I would wholeheartedly recommend registering for eTwinning for all the advantages that it brings: finding a partner or extra partner schools for a project; having access to the etwinning portal’s resources of blog, chat room and storage area for files; being able to communicate in a safe, secure environment.
The use of ICT in helping to develop and sustain our international links has helped to improve cross curricular links, develop ICT skills amongst students and staff for a definite purpose, and enabled contact to be maintained despite many hundreds indeed thousands of miles of distance between schools. It has really been beneficial in developing a sustainable partnership with our partner school in Spain.
As part of my role of Head of Languages and International Coordinator I have led and overseen my College’s successful application for full ISA status. Many of the projects that we have undertaken have involved innovative use of ICT including blogging, creating videos from both still and video pictures using both Animoto and Windows Movie Maker, on-line surveys using Survey Monkey, and Wordle word art to communicate on the themes that we have chosen to work on – in particular environmental themes.
Our international links have developed greatly thanks to eTwinning which has proved to be a really excellent contact point. We have gone on to run a very successful British Council language immersion project (Year 9 students), a joint curriuculum project (Year 11), Student fellowships (Year 13) and are currently undertaking a bilateral Comenius project with our partner school in Málaga, Spain and a multilateral geography project with our partner schools in France and Norway. We are also now developing a link with a school in Chile through eLanguages and looking to further develop our links with South America, South Africa and Asia with Connecting Classrooms.
