Successful eTwinning Conference 2008

Newsletter

Textsize:

Print this page

	From 14-16 March, over 400 participants met in Bucharest, Romania, to celebrate success and discuss eTwinning in Europe.

The eTwinning Conference 2008 on “Promoting Intercultural Dialogue” provided practitioners, policy makers and national and central support services from 29 countries with a great opportunity to meet and discuss both the success and future of eTwinning in Europe.

All conference activities were documented throughout the 3 days on the
CONFERENCE BLOG. Many thanks to all those who contributed!

The first day of the Conference opened with a speech by Jan Figel’, Member of the European Commission in charge of education, training, culture and youth. Commissioner Figel’ - a long time supporter of eTwinning, who has now attended all four eTwinning conferences - spoke of the strength of eTwinning as a force to unite the teachers of Europe in a common purpose, to work together and to collaborate together with their pupils. He stated that “apart from what the pupils involved in projects can learn about each other, I think that the most important thing eTwinning gives them is a disposition of openness and curiosity towards others. And perhaps this disposition is what a united Europe is all about.”

Following the opening speech, Cristian Mihai Adominitei, Romanian Minister for Education, Research and Youth, welcomed the delegates to Bucharest and gave an overview of the importance of eTwinning to Romanian schools since they joined the action in September 2007. He spoke about how well eTwinning fits with the educational objectives in Romania in better integrating education into a European as well as international context.

Doris Pack MEP followed with a brief address to the audience, highlighting the importance of eTwinning for lifelong learning. Brian Holmes, from the Education and Culture Executive Agency, and part of the eTwinning Steering Committee, then made an interesting presentation on the impact of eTwinning in schools, and future plans for how it might evolve.

Minister Cristian Mihai Adominitei></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></P>
<P>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=

Professor Sugata Mitra

A big highlight of the first plenary session to follow was a very inspiring keynote address by Professor Sugata Mitra who is known worldwide for his research experiments called “Hole in the Wall”. Professor Mitra provided a lively presentation on how children in remote areas in India learn by teaching themselves and those around them. The final highlight of the day was then the eTwinning prize-giving ceremony where the winners and runners up of the 2008 Prizes were announced via an impressive media presentation. Congratulations again to all our finalists!

For full details about the rest of the conference - including photos and detailed information about the Saturday workshop sessions, the exhibition areas and the Sunday closing session - please have a look at the conference blog.

Finally, many thanks go to all participants for their enthusiasm, patience and contributions throughout the three days. eTwinning is a great success thanks to the interest and dedication of people like you!

	Web Editor:	Christina Crawley

	Published :	19/03/2008

	Last changed :	15/04/2008

	Other languages :	bg \| cz \| da \| de \| el \| en \| es \| et \| fi \| fr \| hu \| it \| lt \| lv \| mt \| nl \| no \| pl \| pt \| sk \| sl \| sv

eTwinning is part of the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme