Etwinning

Collaborate, communicate and develop international projects

WHAT IS eTWINNING?

eTwinning is an educational community that offers a platform for teachers and students to collaborate, communicate and develop international projects. Our school is been involved in the project-based learning approach since some years ago, and we believe that it is a highly enriching way for our students to develop the competences that they need in order to become responsible citizens, capable of solving problems that they will have to face in their real lives.

Nowadays, in our fast-paced globalised world, we felt the need of providing students with the opportunity to work following a project-based approach; not only locally, but also in an international way. More and more, pupils will encounter situations in which they will need to expand their borders and use languages that are not their mother tongues, or even travel to places with cultures that they are not familiarised with.

Together with the Erasmus programme, we believe that eTwinning caters for this kind of situations that our students need to experience, and all our eTwinning projects were born with this idea in mind.

The eTwinning platform promotes the collaboration between European schools, providing support, services and tools that are useful for both teachers and students to grow in an educational and personal level. You can find further information on the following website https://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm

OUR PROJECTS


https://school-education.ec.europa.eu/en/etwinning/projects/technowater/twinspace

Technowater is a multidisciplinary PBL project designed to give students the chance to raise awareness on water.  Water scarcity is on the agenda nowadays and in Spain we have been suffering from it in the recent months, as well as in other parts of Europe. Another objective was to work collaboratively, exchanging materials and points of views with the Polish school of Lodz.

The project addressed three main areas: English, Science and Technology. In regards to English language the main objective was to develop English language skills of our students mostly speaking and writing. Students created presentations in English, wrote opinions and comments in English, read in English, watch videos in English and made their own videos speaking English. As for Science they learned the essence, causes and consequences of climate change and water scarcity. They watched documentary videos, had discussions about ecology, carried out their research while making presentations about consequences of climate change for their country and shared them with the other students. Regarding technology students developed a scale model of an Archimedes screw, one of the oldest systems of pumping water and made their own Archimedes screws in class.

Technowater has allowed the students to work on the following competences:

  • Communication: English has been the main language throughout the project (all activities were done in English).
  • Learning to learn: Students have learned from their own peers in groups and also from our other European partners online (collaborative work, working in groups and exchanging activities).
  • Competence in social skills and citizenship: Students have learned to share and understand other cultures, which has increased their sense of
  • European identity (reading and watching each other presentations and videos, cooperating in international groups).
  • Digital competence: Students have learned to use IT tools purposely and efficiently (Padlet, Canva, QR Code Generator etc.)
  • Cultural and artistic competence: Students have created storyboards and posters and learned about climate crisis of partner country.
  • Initiative and entrepreneurship: The project promotes proactivity in regards to climate change on the part of students and not passivity.

The main objective of this project is to work on and exchange different regional advertisements while focusing on dubbing, subtitling and filming techniques. There will be two main parts, one which will focus on subtitling (October-December) and the other on filming and dubbing (January-May). In this project there are 150 students from four different countries: Croatia, France, Poland and Spain.

In the first part of the project, students will analyze advertisements from their own regions, which must contain cultural heritage elements and they will transcribe and translate into English the audio of these advertisements. Afterwards, subtitling techniques will be taught to students and finally English subtitles will be included in the advertisement. Our partner schools will translate and introduce these subtitles into their own native language.

In the second part, students will learn different filming techniques through practical sessions and workshops. After that, they will create their own advertisement to promote the village they live in. A storyboard and script will be created and in the last stage, these advertisements will be exchanged and dubbed into the mother tongue of the partner country.

Students will mainly work collaboratively in groups of four and will exchange their tasks with the partner schools online. Communication will be established using the TwinSpace platform and its forums. English will be used at all times and therefore, we will focus on the written and spoken form. Communication amongst partner schools will be marked positively.

We will use several ICT tools such as Google tools, Prezi, Genially, Padlet and video, audio and subtitling software.

This project will be marked within the English and Technology subjects, since the main aim is to promote the use of the English language and  ICT tools in order to make students more competent in this field. Furthermore, it is important to highlight the fact that we will value cultural elements from each country of origin and we will also learn to respect other cultures and traditions.

