eTwinning UK

eTwinning Teacher's Blog

Did you know the eTwinning portal has a blog for teachers?  This great resource is filled with ideas, views and resources from all over Europe.  Read more here! 

New CPD Programme for teachers in England

An England-wide programme to help teachers bring technology more effectively into the classroom has been launched by The Open University and e-skills UK. This new initiative aims to enhance professional skills of ICT and non-ICT teachers and help to transform ICT-related learning.

Funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), the £5.6million programme will help education professionals, from primary through to secondary and college level, build their information and communications technology (ICT) skills, stay up to date with the latest developments and meet the needs of an increasingly technology-savvy generation of young people.

The new programme will help teachers of all subjects make effective use of ICT as an inspirational and effective learning tool and boost the technology skills of their students. Find out more here!

eTwinning Learning Events

Earlier this year, the CSS team led a new eTwinning initiative - Learning Events. These were highly successful and will be running again in the Autumn term on the following themes:

Podcasting in the creative classroom

– In English

The creative use of media

– In English

Exploring creativity

– In German

Mind-mapping and creative thinking

– In French

The idea of a Learning Event is that it is a short intense online course that offers you an introduction to a topic, stimulates your ideas, helps develop your skills and does not require a long-term commitment in terms of your time. It is also designed to be an enjoyable learning experience. Find out more about the next events on the portal.

“A Vision of The Future”: celebrating the 2009 European Year of Creativity and Innovation

Earlier this week, Scottish eTwinning ambassadors Michael Purves and George Glass were asked to represent their respective “Schoolovision 2009” and “Digital Diary Dialogues” projects at “A Vision of The Future”, an Ecotec hosted event at Birmingham's ICC on Tuesday July 14th.

The one-day showcase featured 30 projects and activities funded through the EU's Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP) and Youth in Action (YiA), helping celebrate participants achievements. Some 300 delegates from a large variety of public and private sector organisations came together to view the various projects, along with a range of performances and demonstrations aimed at showcasing the range and diversity of activity taking place.

Of the projects on show, eTwinners will be interested to know that Lancaster & Morecambe FE College’s Roads, Risks and Responsibilities Comenius funded multi-lateral partnership project was founded entirely through contacts made on the eTwinning portal. Aimed at supporting active citizenship and raising awareness of the dangers of drink-driving, the college has gone on to research attitudes and statistics amongst 16-18 year old students with 3 other partners based in France, Italy and Austria. The project will culminate with the making of a DVD towards the end of the year.

Furthermore, anyone in eTwinning working with individuals with learning disabilities might wish to take a look at the work being undertaken by the GOAL – a Leonardo funded project developing “serious” computer based games aimed at improving learning and development of skills.

Sustainable Schools event

Last week the eTwinning team had a presence at the National Sustainable Schools event in London. This event was run this year by SEEd (Sustainability and Environmental Education) and consisted of a series of workshops on various topics relating to sustainability such as, Taking a whole school approach to sustain your work and Engaging with your community.

There were also presentations by various different agencies working in this area, so I’ve compiled a short list of links and opportunities that you might want to pursue, if you’re interested in developing the sustainability of your school’s work.

One of the best starting points is the Global dimension website which has lots of resources to help you bring the global dimension into your classroom. This website is managed by the DEA (Development Education Association) an education charity that promotes global learning and works on global issues such as poverty and climate change.

The DCSF has also published a National Framework for Sustainable Schools with its ‘eight doorways’, describing how schools can become models of sustainable best practice. You can see this on their website.

Also present were NAFSO, an organisation that promotes field trips and outside learning.

If you’re in London, you might want to check out the London Sustainable Schools Forum (LSSF) which aims to help the government reach its target of making every London school sustainable by 2020.

If you’re interested in putting your school forward for a very exciting (annual) schools’ competition, then check out the website of Make your Mark which sets schools a ‘secret’ challenge, only to be revealed during the Global Entrepreneurship week happening this year on Monday 16 of November 2009.

