Author: Anne Gilleran. This paper examines the eTwinning action against the background of 21st century educational and social forces in Europe. It describes in detail the evolution and structure of eTwinning, the opportunities it offers to teachers in terms of pedagogical practice and professional development and the achievments of the portal www.eTwinning.net.

1. eTwinning – A New Path for European Schools
Anne Gilleran
European Schoolnet
Summary
This paper examines the eTwinning action against the background of 21st century
educational and social forces in Europe. It describes in detail the evolution and structure of
eTwinning, the opportunities it offers to teachers in terms of pedagogical practice and
professional development and the achievments of the portal www.eTwinning.net.
eTwinning began as an initiative of the European Commission in 2004 with the express
purpose of twinning schools in Europe in a non formal way, enabling teachers to work with
each other without the major commitment to the type of long term work normally undertaken
in the context of a Comenius project. It is designed to offer a very flexible approach to school
collaborative work and has quite a unique structure in terms of the level of support offered to
the teacher.
One of the unique qualities of eTwinning lies in the existence of very active support services
at both National and European Level provided by the National Support Service (NSS) and the
Central Support Service (CSS), as well as a number of built in incentives for teachers in the
form of quality labels.
The professional development programme for those involved in eTwinning includes
workshops at both European and national level which provide a platform for teachers
exchange and growth of good practice.
Core to the success of this action is the www.eTwinning.net portal, a highly sophisticated
communications platform available in 20 languages and offering a wide range of specific
tools for teachers.
Is eTwinning successful? The answer has to be yes when one examines the statistics in
relation to numbers of schools and teachers registered. Teachers find it is an easy, non-
bureaucratic way to realise projects together in a highly developed online platform.
Keywords
eTwinning, online collaboration, Innovation, digital literacy, pedagogy, platform, school,
teacher
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2. 1 Introduction
The challenge to schools in the shifting educational landscapes of the 21st century is
formidable. The familiar structures of family and society which our generation grew up with
are quickly being eroded and more and more parents look to schools to provide a social
stability to the lives of young people. This fact, taken together with the growth of an
information society where much knowledge is transitory, puts educators in the position which
reflects in the purpose of their work and the nature of their institutions. Alongside the changes
in social order and knowledge delivery come the ongoing changes in the social structures of
Europe, where people are migrating and moving on a monumental scale. This too has a
profound effect on the life of schools with a population from diverse backgrounds and
cultures.
A central aspect of 21st century learning is the concept of Lifelong Learning, in which the
learning flow goes from the informal learning that takes place in a family and social situation
to the formal learning that takes place within educational institutions and in the workplace,
back to the informal learning which can now take place anywhere, due to the ubiquitous
delivery of information and knowledge. Coupled to this are the educational expectations of
the 21st century Europe. Ján Figel, the European Commissioner for Education, Training,
Culture and Multilingualism has said recently that,
quot;Globalisation, new technologies and demographic developments constitute an enormous
challenge; one of the answers to this problem is the access to lifelong learning.quot; [1]
The Lifelong Learning policy of the European Union has at its core the desire to provide open
access to high quality learning opportunities, to all people regardless of age or ability.
Coupled with the promotion of learning new technologies the aim is to make the EU the quot;most
competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the worldquot;. This is an ambitious aim
and can only succeed if the educational institutions at every level begin to re-examine their
goals and objectives. Together with the Lifelong Learning policy is the publication of the EU
framework reference of the eight key competencies recommended as goals for European
education [2]. They are:
1. Communication in the mother tongue
2. Communication in foreign languages
3. Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology
4. Digital competence
5. Learning to learn
6. Social and civic competences
7. Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship
8. Cultural awareness and expression
Alongside the underpinning educational policies of Europe is another growing challenge for
educators: the 2004 enlargement brought about the single biggest change in the European
Union since its formation. These changes are both economic and social. Large number of
people have uprooted, left their homes and sought work in other parts of the EU. Some have
come alone but others have brought their families, often into a completely unfamiliar world.
As a result of this migration, the challenge to the countries of Europe is how to best observe
and respect each other´s culture, not merely at a distance, but actively, implementing the
principals of inclusion and respect for diversity within their own schools and workplaces.