“Change the lyrics” is a project that 2nd ESO students completed with the Italian school Scuola Secondaria Statale di I Grado “Battisti-Ferraris”, involving the subjects of English and Music. The final objective of this programme was to know more about Italian music, to exchange musical knowledge and, finally, to change the lyrics of an Italian song, as the name of the project says.

We started by creating a video to introduce our schools and towns. This was followed by a Kahoot to know more about the two countries: each school created different questions and answers dealing with different topics of interest related to both places (literature, music, politics, education, geography…). We created a Kahoot game with these questions and answers and sent it to our partner country so that they could play and learn more about us, and they did the same. After that, we starting shedding light on the topic of music. Each partner school worked in different groups who carried out research on a genre from the other partner country. For example, EDN students searched information about Italian rap, Italian opera, Italian pop music… We worked on the characteristics of each genre and also on a couple of artists who represented each genre. Students created a presentation with this information, and we sent it to our partner country for them to correct.

The final step of the project was working on songs. In order to know what songs our partners listen to regularly; we created a shared Spotify list with music that all our students suggested. The list included songs in Spanish, Catalan and Italian. When the list was ready, Italian students picked different Spanish songs and changed the lyrics, and the other way round. It was not just a matter of translating, but of changing the whole song keeping the original rhythm and melody. Students were really original, and they wrote lyrics about racism, gender equality, festivities, and even about Coronavirus and 2020. Finally, we sent the new lyrics to our partner country and they chose the best one, which was the one that they sang and recorded.

The project that we carried out with 1st ESO students is entitled “Little Challenges”, and it is a shared programme between Escola Diocesana de Navàs, Istituto comprensivo Rovereto Est, Scuola Damiano Chiesa (Rovereto, Italy), Çinarcik Firuzan Kinal Ortaokulu (Turkey) and College les Colliberts (Saint Michel en l’Herm, France).

As the title of the project suggests, the objective was to challenge partners to carry out different activities suggested by students so as to learn more about the other countries and practice English at the same time. This aim was especially difficult this year since students needed to think of challenges that were absolutely integrative; that is, challenges that everyone could do no matter their age, abilities, capacities and, of course, regardless of being at home or at school.

The challenges that we completed were (1) determining the rules for a successful online project, (2) recording a video introducing our town and school, (3) choosing a song in English and representing it (this was our suggestion), (4) creating videos explaining how to cook local recipes, and (5) choosing a film scene and dramatizing it.

While preparing the challenges, students also had time to interact with each other by using the forum. Moreover, they all had a penpal with whom to start an interaction. Finally, we also had time to have different videocalls in which students could exchange experiences, ask questions, and know about curious aspects regarding the other country. We, for sure, had an opportunity to use English in real life with a real purpose!

 

The first exchange of the project took part in Romania. Six students from Escola Diocesana de Navàs, and other students from Poland visited Dragasani for a week.

We spent five days there and both students and teachers stayed in Romanian students and teachers’ houses. This was a way of learning about their culture and way of living, and a way of practicing our English as well! We had the chance of visiting different places, so we spent quite a lot of time sightseeing: we visited the monastery next to Dragasani, a place that impressed us all for its beauty. We also had the opportunity to see a pottery workshop and a wine museum. In fact, Dragasani is a town with a large vineyard tradition, so it shares a lot of similarities with Navàs.

Apart from sightseeing, we did some activities at school: we introduced ourselves and explained a bit about Catalonia and Navàs. We could even make a “ball de bastons” demonstration and Romanian and Polish students were really amazed since they found it really original. We also did some icebreaking games to start, as the name says, breaking the ice between each other. Romanian students and teachers prepared everything for us, but we also enjoyed the participation of two Belgian students who were working at the high school. They were experts on leadership and team skills, so we could play some games that enhanced the main topics of our project: fair play, leadership and working in teams. Finally, Romanian students had invented a sport for us to practice. This is the core part of our project: creating a game or sport from scratch so that we can show it to our partners when they come to visit us. The Romanian sport turned out to be quite funny!

