PEDAGOGICAL ISSUES AND

THE NEW TWINSPACE

THEODORA GKENIOU etwinning ambassador-Greece

MARIA NICA etwinning ambassador-Italy

Presentation outline

1. Brief introduction 2. Old Twinspace – New

Twinspace 3. Prospects and challenges

of the new Twinspace 4. Practical considerations

What is ETWINNING

ICT-enabled Innovation for Learning in Europe

ICT-enabled innovation

pedagogical innovation

ICT

Objective The vehicle

ICT

Lifelong learning

Collabo

ration

Commu nication

Inter

cultural aware

ness

The 4 pillars

QL criteria

1. Pedagogical Innovation: To develop a project which can be judged as innovative, the first step is to choose an original theme. It is also necessary to use different pedagogical methods and make sure that the pupils take the lead and work collaboratively using different techniques.

2. Curricular Integration 3. Communication and exchange between partner

schools 4. Collaboration between partner schools: 5. Use of technology 6. Results, impact and documentation

What is innovation?

Pedagogy first

project-based pedagogies

authentic learning

game based learning

collaboration, Team work., communication, Problem solving

WHAT KIND OF CITIZENS DO WE WANT TO EDUCATE?

OLD TWINSPACE-NEW

TWINSPACE

HOME HOME PROJECT ACTIVITIES PAGES CHATCHAT

MEMBERS

USED TO BE AT HOME-FIRST PAGE

A separate section

Blog (old TS)

A PUBLIC space to record and communicate the development of your project

Project journal (new TS)

TEACHERS

•BLOG •FORUM •FILE ARCHIVE •IMAGE GALLERY •WIKI

BOTH FOR COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION

TEACHER BULLETIN

ONLY VISIBLE TO TEACHER MEMBERS

A SPACE FOR COMMUNICATION. HOW ABOUT COLLABORATION?

BULLETIN: A BRIEF UPDATE

WE CAN POST&DELETE MESSAGES and EMBED HTML CODE

MOVED TO THE FRONT PAGE-HOME

• VIDEOS •SLIDESHOWS •WEB 2.0 TOOLS ETC •By copy and pasting HTML – embed codes •And POST

PUPILS

• BLOG •FORUM •FILE ARCHIVE •IMAGE GALLERY •WIKI

BOTH FOR COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION

FORUMS

WE CAN

ADD A NEW FORUM

OR A NEW THREAD (A SUBCATEGORY OF THE FORUM)

ARCHIVE A FORUM (HIDE IT)

REPLY-QUOTE-DELETE

EDIT (CHANGE THE NAME OR DESCRIPTION)

ADD PHOTOS, TABLES, VIDEOS, FILES

EMBED WEB TOOLS

FORUMS

EMBED WEB TOOLS

ADD MATERIALS, LINKS, TABLES

THE NEW FORUM IS THE OLD BLOG

PROJECT ACTIVITIES & HOW TO

MANAGE THEM

WE ADDED THE APPLICATIONS BY DRAGGING THEM ON THE ACTIVITY SPACE

PREVIOUS TS APPLICATIONS

• BLOG

• FORUM (basic form) COMMUNICATION

• WIKI

• WEB CONTENT

• BLOG

COLLABORATION

• FILE ARCHIVE

• IMAGE GALLERY

• WEB CONTENT

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

FILE ARCHIVE & IMAGE GALLERY

THEN

MATERIALS NOW

HOME

SEPARATE SECTION IMAGES-FILES-VIDEOS

COLOURFUL, USER FRIENDLY

LAYOUT

NOT JUST STORAGE!!!!!

A COMPARATIVE TABLE

PREVIOUS TWINSPACE NEW TWINSPACE

1. HOME (SEPARATE SECTION) 1. HOME (SEPARATE SECTION)

2. PROJECT ACTIVITIES (SEPARATE SECTION)

2. PAGES (SEPARATE SECTION)

3. CHAT(SEPARATE SECTION) 3.CHAT (SEPARATE SECTION)

4. PUPILS (SEPARATE SECTION) 4.FORUMS (SEPARATE SECTION)

5. BLOG (SEPARATE SECTION) 5. PROJECT JOURNAL (HOME)

6. TEACHERS (SEPARATE SECTION)

6. TEACHER BULLETIN (HOME)

7. MEMBERS (HOME)

7. MEMBERS (SEPARATE SECTION)

8. FILE ARCHIVE & IMAGE GALLERY (CONTENT MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS)

8. MATERIALS (SEPARATE SECTION)

Some remarks

PREVIOUS TWINSPACE NEW TWINSPACE

•Structured form

•Visible tools inside the twinspace

Loose structure;

Invisible tools which are available outside the eTwinning portal

•Collaboration & communication •Collaboration & COMMUNICATION

•Internal applications for communication and collaboration

•More easily customizable

•Open to embedding new tools

• internal applications (files/images/forums)

•Separate sections (materials) (forums)

•Not so appealing •User friendly interface

What are we doing now??

