On 20 11 2021, I presented my paper ”eTwinning Partnerships - an educational alternative for success in the current European context” at the online conference organised as part and parcel of the national project „Practici educaționale de succes din perspectiva educației actuale”, implemented by CCDR-Centrul de Consultanță și Dezvoltare Regională Buzău
eTwinning
Partnerships
-an
educational alternative for success in the current European context
Claudia-Emilia
Frînculeasă, Liceul Teoretic „Radu Vlădescu”, Pătârlagele
The
project "From European Volunteering to Global Solidarity", founded by
2 eTwinning schools from Romania and Turkey in September 2020, became a
strategic partnership of hundreds of pupils and teachers from 5 countries,
embarked on an incredibly rewarding eTwinning journey based on team work,
international collaboration, communication and positive change.
During
the first stages, the younger generation of eTwinners, supported by their
teachers, identified social, economic, educational and environmental needs in
their local communities and suggested ways to improve the situation, in order
to make their communities better places. Volunteering actions were initiated in
the coordinating schools and their local communities, then they were emulated
in the other partner schools and local communities in a concerted effort to
implement effective local solutions and promote civic initiative, social
inclusion, student leadership and solidarity among the 9 European partner schools and not only.
As
far as pedagogical innovation and creativity are concerned, there were student-centered,
competence-oriented, problem-solving and creative-thinking tasks, including the
use of original, interactive resources and games, designed as part of the
project-based learning approach while the benefits of the more traditional
communicative method were also explored through the permanent exposure to the
target language and constant interaction between the participants on padlet,
Whatsapp, Zoom etc. As for me, each class of 10th graders involved in this
project elected a team leader and the three team leaders and I worked very
closely together doing the planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and
dissemination activities of the project, keeping in mind the educational objectives of
our project as well as the students’ individual and collective instructional
needs and interests.
From
the curriculum integration point of view, at Liceul Teoretic “Radu Vlădescu”,
an extensive amount of project work was done during the English classes
(conducted both in the classroom and online) and it was both content and competence-oriented
and related, first of all, to the following topics of the English language
curriculum for the baccalaureate exam: personal life - social behaviour, human
relationships - team work, adolescence , free time activities, public life -
environmental aspects, youth and community life, civism etc. Secondly, as a
form-teacher to a class of 35 sophomores, my Counselling and Orientation
classes benefitted from our participation in this projects as its activities
aimed at the integration of character education in the 9 European schools,
focusing on positive attitudes, behaviours and moral principles and values such
as altruism, caring, civic virtue, generosity, kindness, solidarity etc. and
multiple opportunities were created for the teaching, learning and training of
character, helping the participants to become more responsible community
members and future citizens, more aware of their responsibilities, more
committed to and competent in making fairer, more equitable and ethical choices
and motivated to make a difference and contribute to the social and emotional
wellbeing of others.
Although
the students were mainly motivated to use and improve their linguistic skills,
as a result of their participation in the project activities, their artistic
skills and some of their key competences for lifelong learning, such as their
social and civic competences, sense of initiative, learning to learn, digital
competence, cultural awareness and expression etc. were also complemented and
put to good use. The project was beneficial as it also allowed everyone (direct
and indirect participants or beneficiaries) to increase their awareness of the
importance of volunteering as a solution to a lot of social, economic,
environmental, educational, medical problems and so on.
Collaboration
between partner schools was possible due to the eTwinning platform (online
meetings, online events, forum, teacher bulletin etc.) and other communication
channels such as the national and international WhatsApp groups, email and
phone. The project activities facilitated the exchange of valued educational,
social and civic contributions and the building of a transnational support
network and of a consistent number of meaningful positive relationships. The
activities showed us that volunteering is its own reward, especially during the
pandemic, as the participants were too “busy” establishing a collaborative
culture, exchanging experience, ideas and suggestions and connecting with
peers, planning and implementing their good deeds for others etc. to worry or
think about the stressful Coronavirus-generated situation they found themselves
in.