What are the implications for schools of these expectations of both 21st century education
and 21st century Europe? One implication is that the traditionalist approach of “chalk and
talk” is no longer viable. Schools must embrace the use of new technologies as a tool for
teaching and learning on a wider scale. Perhaps even more importantly, they must continue
to explore new models of didactic practice involving greater use of problem solving
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3. techniques and collaborative practice. We cannot continue to feed information to our pupils;
we need to revert to the Socratic method of question and discussion.
Another implication is that it cannot be taken for granted that every child comes from a
traditional family setting. Schools have to assist more than ever in the socialisation processes
of children, and a creative approach as how best to do this must be addressed by each
school.
Yet, another implication is that not every child in our classrooms necessarily speaks our
language. To combat this schools have to consider their approach to programmes for cultural
appreciation and inclusion, but in particular for the acquisition of foreign languages. The
language we speak is a core part of our identity and culture; to understand the language
some people speak is to understand them and accept them. Another consideration in this
question of foreign language acquisition is the notion that language is primarily for
communication, and in the growing Europe of the 21st century, our emphasis must
concentrate, at first level, at teaching the language of communication for oral interchange. I
pose a question. Is it better to have a communication level of four European languages than
an in-depth knowledge of one?
In order for schools to begin to address the challenges discussed above, they must begin to
address the real situation in their school. How many of the teaching staff are competent with
technology and use it in their classes? How many of them utilise teamwork, collaborative
teaching techniques and a constructivist approach to teaching with their pupils? How open
are they to contact with other schools in their own countries and others? What is the
approach to foreign language acquisition, do all students get the opportunity to study another
language? How do schools begin to introduce such elements into their everyday work?
2 eTwinning
It is against this background that the eTwinning Action will be
examined in the light of its aims, structure, processes and results.
2.1 Aims
eTwinning began as an initiative of the European Commission in
2004 with the express purpose of twinning schools in Europe in a non formal way, enabling
teachers to work with each other without the major commitment to the type of long term work
normally undertaken in the context of a Comenius project. It is designed to offer a very
flexible approach to school collaborative work and has quite a unique structure in terms of the
level of support offered to the teacher. It was officially launched in January 2005, at a large
conference held in Brussels.
2.2 The Structure of eTwinning
One of the unique qualities of eTwinning lies in the existence of very active support services
at both national and European level. The National Support Service, or NSS, promotes and
helps to consolidate the eTwinning action within each country. Currently there are 26 such
NSS with other countries waiting to set one up. These NSS offer training, assistance, support
and advice to their teachers and they monitor the progress of their schools and projects.
They also organise National conferences and competitions related to eTwinning, publish
newsletters and promotional material, as well as maintaining a national eTwinning website.
An increasing feature is their organisation of regional workshops with neighbouring countries,
which are experiencing great success.
At European level there is the Central Support Service (CSS), run by the European
Schoolnet 3 on behalf of the European Commission, and it fulfils a number of roles. Firstly, it
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4. is responsible for the development and maintenance of the European eTwinning portal,
http://www.etwinning.net, where all the schools register and work together with their
European partners. This will be examined in more detail in Section 2 below. The CSS works
in close collaboration with all 28 NSS to promote and support the eTwinning action across
Europe.
As well as the functional end of the portal there is also a wealth of information and news
about eTwinning. The CSS publishes a monthly newsletter and runs a European helpdesk
aimed at solving practical problems people may encounter when using the portal. Another
aspect of the CSS work is to organise in conjunction with the NSS a series of European
Professional Development Workshops (PDW) where teachers come together from all over
Europe to learn more about how to run a collaborative project using technology. Many
eTwinning partnerships also begin at these Professional Development Workshops. In the
school year 2006/2007 eleven such workshops were organised (as seen in Table 1 below).
