Today May 9th, on the day we celebrate eTwinning, we had our last meeting with our partners from Turkey, Italy, Poland and Romania. Although we faced problems with our internet connection, we managed to complete the session.
All tasks aimed at creating a pedagogically "correct" atmosphere within which we could achieve high levels of collaboration and cooperation among students and teachers alike. It is worth mentioning that the side benefits were the most impressive. We formed collaborative networks, grew relations with shared objectives, and built friendships.
A review of the project
We started by creating and sharing videos where we would present ourselves and our reading preferences to get to know our partners. At the same time, both teachers and students answered our starting Questionnaire. We went on with e-safety and rules about copyright and created Logos, which we shared with our partners and voted for the best. The next task was to consider why people read and summarise our thoughts on the e-posters we created about reading benefits. The next step was writing book reviews on the books we read and liked most. We shared our work on the group's Padlet.
Now it was time for our joint product. The first act was to collaborate on a poem production. We used the title of our project as an acronym and added text to turn it into a poem. Our students immensely enjoyed that activity as they had to collaborate on the production.
For our second collaborative work, we had to provide a myth from our country and add it to the e-book that the partners had initiated. We further read the tales and answered the quizzes related to their context. However, our team has chosen to use the e-me platform's ability and decided to create an interactive video instead of a questionnaire. To do so, we needed to develop first a video out of our presentation, and for that, we used an exceptional tool that turns PPs into a video, adding sound and speech (Link)
The final tasks were evaluating the product and providing some fun before saying goodbye. We shared our thoughts and feelings on a Mentimeter word cloud and tried to outrun our partners on a puzzle-solving activity. At the end of our meeting, it was time to say goodbye.
Aftermath
Our students collaborated with great joy, and we believe they have gained immensely from that experience. They have learned about e-safety and copyright and how to respect each other's work. They used English for their products and when conversing on their Viber team. They had to collaborate, discuss, question, accept and reject ideas. They learned how to use IT tools they had not used before. And they managed to succeed in their undertakings, boosting their feelings of self-value and respect.
Joining forces
The etwinning team has joined forces with the environmental group, and both had a fruitful, profitable and rewarding collaboration. The ecological team created the grounds for some creative writing tasks that helped both teams and organised a trip to help boost their imagination and resourceful spark that certainly added value to both projects. More information you can find in this article
Our pedagogical team, Mr Cristodolakis P., Mrs Mayroudi Ag., Mrs Lafatzi I., and the coordinator, Efraimidou K., would like to thank all our colleagues who contributed to the project's completion.