The
activities were planned and executed together as a team by the students, while
the teachers provided guidance and support. The pupils prioritized impact and
meaningfulness as well as competence and ownership in their own
self-development journey, gaining a strong sense of power, self-confidence and
leadership. Their involvement in the project activities and their empowerment
gave them a chance to learn that help, support and positive change can come
from the knowledge and competences gained in school, that solutions applicable
in the real world can be found in the classroom, that schools can be the right
sociocultural environments for active civic behaviour, social cohesion and
self-efficacy. Most participants realized that the real power of knowledge is
to do good, to be good to others and to feel good about it. The objectives were
achieved thanks to the students' initiative and willingness to solve community
problems and as a result of the financial, material and moral support of the
students’ families who provided a lot of resources and encouragement and a
substantial money contribution from abroad.
Technology
was a great tool for all the partners as it was used not only for communication
and dissemination, but also responsibly and creatively for the achievement of
educational aims - the creation and sharing of the teaching, learning and
training resources. ICT was used to design learning resources as well as
digital evaluation activities to check the students' knowledge and
understanding of the language of volunteering and inspire and cultivate
positive attitudes, behaviours and values. These apps were used in almost all the
other partner schools by teachers and pupils. As well as these, all the
partners were informed about the eTwinning official rules regarding e-safety,
copy-right issues and data protection and agreed to follow them.
The
parents of the participants kindly offered their consent by filling in the
project form prepared for this purpose, which allowed our school to use their
personal data. Being an eTwinning school, Liceul Teoretic “Radu Vlădescu” has
an official e-safety policy which regulates not only the responsible, safe use
of technology and especially that of the Internet by its community members, but
also the responsibility for the content they create, access, download or store.
We also collectively created our own rules for the project partners. The
project materials, products and resources were created by properly crediting
and citing the sources (e.g. the “Quote of the week” activities, the
presentation for The Blue Heart Campaign), but there were also copyright-free
resources that were used (royalty-free music for the videos, free visual
content on Canva, the most accessible graphic design platform we used) as well
as original content and resources (the Volunteering song, the students’ art
work, the learningapps).
All
the set objectives were achieved through team work, collaboration and active
participation. The evaluation methods used to measure the success of our
project, the achievement of its goals and main objectives, were both
process-based and outcome-based as our main aim was to create a broader impact
of positive change, a network of hope and solidarity inside the European
community, as soon as the implementation of the project began. There was an
online questionnaire before the project, followed by class discussions and
debates, local and international online meetings where the participants
received accolades and congratulations from their peers. The teachers observed
the pupils’ willingness and enthusiasm to participate (which were captured in
the photographs shared on the platform), they acknowledged the positive
attitudes and improved behaviours of the pupils who also received certificates
of participation for their active contribution.
Some
of the students’ feedback, testimonials and conclusions were incorporated into
the final products, such as the collective e-magazine and ebook, virtual photo
portfolio, the book donation event video etc. The final evaluation and
dissemination brochure with the best results and practices selected during the
final meeting held on 27.05.2021 has been well-received since its publication
online. Self-assessment and peer-assessment were used to measure students’
performance and progress as these methods made it possible for them to identify
their own strengths and weaknesses, helped them to develop transferable skills
and improve their critical and creative thinking as a result. The best results
were shared on the school website and FB group, locally, with a pedagogical
association whose blog I have been administering, at national level, with the
teachers on the iteach.ro platform and internationally during the conference
“Together in Europe” , a live eTwinning event hosted in December 2020, and on
Youtube.
As
for my own contribution, I prepared the project application, looked for team
members, took up an active role in the communication and collaboration process
between the participants, created a lot of original learning and assessment
resources online, including the original song of the project. I also provided
positive feedback as often as possible to the other partner schools and used my
knowledge and experience to disseminate the results of the eTwinning
partnership in different types of media (such as social media, blogs,
educational platforms, online publications etc.). By initiating this
partnership, I believe I encouraged the improvement of knowledge and
competences together with the development of positive attitudes and values such
as generosity on the one hand and gratitude on the other hand inside European
schools and local communities.
As
for the quality standards, in October 2021 the project received 4 European
Quality Labels, two in Romania, one in Moldova and another one in Slovakia.
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