Table 1
Professional
Development
workshops
2006/07
Country Date City Language Theme Age of pupils
2006
29sept - 1
Oct
UK Nottingham English Special Needs Education 4 - 19
12 - 19
PT 19 - 21 Oct Lisbon English Science
SE/DK 17 - 19 Nov Malmo/Copenhagen English Cross Curricular 4 - 19
2007
BE(FR) 8- 10 Feb Brussels French Cross Curricular 4 - 19
NL 15- 17 Feb Amsterdam English Social Sciences 12 - 19
22 - 24
March
IE Dublin English Head Teachers 4 - 19
FI 12 - 14 April Helsinki English Vocational subjects 15 - 19
SL 19 - 21 April Nova Gorica English Language teachers 12 - 19
Cross Curricular
DE 4 - 6 May Bonn English 12 - 19
Cross Curricular
SK 10 -12 May Bratislava English 4 - 19
EE 7 - 10 June Tallin English Primary Teachers 4 - 19
In addition to the European PDWs, each NSS also has a well worked out professional
development programme. In some countries such as Spain and Poland there is also an
extensive online training available, which in the case of Spain is linked to the national training
for teachers.
Another unique aspect to eTwinning is the range of awards that the participating teachers
and schools may achieve. Firstly, there is the annual eTwinning prize, which attracts
hundreds of entries each year. The prize for this is participation by the winning teachers and
pupils in an eTwinning camp that takes place in April in a warm and sunny European
location.
Secondly there is a Quality Label which may be awarded for the professionalism and quality
of the work carried out within an eTwinning partnership. The process for achieving the quality
label is relatively simple. The schools apply to their NSS for the award and the NSS
evaluates the quality of the work done. If both schools in an eTwinning partnership are
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5. awarded the quality label by their NSS then they also receive a European Quality label from
the CSS in recognition for their achievement.
The Central Support Service for eTwinning has also published two books for teachers on
eTwinning [3] design to enable them to begin to tackle the challenges of working on a
collaborative European project. There is also a series of three books entitled Reflections on
eTwinning, produced by the Pedagogical Advisory Group (PAG), on the evolution of
eTwinning.[4] The PAG consisted of a group of experts who identified issues and suggested
solutions for the pedagogical enhancement of school collaboration in eTwinning.
3 The eTwinning Portal
Figure 1. eTwinning Portal entry page.
Core to the success of eTwinning is the eTwinning portal (see figure 1), a highly
sophisticated communications platform available in 20 languages which offers teachers a
wide range of tools to help them in their work. These include a partner finding function, a
secure working environment for teachers, as well as a range of project kits to help to get the
process started. It acts as a one-stop-shop for teachers, NSS, CSS and other actors
involved. By its very nature eTwinning is an ICT oriented action, with online tools, processes,
outcomes, communication, collaboration and everything ICT and the Internet can offer. The
portal has three levels:
Level 1 is the open public level, which contains information, news, a good practice
-
gallery, etc.
Level 2 is a personal desktop, which is available to teachers as soon as they register
-
and which is described in more detail below.
Level 3 is a Twinspace, which only becomes available when a teacher registers a
-
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6. project with another school, and this too is described below. Side by side with the
main portal there is a training portal, which mimics the functionality of the main portal
and is widely used as a training platform, as well as a set of tools designed to enable
the CSS and NSS to monitor schools and their projects.
However, the primary goal of the portal is to encourage and support schools to find each
other and to design, develop, implement and run European collaborative projects. The
eTwinning Portal has been in existence since January 2005 and has been improved and
adapted many times, with regular releases and two major updates in the beginning of each
school year. It is a complex technical and information infrastructure composed by various
elements, all tightly interlinked. Among the features of the portal the following 3 main
elements may be found:
- The eTwinning desktop
o Once the teachers register they get a password, which enables them to go to
a personal desktop where they can use a range of specific eTwinning tools
designed to find partners, communicate and collaborate with them;
TwinFinder, Profile, Chat, My Candidates, a Mailbox, etc.
- Twinfinder
o Is a partner finding tool which suggests partners to a teacher based on their
profile details regarding, subject choice, language, age of student, etc.
- TwinSpace
o Once the teachers establish and register a partnership, they get a TwinSpace
which is a private space devoted to a particular project where partners can
work together. The tools found here are mostly project management and
advanced communication tools which enable teachers to work together, invite
pupils and other colleagues to the space and create web pages, photo
galleries etc. The content of a TwinSpace can be published on the Internet by
their administrators if they wish.
