eTwinning with DB Primary

Who to twin with?•You can set up an eTwinning with any school already using DB Primary.

•You may like to twin with a school local to you, one in a different part of the country, perhaps in a different social context from your own, or even with an international school.

•Please contact DB Primary if you would like us to help you find a school to twin with. Also see the last slide here to register your interest.

How to send an inviteTo do this you must be signed in with your superadmin account: 1.Click on Administration:

2.Click on the school tab:

3.Under ‘Linked schools’ click on ‘Manage links’: 

How to send an invite Now make a search in the text box at the bottom:

How to send an invite Once your search has returned the school you want to twin with, click on the radio button next to their name and select ‘Invite’:

Partner School: the usual twinning selection.

Feeder School: select if it is a school such as an infant or first school where children from that school will join your school when they leave.

School we feed: select if it is a school that children from your school will attend after they leave.

How to respond to an invite When the school you invited logs in as superadmin, they will see the following message on the school tab:

If they click on Manage Links they will then be able to accept or decline your offer.

Creating an eTwinning community You are now ready to create your own eTwinning community. First, you will have to decide which school will be responsible for creating the community in their school portal. Create the community in the community list as you normally would:

Creating your community It’s up to you how to design your community. You could create a welcome message and insert photos of the schools. In the example below, clicking on the images links to a Google map showing the location of the schools.

Creating your communityHere a Google map is embedded into a subpage of the community.

To do this you will need to create a Google account.

Click on the embed media button on the wiki editing toolbar to copy the embed code into the page

editor.

Adding members to your twinning community

To add members to your community, click on the cogs to the top right of the community page.

Now select manage membership, also at the top right.

Adding members to your twinning community

Now that you have linked schools you will have access to any accounts from your linked school.

Note: Linking your schools will give any user with a staff account the ability to add pupils from a partner school to communities. If you would like to restrict this right to superadmin accounts only, please get in touch and we will enable this for you:Support line 01273-201701Support email: support@dbprimary.com

Setting membership rights

Manage Membership area.Click on the mortar board to change membership rights from ‘leader’ to ‘member’.

Any teacher added to the community will automatically have leader rights (editing rights) unless you decide otherwise:

It is also worth keeping in mind that once pupils are in the same community they will be able to email each other. If this is something you would prefer to restrict, get in touch and we will let you know how to disable this option:

Support line 01273-201701Support email: support@dbprimary.com

Email

Ideas for your eTwinning community

1. Have the children introduce themselves on a blog.

2. Next they can comment on a blog of someone at the other school.

Below are some suggested activities:

Ideas for your eTwinning community3. Embed the ‘contribute’ feature in the community

wiki. Children will use this to add questions they would like to ask children at the other school. Teachers will decide which questions will be posted in the forum in the following lesson.

Ideas for your eTwinning community4. Children will reply to questions posted in the

forums.

Ideas for your eTwinning communityExample questions for the forums:

• Do you prefer living in the city or would you rather live in the countryside?

• What time does your school start?• What are your favourite lessons?• What are your favourite subjects and why?• Do you have different teachers for different subjects?• What’s your favourite TV programme?• What games do you play at playtime?• Do you have a school pet?• Do you have a separate playground for infants and

juniors?• Do you go to a school club?• If you eat school dinner, what is your favourite school

dinner?

Ideas for your eTwinning community5. Post videos in the gallery.

Give your partner school a tour of your classrooms, playground, and other aspects of life at your school.

Ideas for your eTwinning community6. Group project work.

Children can work in groups to introduce an aspect of school life or their community such as:

•subjects you study•lunchtime/playtime•sports•school events•school facilities (playground & equipment, gym, hall etc.)•famous landmarks or people from the town•housing•out-of-school clubs children participate in•events during the year

Ideas for your eTwinning communityIf children are made ‘leaders’ in the community, they will be able to update a community blog.

Click to promote member to a leader.

Let groups of children update the blog during the lesson.

Ideas for your eTwinning community7. Art Exchange Project.

Communicate through drawing and works of art. Themes could include families, school, living

environments, homeland etc.

Topics could include ”Meet My Family”, ”Meet My Friends and Visit My School”, “My Home City”, “Summer Fun”, “School Animals”, “Merry Christmas”.

Take photos and publish pupils’ works in the community gallery. When the project is over, the best pieces of work could be sent to the partner school for an art exhibition.

Ideas for your eTwinning community8. Bear Exchange Project.

Send a ‘DB Bear’ to your partner school.Children can take photos of the bear as it visits places around the school, community or further afield.

If children are made ‘leaders’ in the community, they will be able to update a community blog with their comments.

Ideas for your eTwinning community

Bear Exchange ProjectIf you would like a DB Bear for your own school to use in a eTwinning exchange, please send us an email.

Kayes First and Nursery School, KirkleesKayes First School in Kirklees has taken part in three eTwinnings using DB Primary. Their latest actually led to a visit by their twinned school. Marie Fisher, ICT Co-ordinator at Kayes School explains further:

“We had a fantastic day when Boothroyd visited us and we are going there for a return visit on Friday.  The children have really loved it.  The British School of Paris was really good learning about a school in another country and I think the Boothroyd one has made it more 'real' for the children because we have been able to actually meet up.  E-twinning is now embedded into our ICT teaching in school and we definitely want to do one every year.”

Kayes First and Nursery School, KirkleesFor some photos of the visit by Boothroyd School, please visit the Kayes First School website here.

To read a newspaper article about the visit, click on the newspaper:

Kayes First and Nursery School, Kirklees

If you would like to contact Marie Fisher at Kayes School to discuss her experiences of setting up and running a twinning, she would be more than happy.

Marie Fisher, email

For some case study information about Kayes School and eTwinning, please click here.