Let´s /b/log in

Let’s (b)log in was the first project for the Polish partner and thanks to it we really took to eTwinning. It was a good opportunity to develop ICT skills and practice English. What seems another particularly important advantage of the project is the friendly atmosphere both partners enjoyed. It was expressed in various ways, e.g. by sending prizes for taking part in some competitions or sending such gifts like Polish ”opłatek” (related to Christmas) or the Czech “pomlazka’ (related to Easter). Dealing with the project both students and teachers had a chance to be more creative as we tried to present various topics using various tools. Students also liked such events like a trip (it was organized to present the region to our partners), a meeting with a guest (who worked in the Czech Republic) or podcasts. What was really rewarding for the students what the fact that the project was awarded with European Quality Label and it was mentioned in our local media (newspapers and the radio).

About the project:
We consider inovation and creativity of our project as very clear and important. All the final products such as the Collection of boardgames / can be used during English lessons / as well as the Collection of the crosswords – the topic Famous people can be used any time again.
The fact that the students overcame the first fear from talking in the skype or being recorded on the video was very gratifying. But also the presentations about directions in the town are very useful and have been already used in other classes.

Our project was based on the school curriculum and the textbook Cambridge Worldwide used by the Czech group. We have decided a compromise with the Polish partner about the topics. We also spent a lot of time talking about the environment./ photo tree competition/. Project was included into the School educational programme especially the way of project teaching as the cross-section topics of the school. For example The world and Europe is interesting for us,multicutural topics, self control,human relations, self regulation,media education- our presentations in the twinspace and the blog.
Cooperation between the Czech and Polish schools was in very high profesional quality, both teachers spent a lot of free time working also at home, arranging contributions, preparing new parts of the project, talking on line in the skype. It is really visible in the Blog- everyday articles. The project was presented in the local newspaper on both sides, on the school website in the section International projects, the students introduced their contributions to the parents during teachers-parents meeting, There is a large noticeboard in the school corridor with etwinning projects. It was presented in the National conference of etwinning in the Czech Republic and the metodology of this project was presented in the British-Czech etwinning workshop in Prague.

Using ICT-
All the children were the part of the twinspace team and had access to the activities there. They worked in photogallery, blog, forum, they sent emails, created powerpoint presentations, photostories, word documents, they learned a lot of new- such as excel, Windows movie maker, podomatic.com, videoclips in quick time, they took part in videoconferences.

This project can be used at any school at any time especially the final products of the project which were already mentioned. / Boardgames, crosswords, directions, maps / We wanted to publish them but it was too expensive, so we published them only on line on our school website in PDF format, so they can be copied and used again. It would be a problem to use this project through the whole school. It is a language project, but we are using the parts of it again at the moment.

The project was a unique oportunity to show our people the Polish nation in another way that before. The students were very surprised when they had read about all the activities which were organized in the Polish school during the school year. They had to confess that their Polish friends do more for other people that the Czech children. The children realized that the school ICT equipment was similar to the Czech school and that the Polish children were as good as the Czechs. We also tried to understand written and spoken word in both native languages and we were able to show our students the fact that our languages come from the same group of Indoeuropean languages- Slovonic group. The very important is the fact that the relationship between the teacher and the students is based on friendly atmosphere,democratic relationships. The students are grateful that they can use the free software given them in the etwinning project and they felt safe using the internet that way. They tried very hard to created the best contribution. They behaved very well in the computer room and they were proud about the project. They became more confident in public speaking.

The most important income for the students was that they improved their ICT literacy, they learned a lot of new software, they were able to realize their ideas- very often in the better way than we, teachers had expected. They communicated with the teenagers from another country. We, teachers, had to accept the reality,that the students were very often better at using computers than us and we often changed the roles in the classroom. We are not ICT teachers and we had to learn a lot ourselves, very often the method of try and error. We have got the Quality Label in both countries, which means that we have received also the International Quality label. We think that this project with the special name which can be explained in two ways Let´s/b/log in- Let´s blog in or Let´s log in deserves good assessment.

http://twinblog.etwinning.net/4760/
http://twinspace.etwinning.net/launcher.cfm?lang=en&cid=32114
http://tercieb-poland.blogspot.com/