News
Helpdesk
In case you do not find the answers in the above topic list linked above, or if you would simply like to share some issues with other eTwinners, you can use the forum of this section on the Desktop. Bear in mind that this particular forum on the Desktop is not for partner finding! The registration for eTwinning is a two-phase process:
N.B.: in case you do not receive the confirmation email, please check your SPAM folder: it may have ended up there. In case you cannot find this email anywhere, contact your National Support Service. Do not register again! Registration is only open to teachers working in a school in one of the European countries where eTwinning has a National Support Service (see full list). If you are not a teacher, working in a school in one of the eTwinning countries, your access will be revoked. Teachers interested in participating in an eTwinning project, but who are not able to register because they are not part of the participating countries, can be invited as members of an existing project’s TwinSpace. Contact for this must be made outside the eTwinning Portal. Click on ‘Forgot your password?’ located in the login box of the eTwinning Portal’s homepage (see top right-hand corner of this page). Type your email address that you used for registration and then hit ‘submit’. You will then receive your login data and a new password by email. If you do not receive this email, or you encounter a problem when you try to sign in again, please contact your National Support Service directly. The Desktop is your personal, private area in eTwinning to make connections with other eTwinning teachers and join the various activities on offer (e.g., Learning Events, eTwinning Groups, Teachers Rooms and Projects). The Desktop is for school staff only (teachers, headmasters, school librarians)! If you register an eTwinning project, then your pupils will have access to another platform called the TwinSpace.
The eTwinning Desktop offers a multitude of possibilities to communicate with other teachers to find and meet future project partners, share experiences and promote your activities. In the Teachers’ Rooms, you can join in short term discussions on specific topics. You can either choose to see an overview of all Teachers’ Rooms available on the eTwinning Portal or look for one or more specific ones depending on your interests.
You can also get in touch with European colleagues by becoming a member of an eTwinning Group. They are long-term discussion platforms, similar to Teachers’ Rooms, but with more tools to maintain and run activities for the long-term. N.B.: Teachers’ Rooms and eTwinning Groups are NOT to be used for project partner-finding. Of course, you may meet future partners in Rooms or Groups; however, this is a secondary effect and partner-finding messages in Rooms and Groups are not allowed. If you are directly looking for partners, you can use the search tools and forums in the Find eTwinners section. You can either send them a direct message by clicking on the envelope on the left above their profile, or comment on an entry in a teachers’ journal indicating, for example, similar experiences, tips or your interest in a project that you think would be of interest to them. First of all, check to see if the topic of the room you’re planning to create is already being discussed in another room. Avoid creating more than one room about the same topic, otherwise it becomes confusing for everyone. In order to create a new room, you can select ‘Create a New Teachers’ room’ in the section ‘My Rooms’. Fill in all obligatory fields and submit your entry. When creating a Room, make sure that the title is catchy but clear. Also, the description of the Room should be detailed and clear to those who come across it. You can explain what you expect from the Room, who should participate, the timeframe, etc. Once the Room is created, you must post at least one first forum message: this is the ‘welcome’ to the members who will access the Room. In this message, you should explain what to do (e.g., introduce yourself, share materials, explain how you see the Room working, etc.) and try to be as concrete as possible so that it is easier for others to contribute. Rooms are visible to other eTwinners only if they have at least two members. So, what you have to do now is to invite other colleagues; however, only members of your contacts can be invited directly by you. Alternatively, someone can request to join your Room, and thus, as the Room’s creator, you receive a notification. If you would like to accept these new members, simply click on ‘accept’. If you are the creator of the Room, you have the responsibility of running it and can take different actions such as extending the deadline of the Room, editing the description, inviting contacts, managing members and managing the forum. As the creator of the Room, you can delete messages in the forum. You should do this only in case such messages do not really fit with the purpose of the room (e.g., if they are partner-finding requests which instead belong in the ‘Find eTwinners’ forums). We suggest that you also contact the author of the message to explain why you delete his/her message. The eTwinning Desktop forums have sometimes been the targets of ‘spamming’. Overwhelming teachers with partner-finding messages can be very disruptive to the community as a whole and cause frustration to others. We would like to ask all eTwinners to avoid posting the same message on different forums, without taking into account the subject of the Teachers’ Room or eTwinning Group in question. Each Room and Group has a topic and a goal (specified in the title and description) and is not for partner-finding or over-posting. If you are a member, we suggest that you read your messages carefully before posting them since you can neither delete nor edit them afterwards. The eTwinning Desktop offers you all the possibilities to open up or join discussions about specific topics and also foresees additional tools to conduct quite advanced searches for potential partners. In this sense, less noise is more success! By using the tools in a correct and respectful manner, and identifying the topics of the different forums, you will be able to participate in the discussions and find partners of future projects in an efficient and effective way. If you think someone is ‘spamming’, don’t be afraid to send him or her a message that points him or her in the right direction, i.e., to a different area of the Desktop. You may want so check a presentation we did with the main issues related to eTwinning Netiquette. First of all, you can turn to your fellow eTwinners, as they can all help you based on their own experiences on the eTwinning Desktop and as project coordinators. You can ask them for help by sending them a personal message or, when available, by posting a question in a relevant Teachers’ Room or eTwinning Group. If you cannot get the answers or information you are looking for from your colleagues, you can check the FAQs and guidelines in the help section on the eTwinning Portal. When the information online not allows you to solve your problems you can get in touch with the eTwinning Support Services:
|
Also in...
|
Directorate-General for Education and Culture | Disclaimer
| Contact | About this site