News
Welcome to the new eTwinning Desktop!
What has changed? The new eTwinning Desktop offers more options and possibilities for networking, but you will be pleasantly surprised to find that this has been achieved without altering it completely so, if you are used to the old eTwinning Desktop, don’t worry! You will find your way around easily.
A new feature introduced in the Homepage is the communication area for announcements and information from the Central Support Service (CSS) and from your National Support Service (NSS). So by logging in your Desktop, you will be immediately be informed of the latest news items, deadlines, training events, etc. Directly from the Homepage you will now be able to access the brand-new Teacher Rooms and get connected to the Learning Events and eTwinning Groups. Finally, from the homepage you will still be able to access your internal mailbox system.
Whether you are an experienced eTwinner or a newcomer, your Profile is the place to start networking! Make sure that it contains a photo and a brief presentation about you, including your professional interests, the new competencies you hope to gain through eTwinning, domains in which you feel a real expert, etc. The Profile page in the Desktop maintains all the features present in the previous Desktop: there is a section called “About me”, listing the main information about you, such as your name, the name of your school, the language(s) you can communicate in and the age of your pupils . The functionality of the previous “wall” (where other eTwinners could leave messages), and “ me too” (for other eTwinners to express interest for a project idea) are now integrated in the brand-new “eTwinning and me: My Journal”. The journal offers the possibility for other eTwinners to comment on all entries not only project ideas. NB: the purpose of the journal is for you to share information about yourself and for others to comment. It is not a public wall (as you may be used to in public social networks, such as Facebook). → → eTwinning and me: my Journal How you choose to use the Journal is entirely up to you! You can keep a record of your own professional development in eTwinning, of the new competencies you have acquired, and of interesting things that you have learnt. You can share links you have found interesting or inspiring or upload files such as presentations and lesson plans with other colleagues. You may decide to share these files with the wider eTwinning community by making them available directly in the Resources area. But it’s not only about the positive – feel free to write about difficulties that you encountering in eTwinning and in your teaching in school. You might be pleasantly surprised that some teacher somewhere has a solution to some of your problems! Keeping a journal is also a means of letting other colleagues in Europe know you better, discovering affinities and common interests.. Other teachers in eTwinning to comment on your entries, thus starting up a conversation with you.
Teachers Rooms are online spaces where eTwinners can aggregate and discuss any topic of interest. Each room is dedicated to a different discussion. Teacher Rooms remains active for two months and after this period they can be extended for another two months, according to the interest and need of participants. If after four months the discussion is still lively, and there is an interest to remain together, then this is a good indication that participants could consider working together in an eTwinning Group, or register a project. As an eTwinner you can create, request or be invited to a Teachers Room. There is no formal approval procedure and you will only be asked to create a room name and short description. You will have to indicate as well in which language you would like to discuss and to provide some tags to give other people the gist of what the discussions are about. The Central Support Service will also open rooms where anyone can drop in. Discussion topics must not be of illegal, immoral or unethical nature. If you create a Teachers Room, it is your responsibility to monitor the discussions. Good discussion examples include: aspects of the subject you teach, problems that you may encounter in school, the use of a particular digital application, details for organising a job-shadowing experience, a project proposal, etc. We are certain that you will come up with many more suggestions!
The previous Partner Finding section of the new Desktop has been replaced by a section called Find eTwinners. The change of name does not simply imply that the search tools have been improved, but it indicates that you can explore the eTwinning community not only for finding project partners but also contacts for professional social networking. Use the advanced search option to find eTwinning through different criteria or read the messages posted in the forums. In the new eTwinning Desktop, to avoid having to go through many messages that may not be relevant, there are now four forums instead of one. Three forums are dedicated to age groups - age 4-11 (corresponding roughly to the pre-primary/primary level) 12-15 (lower secondary and first years of upper secondary level) and 16-19 (the final years of secondary school) respectively. The fourth forum is specifically dedicated to teachers of all school levels, looking for partners for a Comenius School Partnership project. Therefore, if you post a message in a forum, make sure it is the right one!
You can still access all functions relating to the management of you project from beginning to end: from project registration to managing partners, running the project and eventually closing it. You can also access your projects’ TwinSpaces – where your pupils will work together - and Project Diaries – where you and your partners report on your progress and activities. In addition to the above, you can now search for all active eTwinning projects. Therefore, if you’re looking for some inspiration, ideas, etc., this is a great place to start.
The Resource area has been improved to allow you to more easily find what you’re looking for . Here you can search for resources for your projects among the many submitted by other eTwinners or you can upload, edit and manage resources that you have created yourself. Additionally, you can now rate others’ resources (which is also a great networking tool!) and consult featured external resources, suggested to you in addition to eTwinner resources. Now it is your turn! If you are new to eTwinning you can start your activity in different ways:
If you are instead a seasoned eTwinner, you might consider:
We hope you enjoy the new eTwinning Desktop and make full use of it this school year! To learn about the development of the new Desktop, have a look at an interview with Santi Scimeca, eTwinning’s project manager at the Central Support Service in Brussels.
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