1. No wiki

2. No file archive

3. No image gallery

4. No web content

5. No forum

6. No blog

NO APPLICATIONS!!! Now what?

?

EDITOR TOOLBAR

EMBED WEB TOOLS/INSTEAD

OF WEB CONTENT APPLICATION

EMBED MATERIALS AT

THE EXACT SPOT WHERE

YOU WISH

INSERT EXTERNAL

LINKS

HTML CODE

SO IN THE NEW TS:

1. Page = wiki

2. File archive and image gallery = materials

3. Web content = html mode button

4. The new forum=old blog

Advantages

Place the materials and forums at the exact place where you want

Disadvantages

You have to present them in an organized manner.

OLD TS: A PUZZLE TO ASSEMBLE

NEW TS: A CANVAS TO CREATE..

A SCRIBBLE OR…

HARMONY & SYMMETRY?

Common problems

Pages randomly created (if at all..)

Everything stored in the project journal or just stocked on the materials section

Pages without clear structure

No descriptions of activities

No interaction among students-inactive forums

No project planning

1. Twinspace appearance

● Personalize your twinspace to make it friendlier

● Create your logo to build a sense

of community among the participants

● Don’t forget: the twinspace is

both a space for collaborative work and the place where you can display your work to a wider audience.

So...it has to be clearly organised and

customized according to your preferences

Make it yours! It’s your workplace!!

2. Fostering communication

Teacher’s bulletin

Project journal

Twinmail

Profile wall

Forums

Members

Chat

Q; When do I use the teacher bulletin and when the project journal? A: The bulletin addresses teachers. Use it to

● decide about the practicalities of the project (who does what, when, how etc)

● provide assistance and encouragement to your partners

● socialise, get to know them a bit better

● share ideas, knowledge, practices. Educate each other!

● Remember the old TS “teacher room”? It has been replaced by the teacher bulletin.

● Obviously it is suitable mainly for communication.

● For collaboration you had better open a private page

•Holiday timetables •Suggest activities, tools •Report problems etc

The project journal is a journal:

● we record the process of the project

● we mark milestones, that is important points along the project timeline

● we can add photos, collages, videos etc

● Remember the old TS “blog”? It serves the same purposes

Communication is the most important ingredient in the etwinning recipe!

The new Twinspace was designed to make it easier. Take advantage of all the above mentioned features and communicate with your partners. Don’t forget to update the project journal which is public so that the world knows your work Encourage your students to update their profiles, post messages to get to know each other and use the forums to exchange ideas. Organise chats to ensure participation. Discuss-discuss-discuss with your partners, through the teacher bulletin and the twinmail before you actually do something

3. Developing the project

The twinspace is to be used to

plan and organise your work in clear modules. It is the space where all project members will

● become a community with the same goal to achieve

● be informed about the processes to follow

● negotiate and work ● display their work ● evaluate and comment it

So each of the tools provided should be used for these purposes!! The twinspace is NOT a storage space. It is a living organism and it has a Cycle of Life

etwinning project cycle of life and the new twinspace tools

ONE single page

Everything stored on the project journal!!!

The project design in 6 simple steps ??

Much communication on the Bulletin; No collaboration on TS

Partners working in PARALLEL

HOME

A PROJECT WITHOUT A SINGLE PAGE!!

The home is the first impression one gets when s/he enters the twinspace, the “Cover” of the project. So what is important?

1. The pages should be well arranged

2. Photos and videos should be of good quality

3. The project journal should help us keep track of the project

4. The teachers should be involved and communicate effectively (although the teacher bulletin is not visible to students)

Don’t The pages cannot be created randomly, without having decided earlier what the stages and activities of the project are going to be. Do PLAN-PLAN-PLAN this is the only key to success and a tip You can archive pages if you don’t want them to be visible and mess up the appearance of the twinspace. However.. It’s better to be safe than sorry

Pages

PAGES & HOW TO MANAGE

THEM

CREATE-EDIT-ARCHIVE (NOT DELETE)

ADD SUBPAGES

VISIBILITY

AUTHORSHIP

REVISIONS

A BLANK PAGE!!!

Visibility-Editing

Q: How do we organise the pages? A: 1:1 rule Each page corresponds to one activity (Not to one country) Q: How can I group different pages under one topic? A: Use the sub-pages option, listing each subpage under the parent page. There is thus thematic unity. In this way the individual activities across the project are centered around some themes.

