Kwaliteit lesgeven en competenties leerlingen verbeteren door eTwinning (en)

Teachers involved in eTwinning, the European online community for schools, met with local and national policy-makers in Genoa yesterday and today to discuss how linking up with other schools can help improve teaching quality and pupils' skills.

The conference took place alongside ABCD, Italy's most important education fair, which attracts over 40,000 visitors. Participants discussed ways of integrating eTwinning into education policies by using it systematically as platform for teachers to develop innovative practices and forge new ways of developing their professional skills.

In a video message the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, Androulla Vassiliou i, encouraged participants to "explore the contribution that eTwinning can make to your own national, regional and local priorities for improving the quality of learning, for encouraging cooperation between teachers, and for promoting school improvement."

Last week, school leaders from across Europe met in a similar event near Berlin to look at how they can make specific use of eTwinning to raise the profile of their school, get an insight in modern trends of educational leadership and find partners in Europe (To know more).

Background

eTwinning is the European online community for schools involving already 145,000 teachers across Europe. eTwinning is funded by the European Commission as part of the Lifelong Learning programme.

The eTwinning platform (www.etwinning.net) offers opportunities for teachers to meet and interact with each other in school projects, special interest groups and online forums. It also offers teachers many opportunities to develop their professional skills via online learning events.

"At the end of my first project, when summing up the results and my pupils' feedback, I started to think that eTwinning could be more than an extra project and could be fully incorporated into teaching. eTwinning is the most flexible tool of my teaching that allows my pupils and me to learn, improve, have fun and make friends." Maria Doria, teacher from Italy