Traveloteacher

When I first came up with this idea to organize a slow Twitter chat that would last for five full days, 24 hours a day, at a time when most teachers from European schools are still on holidays, I had absolutely no clue how it would go! But I liked the idea and proposed it to Irene Pateraki, eTwinning CSS Pedagogical and Monitoring Manager, who gave me her full support. Two weeks ago the word slowetwiam didn't exist. Now,  it is a lively buzzword that has attracted teachers from Europe and beyond to learning and sharing on Twitter. More than 1,000 tweets, retweets and replies have been sent out by 90 teachers over the past 5 days! Some teachers actively participated from the beginning to the very end, while others chimed in whenever they could. Our tweets have been delivered to Twitter timelines more than 2,283,000 times! We had our ups and downs during the chat: We discussed five topics and inspired each other with so many great ideas. #slowetwiam :a gre...

Twitter chats represent an excellent opportunity for professional development. A Twitter chat is an online conversation about a specific topic. It usually lasts for an hour during which a facilitator tweets out questions. There are usually up to 6 questions posted during a Twitter chat. The participants send out tweets, retweet other participants' tweets and reply to them to make the conversation lively and diverse. While sharing their ideas, experiences, examples of best practice, as well as links to interesting and useful websites,  they use a predetermined hashtag (#) to make it easier to follow the chat, because Twitter chats are usually "fast and furious". So far I've facilitated a number of an-hour-long "fast and furious" Twitter chats for eTwinning teachers. In such chats, there are sometimes a lot of tweets sent out at the same time, which makes it difficult to follow. That's why I decided to  do a completely different Twitter chat - a SLO...

In August I was invited to give two talks and a workshop at two great events:  - a plenary: "Curricular Integration of eTwinning Projects" at the PDW eTwinning from A to Z, in Rimske Terme, Slovenia; - a plenary: "The Future Is Now" and  a workshop "eTwinning - the most exciting community for schools in Europe" at LEND International Summer School in Sirolo, Italy. Both events provided me with a wonderful opportunity to connect and network with European teachers and to attend some excellent workshop and talks delivered by expert educators. Peer learning at its best.

Europe and European teachers were in the focus of my activities over the past days. The fourth learning event, Augmented eTwinning Reality , developed and run by the compagnons de route , as Bart likes to call us, took place in the eTwinning learning lab. Our first event was great, our second event was even greater and the third one was the greatest (so the participants!). So, yes, after the third event, as Bart wrote in his  post  : " This is the third Learning Event Arjana and I organized, but this one is really special. We have never seen so much enthusiasm, so much creativity, so much innovative attitude. It’s a learning roller coaster." and while preparing this fourth event I felt rather panicky because 200 hundred seats for the event were taken in just a few hours. I didn't know if we would live up to the expectations of the participants, who, I was pretty sure, expected us to push the limits even further, beyond the superlative ... to the augmentative or to...

 Over  the past years we have witnessed the transformation of education 1.0 to education 3.0. Not only witnessed! Along the way we – teachers and students – have actively participated in the process of change, we have brought and will continue to bring new ways of learning into our classrooms.  Together we have transformed the roles of teachers and students:      -  from  Education 1:0  where teachers were lecturers and know-it-alls and where students were passive onlookers and receivers of information;       - through  Education 2:0  where teachers were moderators and facilitators who showed the right direction to students who were active participants and consumers of information       - to where we are right now in  Education 3.0 : there where the line between teachers and students is blurred, where we are all learners, discoverers of information, producers of new content and crea...

I love Twitter, I always have, ever since I first started following Ashton Kutcher @aplusk, (yes, really!) in April 2009. Only a month later, my PLN began to take shape. That was also the time when the first educational Twitter chat took place. 4,5 years later, my PLN plays a very important role for my professional, but also personal development and Twitter chats are events I take part in whenever I can.  I have grown both professionally and personally over those 4,5 year, as Italian educator Alessandra Pallavicini aptly said: Yesterday, I went even further than that -  I led the first eTwinning Twitter Marathon together with Bart Verswijvel , with whom I have already done lots of educational projects that have inspired a huge number of educators worldwide. ETWION as we called it, brought together more than 150 educators from all over the world. It lasted for 5 hours non-stop, with Bart and me welcoming the audience, involving them in the conversations, making ...

#ETWION is an eTwinning Twitter Marathon that Bart and I are organizing for eTwinners and educators from all over the world on December 19. We're really pleased to see that lots of teachers have opened a Twitter account and are getting ready to take part in the twitterathon. Here are some tips for newcomers on how to make the most out of #ETWION: First and foremost, we communicate with other Twitterers (or tweeps) by sending short messages or tweets which are up to 140 characters long. Even though this may seem really short, we can add links, photos and even video clips to our tweets. Every Twitter user has a Twitter name, also known as Twitter handle , which consists of the symbol @ placed before the username. If you don't add the @ , the user might not see your tweet, so make sure you always add the twitter handle of the person who you're addressing this tweet to. For example, I sent out this tweet to no one in particular so it appeared on the timelines of all t...

I'm a perfectionist and I'm hardly ever totally satisfied with the workshops and seminars that I deliver. But last weekend at the eTwinning contact seminar in Dubrovnik I was completely totally fully satisfied and euphorically happy with my workshops A Little Bit of Magic with Collaboration Tools . It was magical indeed! And I even had a magic wand and a magician hat filled with -I'm sure you would never guess! - with chocolate and gingerbread hearts, and what's more I also had my own (magician) assistant - Bart , with whom I also gave the opening plenary workshop called eTwinning on the Beach . In my Magic Workshop I introduced some useful web 2.0 tools to the participants from 9 European countries, but the best part of the workshop had nothing to do with technology - it was all about collaboration: it was about singing karaoke and making a lip dub together!  The participants were so enthusiastic and passionate about it and I immensely enjoyed every second of t...