4 Results
Is eTwinning successful? Certainly in terms of numbers of schools and teachers registered,
the answer to this question has to be yes. The actual numbers may be seen in Table 2 below.
Bearing in mind that in September 2005 the number of registered schools were 6.000 and the
number of teachers involved were 7.000, the growth is phenomenal over a relatively short
period of time, and the numbers are still rising. Teachers find it is an easy, non-bureaucratic
way to realise projects together in a highly developed online platform.
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7. Table 2. eTwinning statistics from the 6th August 2007.
Apart form these statistics, the 400 delegates attending the annual eTwinning Conference in
February were asked in an interactive session if they thought eTwinning was worth the time
and effort involved. They gave it a resounding endorsement, as may be seen in Table 3
Table 3
83
90
80
70
60
Totally Disagree
50
Agree is only some ways
Agree in many aspects
Totally Agree
40
30
30
20
4
10
0
0
Is eTwinning worth the time and effort involved?
At the same session, the participants were asked if they felt that eTwinning contributed to the
International activities in their schools, and again the result shows a very positive opinion, as
may be seen in Table 4.
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8. Table 4.
60
52
50
40
40
Totally Disagree
Agree is only some ways
30 Agree in many aspects
Totally Agree
18
20
8
10
0
eTwinning makes a major contribution to international activities in our school
Interestingly in relation to the ICT provision within the schools, the participants felt that their
school’s equipment was adequate to run a project with an ICT focus as seen in Table 5. It
could be said that eTwinning is arriving at a time when the level of ICT provision in European
schools has reached a adequate level. This, together with the advent of high speed internet,
mobile technologies and the increasing social dimension of internet communication, all lead
to a climate ready to foster the development of school participation in an action such as
eTwinning.
Table 5.
47
50
45
38
40
35
30
Totally Disagree
Agree is only some ways
25 Agree in many aspects
Totally Agree
17
16
20
15
10
5
0
Our school's ICT equipment is sufficient to run an ICT project
Are the professional development needs of teachers in relation to using ICT in their
pedagogic practice being met? Again, the answer has to be yes, even though the scale is as
yet relatively small. But the number of teachers participating in professional development
activities related to eTwinning is constantly growing. Also, through their practice, the teachers
themselve develop their own pedagogical skills and experiences and it may be said that
eTwinning is a dynamic human group constantly growing and interacting [5]. Now the future
of eTwinning is ensured as it takes its place under the Comenius umbrella in the new Lifelong
Learning Programme, launched by the European Commission in May 2007.
To be involved in eTwinning is to be involved in a European wide community of teacher
practitioners, all of whom are committed to giving their pupils an experience of being in
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9. contact with another young person in Europe; to learn about their ideas and exchange
opinions on all the topics which enthuse young people everywhere. They are also part of a
wider community of eLearning practitioners actively involved in seeking new and innovative
ways to develop eLearning within their pedagogic practice. Above all, eTwinning is about
people. Teachers, pupils, head teachers, parents, support agency staff, webmasters, teacher
trainers and pedagogical experts from the 28 member states of the EU, all united in a
common purpose: to bring the teachers and students of Europe closer working together,
building a common identity and appreciation of what it is to be European.
References
[1] Available at http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/elearning/index_en.html
[2] Available at http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/2010/doc/principles_en.pdf
[3] http://www.eun.org
[4] Learning with eTwinning published in May 2006 and Learning with eTwinning- A
Handbook for Teachers published in April 2007. Available as a download at
http://www.etwinning.net/ww/en/pub/etwinning/publications/general_publications.htm
[5] eTwinning has grown from having 6.000 schools registered in September 2005 to having
26.700+ schools registered in June 2007.
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10. Author
Anne Gilleran
European Schoolnet, Belgium
anne.gilleran@eun.org
Citation instruction
Gilleran, Anne (2007). eTwinning – A New Path for European Schools. eLearning Papers, no.
5. ISSN 1887-1542.
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