Finally, we have to say that the last day in Romania left us a bittersweet feeling: one the one hand it was sad for all of us to say goodbye to all those people who had taken care of us, but on the other hand we had the opportunity to tour around Bucharest, a city that shocked us a little bit since both the culture and architecture is different from what we are used to. However, we really loved it!

In summary, we had fun while we were practicing and establishing a strong friendship that we hope is going to last for a lot of time. Next stop, Navàs!

This is a two-year project thought for 2nd/3rd ESO students with the objective of developing three skills that are usually present in sport: leadership, teamwork and fair play. In order to carry it out, we have two partners, Romania and Poland, and seeing the characteristics of the project we decided to involve two subjects in it: Physical Education and English.

We identified the need to motivate students towards and through sports in this computer and technology-based age, when students spend too much time on their phones, and less time being active. This aim could be reached by teaching students notions that will make them become a better person, to learn the role of a leader and of a team member, to understand the common effort, to be less selfish and more resilient, to learn to take decisions on their own and accept the consequences. With all these skills, they should be able to create a sport as their ultimate objective.

One of our main aims is that we can take one step further and carry out some exchanges to our partner’s countries so that the project becomes much more motivating and enriching for both students and teachers. 2018/2019 is our first year, so we divided the planning into 2 different parts: On the one hand, firstly students introduced to their partners. They are going to work together for two years, and they are going to see each other three times (there is going to be one mobility in Romania, one in Catalonia and one in Poland), so we thought it was highly important for them to have as much information as possible about the other. In order to do that, students presented their school by means of videos of their own creation. After that, they wrote articles about different aspects of the countries and, from there, they recorded short video documentaries with the information that they found.

On the other hand, the second part of the project is more focused on the sports side. After analysing the characteristics of leadership, teamwork and fair play in depth, students are going to work in teams in order to create their own sports from scratch. Once each group has created their sport, students are going to practise them with the objective of choosing the best one: the one that we are going to present when our partners form Romania and Poland come to Navàs. Therefore, the main objective of the mobilities is to organize tournaments between the three countries that are going to be centred in the new sport created by the host country.

Obviously, apart from practicing sport and developing essential skills, an exchange gives us plenty of other opportunities to get to know different places, cultures, and to make friends that might as well last much longer than the project itself.

You can see the TwinSpace with the outcomes of the project on the following link:

https://twinspace.etwinning.net/70633/home

This is a project that students of 2nd level of ESO carried out during the 2017/2018 school year together with Italy. We did it from the English subject and, concretely, we worked with a high school located in Cesa, which is a town in the region of Campania, Italy. The objective of this project was twofold: firstly, we wanted to discover the most curious European traditionscelebrations and customs. Secondly, we wanted to show our partners the traditions of our own countries that we most appreciate.

Therefore, our project was divided into two parts: in the first part,both Italian and Catalan students did some common research on 5 European countries and their traditions (focusing on the ones that are curious and not so well-known). After the common research, students worked in groups to create videos about these traditions. They were asked to watch all videos and ask/answer questions about them. In this way, we made sure that there was constant interaction between the two countries.

After doing a reflection on the outcome of this first part, the second part was focused on national traditions. Students did research on Italian and Spanish festivals and they shared the knowledge with their partners by designing digital posters. After having a look at them all, they had all the information to play the Kahoots that they created: Spanish students played the game that Italian students created and the other way round.

Obviously, before all this, students introduced themselves to the other school by means of a video of presentation and also by using the forum and editing their eTwinning profiles.

During our project we tried to use a range of ICT tools to engage our students. They are 13-14 years old and they are really motivated by technological aspects. We also tried to mix autonomous work and group work so that all students’ abilities were developed. Moreover, we also tried to combine work indoors and outdoors in order to make the most of our opportunities.

After finishing the project , we were very happy to lean that we obtained the European Quality Label for it. These were very rewarding news for all the work done. However, for us the most successful result of the project was all the knowledge that both teachers and students gained and, above all the awareness about new cultures and traditions.

You can see the TwinSpace with the outcomes of the project on the following link:

https://twinspace.etwinning.net/46459/pages/page/416291