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Partner Meetings

  • Whenever we have partner meetings we'll try to share some sort of a minute that briefly goes into what was talked about and agreed upon by us.

    Final meetings

    Apart from all the webinars and short meetings that we had to prepare the final debates (please check the page preparing the debates), we always used the moments prior to each online debate to talk and adjust things, agree on what to do next and how.

    After the last debate, on June 4th, we got together again for a final feedback on our project. Of course we will keep in touch as there are still so many little details to work on before we can conclude the project and, who knows, prepare the next one...

    Fourth meeting - 17/04/2020

    Time to meet again!

    It took us more than expected because we were all trying to figure out what life and teaching would be like uner this pandemic.

    No one is sure about what this elearning will be like, wht outcomes we can expect and how we can have students participate in all the activities we had set up for this project. Still, we're no quitters and so we decided to try and continue the project with some adaptations.

    We decided to give students more time to upload their speeches. Meanwhile we'll be moving on to the next activity: Voices over bullets.

    It won't be easy to have as many students on board as we expected because not all of them have the means to participate in these online debates and we don't have as much time with them as when we were at school. Still, we have invited a Polish teacher who is an expert in Oxford debates to set up a webinar for teachers and then for students to lead us through the different stages and help us prepare the debates. We will try to motivate some of our students to participate and after we have volunteers we will create international teams. These teams will work collaboratively, deciding on topics, producing arguments and when they're ready, we will set up an online meeting so the actual debate can take place with one or two teachers moderating.

    Let's hope for volunteers now!

    Third meeting - 15/12/2019

    Some recap

    Let’s get to know each other – everybody participated, students quite active, commenting on each other’s word clouds. Sorry that Sezi’s students didn’t get as much feedback as they deserved but it was difficult to make them go back to the padlet.

    Project logo – great choice!

    The pen is mightier than the sword – good page and good participation in the forum

    It got to me – massive participation voting for the best quote and some interesting insights in the forum

    Proverbs and idiomatic expressions – nice research work and then great illustrations and a nice ebook

    The power of words – anyone else has any responses? I published the ones from Madeira and Croatia as well as my students’

    A good speech can move mountains – this subpage or part of it could actually move into the second activity as we will be dealing with this

    Words and censorship – great work from Madeira students and the Skype call between Bragança and Warsaw students. It proved to be a success and something students really look forward to. We should do more!

    Wise Words from Wise men from Greece – very interesting

    Extra activities – Flipgrid – I would have liked more participation. Let’s hope it will be better our next attempt

    Activity 2 – Voices over bullets – The speech

    How shall we go about it?

    Step 1: I will share and also upload to TwinSpace a document with links to a number of famous speeches. We can use them or ask the students to do their own research, see what they come up with and if they missed any one speech we consider essential, we share it with them.

    Step 2: Then we should analyse these speeches and create an infographic or a poster with the rules for a great speech (there are sites online with this information, but it would be better if it came from them). Which tools can we use? Is there any one tool that we could use collaboratively?

    Step 3: Students choose the topic they want to make a speech about. Should it be free topic? Or should we choose a couple of topics and then vote on one or three or…?

    Step 4: Students write their speech, perform it in class and vote for the two or three best in each class. The best ones should be recorded and uploaded to TwinSpace. Attention: Speeches should be about 2 minutes long.

    Step 5: Students from all the countries vote for the top three speeches.

    This activity should be completed by mid March.

    These speeches could also be in a kind of TED talk format.

    Second meeting - 13/10/2019

     

    In fact it was a double second meeting as Luísa, Anna and Alexandra met through Skype and then Luísa, Barbara and Fatma met through Facebook Messenger. Only Elen couldn’t make it. Here’s what has been discussed and decided in those two meetings:

     

    TwinSpace pages

     

    Fatma still needs to create the pages “Voices over bullets” and “Final project evaluation”

    Elen still needs to create the page “Project dissemination”

    Get to know each other activity

    Keep encouraging students to see and listen to the word clouds and then comment on a few. There are some very good texts there and some have already found interesting people they would like to meet face to face.

    Logo

    There are currently  some logos created by Anna’s and Alexandra’s students in TwinSpace. Barbara is going to add some and so will Fatma early this week.

    Anna will then create a google form for students to vote on their favourite and will share it with all of us. So Anna, will you please wait until Fatma uploads her students’ logos?

    Activity 1

    What has been done so far:

    • Bragança students did some research on Proverbs and idiomatic expressions related to the words “book” and “words”. 

    • They also researched forbidden books and moments in history when books were burnt.

    • They created quotes posters/images for the activity “It got to me”. These are quotes or extracts from books they love or book quotes that are meaningful to them. An example can be seen on a subpage in TwinSpace

    • Madeira students wrote essays on the sentence “The pen is mightier than the sword”

    What was suggested could be done next:

    • Alexandra will create a Flipgrid thread where her students will record some of their opinions from the essays written on “The pen is mightier than the sword”. She will share the link and our students should add their comments (say whether they agree / disagree, etc)

    • Luísa will create an ebook with the quotes posters (if anyone else wants to participate please send me the images until 31st October)

    • Luísa will share some questions on forbidden or important books with everyone. Students from other countries should answer them in class and their answers should be recorded in video and uploaded to TwinSpace. Then Bragança students will upload their comments and right answers. A kahoot may then follow to check how much they’ve learnt.

    • Anna’s students will illustrate proverbs and idiomatic expressions related to “book” or “words”. We can send them to her until the 25th October

    • Alexandra’s students are also doing videos or presentations on the topic of this activity (can you be a bit more specific, Alexandra? Please add here)

    • Barbara said she would like to work with her students on the power and importance of language (mother tongue) as it is important for them. They are a new country with their own official language and she wants her students to reflect on that.

    • Fatma also said she would like to do something about her country and share it with us and asked if we could also shortly present our countries to her students. Suggestions on how we can do that are welcome.

    • Fatma would like to have her students talk to our students via Skype as soon as possible. It could be about “The pen is mightier than the sword” or about “Censorship”. Can you please check if there’s any way anyone can be with her? Please check the document with our timetables. 

    • Elen, what are your students going to do?

    All these activities should be completed by end November so that we can then concentrate on the Speeches activity (Voices over bullets)

     

    First meeting - 08/09/2019

    Welcome on board everyone!

    Our first meeting was a great opportunity to get to know each other. It's true that Anna, Alexandra and Luísa have been doing eTwinning projects together for quite some time, but it's good to have new people working with us, bringing new ideas and challenging us to do different.

    During this meeting we decided on which pages to create and how to go about the first activity - Let's get to know each other. The students will create a word cloud with the words that best define them and will then create an audio explaining their choice. Everything will be uploaded to a padlet.

    Logo

    We decided to let the students decide on the project logo. Students will create images and then will vote on a selection from each country.

     

    First activity: The pen is mightier than the sword

    For this activity we should start by brainstorming the students about what they would like to do: dangerous books, forbidden books, books burnt, censorship, quotations/excerpts, ... We will decide on exactly what to do in the next meeting.

     

    Project accounts

     

    Meanwhile, to make everything easier several project accounts were created for the project. With the email and password provided teachers will be able to access accounts in

    • Flipgrid
    • Mentimeter
    • Tricider
    • Padlet
    • Voicethread
    • Pearltrees