Module4: Collaboration in e twinning

Golden rules for successful eTwinning collaboration

In any good task or project, there must be rules to follow and fulfill to guarantee its success. Next, we list nine golden rules that will ensure the success of your eTwinning collaborative project.

1. Get to know your partners: share with your partners all the necessary information, such as the number of students participating in the project, your students’ age and interests, your students’ level in foreign languages and their ICT skills.
2. Create a detailed time schedule: set the starting dates for each task, mark the dates when one of the partner schools is on holidays, share it with your students, set deadlines and respect them.
3. Preparatory planning leads to a successful eTwinning project: plan a meeting, introduce the project to the children and inform the parents, the colleagues and the headteacher about the specific project; add more teachers from your school to the project and form school teams; announce the beginning of the project on the school website; create Twinspace accounts for all the participants, and invite students to the Twinspace; organise mini-courses for your students on ICT tools to be used, and on how to use the Twinspace; create Twinspace tutorials for students or partners who are beginners in eTwinning (if necessary).
4. Design your Twinspace carefully: create activity pages for each one of the planned tasks, add a short description for each one of the activities planned at the top of each activity page, agree with your partners about the most suitable tools for each one of the activities, and add them to your activity pages.
5. Break the ice and get to know each other: have students interact as much as possible, ask them to update their Twinspace profiles by adding a short description of themselves, and a representative avatar. Ask them to leave comments on their partners’ walls, and to vote for the best Twinspace profiles. Plan chat sessions and skype meetings regularly. Find creative ways to have your students introduce themselves and their school or country.
6. Team your students up in Transnational Groups: team students up in transnational groups, create a table with the newly formed transnational groups and add it to the Twinspace. Ask your students to work together and write a short description of their group members. Ask your students to also agree upon a name for their group and draw together a symbol or an emblem for each group.
7. Plan as many collaborative activities as possible: try to plan activities that need your partners’ contribution to be completed. Use as many collaborative tools as possible (Google suite, DrawitLive, Glogster, etc.). Try to avoid creating folders for each country in Twinspace (successful collaborative activities are the ones in which you cannot tell which of the partners did what!).
8. Assign responsibilities to your students: discover your students’ talents and skills and give them responsibilities. Team the students up in groups, according to their talents (the painting group, the photography group, the ICT group, etc.), and assign to some students the role of "student administrator" in Twinspace.
9. Set Evaluation Criteria: try to evaluate the quality of your project along with your partners. Recognize Key Strengths, and identify areas that need improvement. Plan ongoing evaluation activities (share opinions, make proposals, comment on each other’s work).

These golden rules will make an eTwinning project a successful experience, since they promote collaboration between partners, PBL methodology and the change of role of the teacher and students. Remember that it is important to clearly indicate to the students what they have to do, how they must do it and when they have to do it, designing the phases of the activity very clearly. This will facilitate their autonomy and the development of skills. In these new processes, we must emphasize the fact that we have to facilitate and provide opportunities for the students to work as a team, both among them, in the classroom, and with their distant partners.

Collaborative working

https://youtu.be/dZ_xEy4ZxIE

Useful links to design e-collaborative tools:

https://www.symbaloo.com/mix/cajadeherramientas35

My project :Welcome to digital learning

Title: Welcome to digital learning
Age and number of partners: from 11 to 14 years(middle school students) from different countries.

Languages / areas: English / 21st century skills, the use of digital tools

Abstract: Students (between 11-14 years) like to use technology. We help them use technology effectively by integrating digital tools in our lessons through this project. Students can create and share their own digital works each other. 
Goals : to motivate students to improve their use of the English language                                    
to help students share and learn cultural aspects of the different countries                   
to motivate students and teachers to learn through exploring                                         
to improve students' 21st century skills such as critical thinking, creativity, positive thinking, collaborative skills and communication skills.

Work process: 
1)Sts will introduce themselves, their schools and cities with the help of digital tools. They can use some applications such as canva(they can prepare a poster), bitmoji, voki etc. They will upload their introductions to twinspace. Teachers will create a messenger group to communicate. At the end of first process teachers will prepare a questionare about digital tools' usability and share it to be answered by sts.

2) Teachers will provide students to communicate each other with the help of digital tools.Students will use twinspace actively.

3)Sts will create a logo and poster for the project by using web 2 tools. Teachers will create a questionare about digital tools students like using while creating logo and posters. Partners will choose the best application of the month.
4) Teachers will introduce a new application every two week and students will use different types of digital tools to create games, practices, stories, songs and videos according to the curriculum and they share their works on twinspace. 
5) Teachers will arrange different competitions among the students.
6) On special days, partners will send cards each other. 
7) The project will be ended by e-book and website created by sts' works. Partners will share their experiences and feeling during process.

Expected results: 
learning with new methods, enjoying while learning and teaching, exchanging experiences,  improving communication skills and motivation.

Module 3 My Project Design

In this module, l get infromation about quality in etwinning and criteria to plan an efficient project. Here is a project sheme:

And quality label rubric:

Innovation in the classroom

In this module, I get some strategies to make my teaching more efficient and how l can implement innovation projects in the classroom. l analysed my teaching practice and shared my conclusions  on the padlet.
 l integrate many web 2 tools to my classes. My students use many applications to communicate, share, create new works and play. At the end of each unit, they create new games, puzzles and exercises with the help of applications and then we play their games in classroom. New generation like to use technology and as a teacher l need more information about digital games.

My experiences on PBL Course

My Course Calendar

Let's meet!

Hello from Antalya, a city in the south of Turkey. My name's Şükran. l'm married and have 3 year old son. l have been an English teacher for six years. l have been working at a secondary school in Döşemealtı, Antalya. My students are 11-14 years old. Our school has an e twinning label. As a school we have many projects. l like integrating projects in my classes. Thanks to projects,  my students can join classes more actively and they are more motivated.