The WWF have just produced a very beautiful and inspiring video for schools which you can (hopefully) show your kids, it’s posted on the Green TV website.

I only managed to get to one of the workshops myself which was run by Margaret Burr from the Humanities Education centre. Margaret raised some very important issues regarding Global school linking and asked pertinent questions in terms of who is really benefiting from global links and the responsibility involved in taking on a Global partner school.

In British Council, the DFID Global Schools partnership programme has developed resources that can support you in terms of global linking. We encourage teachers to formalise a partnership agreement with their counterpart school. To read more about this and the partnership agreement tool that we have developed, click on the link to our website.

Thanks to flickr.com user John LeGear from Chicago, Illinois for publishing this image of our ‘Sad Earth’ under the Creative Commons License.

Do you subscribe to Learning World?

Learning World is a magazine produced by the British Council to celebrate and highlight the education programmes available through the British Council.  It’s free and full of great case studies to inspire.  Click here to subscribe!

Don't get bored over the summer!

The school year is coming to an end and if, like me, the thought of lying on a beach and reading the latest bestseller sounds a bit boring, then fear not, we have a whole host of free ICT tools that you can explore over the summer holidays!

We all know what it’s like during term time, we hear about all these great ICT tools but, between planning and delivering lessons (not to mention all the paperwork!) when do we ever get the chance to explore them? Well, now’s your chance!

One of our eTwinning ambassadors, free software enthusiast and Twitteraniac, Drew Buddie, has recently sent a message out to his 2,920 followers on Twitter, with the aim of pulling together a comprehensive list of Indispensible Classroom tools (most, if not all of them, completely free of charge). What a fantastic idea Drew! The result is probably one of the most comprehensive ICT tools list you could hope to find and, better still, all of it has been sourced from real teachers and educationalists – not a promotional company in sight!

If you want to have a look at Drew’s list – please click on the link to his blog http://indispensibletools.pbworks.com/  

You can also find this, and other useful links, on our wikispace http://etwinninguk.wikispaces.com/Useful+Links  

If you want to follow Drew on Twitter and be part of that ‘community’ of teaching practitioners, his Twitter name is digitalmaverick – Drew prefers to vet people before they start following him (not a bad idea all round) – but as long as he knows you’re a teacher, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Alternatively you can follow the eTwinning team at etwinninguk

The image on this blog is courtesy of Flickr user freefotouk who is a member of the Gateshead Photography Club. The image is of a beach in

Menton

on the Cote D’Azur. Thanks freefotouk for sharing this with us through the Creative Commons License.

Comenius Multilateral Partnership Results Available Online

If you applied for a Comenius Multilateral Partnership back in February 2009 the results are now available online at: http://www.britishcouncil.org/comenius-results.htm. Bilateral Project results will be available from the same link by the middle of July.

If you are thinking about applying for a Comenius Partnership in February 2010 you can apply for funding to attend a Contact Seminar to find partner schools in the Autumn Term 2009, a list of which can be found at: http://www.britishcouncil.org/comenius-contact-seminar.htm. Don't forget that you can also use the eTwinning Partner Finding Forum to look for potential Comenius partners.

Getting the most out of your Twinspace

Have you ever wanted to really bring your eTwinning Twinspace to life, but only know how to upload documents and photos? Well here is an idea to really brighten up your Twinspace, you could embed some widgets from other websites to enhace your shared area.

You could embed a weather feed widget of your hometown and your partner's hometown from www.bbc.co.uk/weather: 

Or a word-cloud from www.wordle.net:

Or a Google Map:

CommunityWalk Map - eTwinning Schools in Wales

Essentially you can use your Twinspace as a window that looks into a part of another website, without having to go there independently.

Full step-by-step instructions on how to incorporate all of these and other widgets into your Twinspace can be found on our Wikispace and by clicking here.