We also call the newspapers so they publish some articles about eTwinning.
Maite from Spain
In Poland the eTwinning ambassadors promote eTwinning by organizing workshops for teachers in their regions. During the workshops we present what eTwinning is, how to find partners and plan a project, we help new teachers to register on eTwinning, we show how Desktop and TwinSpace work and we share best practice. We also help eTwinners if they have any problems. We sometimes do workshops during national conferences, PDWs and contact seminars.
In Italy, the task of our ambassadors is essentially to promote the use of eTwinning and to help those who need it. From time to time we organize regional workshops to introduce eTwinning inform about news, guide new teachers in the development of projects. Several times we take part in the online webinar with the authorities eTwinning. Once or twice a year we participate in national conferences. We have created both regional and national groups on Facebook to be in constant contact with both of us that the authorities eTwinning. Maria Teresa
In our country disseminating the ideas of of eTwinning, I go to schools and teach beginners how to create projects, work on the desktop and TwinSpace and tool use in projects. Also as an ambassador I train etwinery via WebEx. Pavel
In Navarra, we have created a etwinning embassy. In December I'm going to teach a course for new teachers in etwinning, also last year in my school, we create a etwinning seminar where several projects emerged. Pedro
In Germany there are 16 different countries and also 16 different school systems. There is only one place where all the countries meet and discuss educational things: it's called "KMK" (conference of educational ministries). That's the place where erasmus+ is settled. So we have about 100 "erasmus+ moderators" for the 16 countries. We meet once or twice a year. A part of the "moderators" is specialized on eTwinning. In my area (150*100 km; with cities like Braunschweig or Göttingen) I am the only eTwinning ambassador. So I try to inform about eTwinning, try to visit schools and help teachers to work with eTwinning. Harald
I´m part of Galician embassy together with Marcos, Carmen and Susana. We give support to Galician teachers who show any interest in taking part in an e-twinning Project offering help from the inside. We´ve created a Project where they can taste e-twinning for real just to lose their fears and try the different tools they are going to find when beginning a real Project.
We cooperate with our regional Education authorities giving workshops and teacher training in groups of different sizes within the teachers schools on demand or through events organized by our regional govermment showing the Projects we are involved in, or helping with any doubts they can find within the desktop, twinspace, finding partners and so on.
On the 29th of November we are going to have a confference for more than 200 teachers who want to know about e-twinning in Santiago de Compostela. We hope the e-twinning comunity will grow up after this meeting.
Mela Rguez
In Romania we are many eTwinning ambassadors since last year (2013). I'm in a very good terms with some ambassadors and we imagine together some activities meant to increase the prestige of eTwinning at National and European level. Recently we conducted a videoconference which focused on developpement of the eTwinning national projects (the pilot-project with both founders from the same country) http://ambasadoriietwinningromani.weebly.com/prima-pagin259/proiecte-nationale-initiate-cu-sprijinul-ambasadorilor. I wrote some researches about eTwinning and its benefits for the teachers practices http://padi.psiedu.ubbcluj.ro/adn/article_6_4_3.pdf, http://padi.psiedu.ubbcluj.ro/adn/article_7_1_3.pdf, http://rrge.reviste.ubbcluj.ro/Arhive/Art%20pdf/v3,n1,2014/3%20Crisan.pdf. With this papers I intended to attract academics to eTwinning.
Gabriela
In Italy there are lots of Ambassadors because there are more than 20 regions and each region has its Ambassadors. It depends on the size of it: some small regions such as Molise have only 2 or 3 Ambassadors and some bigger ones such as Lombardia about 10. Well, in my Region , Abruzzo, there are 7 Ambassadors. My role is to take part into learning events planned by local coordinator or arranging workshops in schools asking for more information about eTwinning; sometimes I collaborate with my National Agency with videotutorial or publishing resources that can help teachers. The Italian web site for eTwinning is at: www.etwinning.it. Lia
I am an Italian Ambassador. In my Country there are more then 100 Ambassadors because as says Lia there are from 3 to 10 Ambassador in each regions and we have 20 regions. As Lia: My role is to take part into learning events planned by local coordinator or arranging workshops in schools asking for more information about eTwinning; sometimes I collaborate with my National Agency with videotutorial or publishing resources that can help teachers. I'm a teacher so I take part in more eTwinning project. I love to be an eTwinner.... it's my life!
Brigida Clemente