Dear eTwinning 3.0 participants, ever since that warm June afternoon when Bart and I were asked to do yet another Learning Event in the Learning Lab, we lived with it and for it! We worked on it day and night, we looked for new tools and resources, did research, explored the tools and discussed their pedagogical value and usage in education, experimented, created new tasks, invented new  activities, tried them out with our students, reflected and reviewed, critized, praised and inspired each other, dealt with issues and problems, were excited to find something that worked perfectly and disappointed at other times because it didn't. And now after the learning event has finished, after ten days of intense online collaboration, fascinating connectedness and creativity, after having received so many compliments, beautiful comments, lovely posters and thank you notes, we know that we have inspired and motivated you and that together we have ... touched the sky! Thank you for flying ...

Today is the last day of yet another learning event that Bart and I are leading in the eTwinning Learning Lab. Our event, eTwinning 3.0 is about education 3.0. We prepared lots of resources, tools and most importantly lots of creative tasks for our participants. Those past ten days were so intense, totally filled with collaboration, connectedness and creativity that I feel like we have reached the stars!All those comments that have been posted all over the web show that we have fulfilled our mission - to fly to the moon: Here are some of the comments: Words fail me - I'm so deeply touched and .... over the moon! A million thanks to all of you, dear participants, fellow etwinners and friends. It's been an out-of-this-world experience.

I love web 2.0 tools! No, that's rather an understatement! I adore tools! I enjoy exploring this vast sea of new technologies and  experimenting with them to see what would work best in my classroom.  Some of the tools are really awesome, but yesterday I stumbled upon one that is beyond awesome!!!! Videoscribe by Sparkol   is "a unique way to create engaging animated videos quickly and easily ". It's something completely different! I've seen and admired such animated "doodle-style" videos so many times before and I always thought that you need to be an artist to produce such stunning pieces of art! Until I saw a jaw-dropping video created by Adrijana Leko , an innovative and creative teacher from Croatia. And I immediately gave it a try and was euphoric all day yesterday and still am about this fabulous, fantastic, awesome, wondrous tool! Now I can draw too! I can be an artist as well! So here's my first Videoscribe - eTwinning 3.0 . It...

If you are a member of the Twinning community, you're provided with lots of opportunities for professional development, not only online but also in the real world. Workshops and contact seminars are organized in different countries all over Europe all year round and teachers can apply for those that are chosen by their national agencies. Right now there are four workshops for Croatian teachers to choose from: in Stockholm, Billund, Brussels and Dubrovnik.The deadline for applying is August 28. The contact seminar in Dubrovnik is organized by Dunja Babić, the NSS for eTwinning, and the staff at the Croatian  National Agency. Ten Croatian teachers will be selected to come to Dubrovnik and meet their colleagues from several European countries. Together they will learn about the Cross-curricular collaboration using Web 2.0 tools , make new contacts and start new eTwinning projects. I'm especially looking forward to it because I'm one of the three invited speakers. On...

The ten-day long Learning Odyssey that Bart and I were running in the eTwinning Learning Lab moved from the virtual to the real world in Portugal last week. At the annual eTwinning conference, held in Lisbon, we delivered two workshops about The Pedagogical Value of eTwinning projects. The workshops were well received by the teachers who wanted to learn more not only about the web 2.0 tools that they can use in their eTwinning projects, but also about the pedagogy behind the tools (or ahead of the tools). We received fantastic feedback and I'm still over the moon about it, because so many teachers approached us after the workshops to tell us that our sessions were the best or among the best sessions of the entire conference.   Also, after the first workshop the good word about what we did and how we presented this topic spread around and we were asked to let in some other teachers who hadn't previously signed up for our workshops. What the teachers liked most about t...

The learning event The Pedagogical Value of eTwinning projects that Bart and I are running in the eTwinning Learning Lab is now in full swing. The warming up part was well received by more than 150 participants. Bart and I have collected not only a lot of resources and tools to engage our particpants, but we've also prepared some fun tasks for them that they have been doing with pleasure and passion. We're delighted to see how enthusiastic and inspiring the eTwinners are and how committed they are to lifelong learning and collaborating with peers from across Europe. Our first fun activity was a Thinglink map of Europe where they were invited to introduce themselves with a video, photo or link to the website of their school, hometown or country. We have two maps now - one bigger ,  the other smaller and both are filled with beautiful videos and images. The second task was to write their favorite saying on the 21st century education and learning on a Linoit Board. T...

Today I'm proudly announcing and inviting you, dear readers, to take part in the learning event The Pedagogical Value of eTwinning projects , which I'll be running with my Belgian colleague Bart Verswijve l in the Learning Lab from February 28- March 9. This is the first time that I'm running such an event, and also the first time that a Croatian educator is doing it. Learning Events are short online courses aimed at improving teachers' skills and putting them in touch with other eTwinners. Learning events take place in a specifically designed platform called the Learning Lab . Our learning event is about technology, but technology that is used only as a means to achieve the learning goals set by the teacher and to develop students' 21st century skills.  As you can read in my bio, I'm an avid user of web 2.0 technology and have been using it in my classroom for quite some time now. I must admit, however, that at the beginning of my tech journey, ...