Learning with eTwinning - European Commission - Europa

Interview: Irène Indemans, Hélène Williams and Onute Kizaliene123456In the French and Belgian schools, 12-13 year-old pupils have chosen theoptional subject ‘European project work: eTwinning’ and foreign languageteachers are in charge. In the Lithuanian school, the development of the projectis done during the lunch break, in a ‘Europe Club’ setting, coached by theschool librarian.It certainly has. The integration of ICT as a means of communication and asa learning aid really has improved the ICT skills of pupils and teachers alike.Also, more cross-curricular objectives in the domain of ‘Education tocitizenship’ have been attained.Skills, such as gathering, structuring and presenting information have beenacquired. The pupils have experienced that (intercultural) communicationisn’t at all easy and that messages are sometimes interpreted in a different waybecause the partners are living in different cultures. The pupils also discoverthat European citizens have common interests, for instance, a lot of pupils likethe same sports and kinds of music and share similar extra-curricular activities.Developing eTwinning projects contributed to the attainment of cross-curricularobjectives. Curricular requirements, as far as languages are concerned, werefulfilled. Pupils also learned more about their European neighbours first hand,which diminishes prejudice.Of course. We’ll integrate ICT tools further for presenting subject matter andfor bringing more ‘authentic’ material into the classroom.eTwinning offers the pupils ‘windows to discover the world’.59