We are talking about the Twinspace but in reality we are talking about

PEDAGOGY

Q: Do we want to duplicate the traditional teaching paradigm in etwinning projects? A: No, we want to students to learn actively, to construct new ideas and hypotheses, to use existing knowledge, to go beyond it, to discover, select and transform information. We also want them to take advantage of the potential that group work can offer and the social interaction with peers and teachers from other sociocultural environments. Also we want to cater for the individual needs of our classes. Q: So how do we achieve these learning objectives?

learn actively and construct new ideas and hypotheses creatively

the teacher creates the appropriate environment on the pages, using extra web tools if needed, to design activities that promote active learning in a meaningful context, eg learning scenarios The instructions, process and final product should be clear.

use existing knowledge & go beyond it, discovering, selecting and transforming information

the materials can be the place where the new productions are carefully organised and displayed

socialcultural interaction

we create and use forums, chat, twinmail, wall messages

learning suited to individual needs

a rich variety of activities can be created on the pages to cater for the needs and interests of the students involved

Finally, let’s keep in mind that

● etwinning project = a project

● project members = a learning

community

● founder = a leader and

manager

● the twinspace = a learning

management system

● pages = tasks or activities which

make up the learning scenario

● materials = supporting or

original productions of the

project members

● web tools = tools

Q: Why use the HTML code? A: To embed web 2.0 tools so as to improve the quality of your project Q: Can I have an example? A: Sure..why not create and embed at the appropriate place in the page a collage or slideshow (eg photopeach, kizoa) with photos you collected on a certain topic (eg Your hometown presentation) instead of just creating a folder in the Materials and stocking them there?

A

B

C. A blank page?

Can you come up with your own examples about how a web tool can improve the appearance the organisation the collaboration the communication the evaluation of your project?

Q: and what happens when I try to use the embed code but my creation doesn’t appear when I switch back? A: In this case, there are 3 alternatives depending of the given embed code.

1. When the given code type is <iframe … it’s just a copy and paste procedure

2. When the given code is something different of <iframe... then must be changed by someone who knows what to do

3. When no embed code is offered for the tool, it must be created from scratch

(Tip by Petros Mihailidis)

SOME TUTORIALS

VOKIS

http://www.slideshare.net/socratisvasiopoulos/use-voki-in-your-twinspace

INVITE PUPILS

http://www.slideshare.net/teacherinresidence/invite-pupils-to-the-twinspace?related=2

WHAT PUPILS CAN DO

http://www.slideshare.net/pitm/the-new-twinspace-41887342?related=3

SMILEBOX

http://www.slideshare.net/pitm/how-to-embed-smilebox-into-twinspace?related=1

ANSWERGARDEN

http://www.slideshare.net/pitm/how-to-embed-an-answer-garden-in-a-twinspace-page?related=2

FORUMS

http://www.slideshare.net/pitm/forum-in-a-page

Materials can and should be displayed on the pages, at the particular point where they are needed.

● The folders are not supposed to act as warehouses.

● The folders should be well

organised.

● The forders should correspond to the pages and be easily traced.

● Materials’ folders should not

be created randomly, without having planned it first!!

ALL PROJECT ACTIVITIES IN ONE NATIONAL FILE

Don’t forget

● display your materials following the e-safety and netiquette rules

● ask for the parents’ permissions and let them know the work which is being done.

● If you use YouTube, you can make the video UNLISTED so that it is not publicly visible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaSM_xcmkOI&t=46

(tip by Maria Georgiadou)

And the crucial point is coming up: “Who does what?”

● If you make your pupils administrators, they can take initiative but they can create confusion since they are allowed to create pages, edit and delete.

● Why not assign them some roles and decide who are ready to take responsibility?

● Visitors can also edit the page..so even teachers from non etwinning countries, or policy makers, administrative staff and parents could contribute.

● All teachers (administrators or not) can edit too.

So here comes again:

DECIDE-PLAN-ORGANISE before you ACT

Luckily, if something goes wrong you can always fix it by using the REVISIONS button

Q: Why Forums?Do really need to have them? A: Forums are most important. They are the GLUE of the project. The MEETING POINT of the students. How can you tell they actually got involved without having expressed themselves on the topics discussed and the activities implemented? TIP Create a forum per activity and encourage the students to contribute. (it’s an excellent writing task too) You can copy and paste the LINK of the forum on the corresponding page OR EMBED IT so that it is easily accessible OR You can use the same name as the one of the corresponding activity/page

FORUMS

ONE FORUM FOR THE WHOLE PROJECT!

As a teacher, you are the leader and the decision maker in the project. The project members need your guidance and support So

● decide who to invite ● decide which roles to assign ● be flexible-change roles if

necessary ● be on the alert-contact the

members when needed ● always be ready to remind the

students of their passwords..they tend to forget!

THANK YOU