 Hello, good afternoon everybody. My name is Diego Ojeda and I am part of the facilitation team of the MOOC Open Itwining on its second edition. First of all today we are thinking of a neighbor country and we would like to give a word of condolence and support to the British teaching community who are shocked today by the Manchester attack. Our solidarity and courage to all who have suffered this tragedy more closely. And having said that, welcome everybody to this live video chat organized by Aprende in Peth. Let me introduce, let me introduce our guest speakers today. Diego Rojas is a member of the Itwining National Support Service in Spain and also with us Paola Argrini who is an Italian Itwining Ambassador and an experienced Itwiner who is currently working here in Spain and has been and is already taking an active role in this MOOC as part of the facilitation team. Welcome and good afternoon Diego and Paola. Hello everybody. Good afternoon. Away from the camera, but with an important role too, there is, we have Yolanda and Julian from the facilitation team too. And who are ready to give a hand at any moment we need it. And also I would like to say hello to the team of INTEF who have organized and prepared this broadcasting. And hello to Maria and her team of Visión Líquida who give the technical support of this event. Welcome and good afternoon to everybody. And having said that, let's talk about the place where our dear projects are going to live for the next weeks or next months. We have been working with them, we have designed them, we have improved them, we have already have them almost ready and now we have to take them to life. And this place, this country where they are going to live for their life in schools is the Itwining Network. The Itwining Network, the biggest school system in Europe is a place with many possibilities for you and with many things perhaps have not been discussed in deepness during the MOOC. And now we'll have the opportunity to discuss and talk about them. Before going on, I would like also to remember, to remind you that there is a chat window just below the broadcasting window. You are watching us from the Directo INTEF site and you can use it to leave questions or comments live during the celebration of the video chat. The colleagues Yolanda and Julián basically will be making us taking these questions, these comments to the guest participants in the chat. We also remind you that this chat will be recorded and published on the MOOCs blog, so you can visit and revise it at any moment. Alright, and now to start Diego, I would like you to tell us something about those things, those aspects of Itwining we shouldn't miss in any way. I mean, what are the first steps I should take when I go for the first time into the real platform, not inside the MOOC, but now when I want to take my project to life? What are these steps? Okay, to start with the first important thing that you have to do is not to do something. I mean, just very important, just do not panic. Okay, Itwining offers you, offers teachers a lot of possibilities, not only for projects, also for networking, socializing, professional development, etc. So what you have to do is just calm down, relax, do not try to understand or to grasp everything at once. So step by step and enjoy the experience, that's all. Okay, so this is not something you have to do, but more an attitude you have to take when you're joining Itwining. And then about specific things, when you join Itwining, let me talk about some boring formal aspects of that. Itwining is based also on safety and security, and all the identities are checked by the national support services. So when you're registering Itwining, it's very important to use your real data, your real personal details, and also your school personal details. So please try to use email accounts that you actually use, because you are going to receive important notifications there. Just try to check that the email of your schools you are using in your registration actually work, and they are actually used by your headteachers, principals, administrative team, or whatever, be very cautious with that. So use real data, just try to put working accounts, because we are going to check it. So this is the very first important step. And now you have to get to know more people, and I think that Paola is quite more experienced than me and that. Okay Paola, so some more essential elements after registration. We have to make registration and take our personal details. But is there any hint, any tip you would give us to make our registration and our profile more attractive? Registering Itwining, you should take care of your profile just as you take care of your social profiles like in Facebook or in Twitter. Because there you can upload, you can show, you can post all the things you are important for your professional life. And it's very important that as Diego told you, that as inside the Itwining, all the people inside are certified, are verified teachers and schools. You have to show that you want to projects or in community, or in the groups that are inside Itwining. So it's important that you show what are your interests, what do you like to do, what do you like to do with your pupils at school. And so if you platform, surf around the people's profile, the other teachers, so you can just understand, looking at the others, how you can upload things, how can you update your profile so that other people making a project with you and your school, it's a good thing for them. And you can start searching people inside the platform, searching the people in the city or in the countries where you are interested in or people who are interested in the same thing you like to work with, or work with the same age of your pupils or any other interests you can do. Just think that it's a huge community of teachers, the biggest probably in the world. So you can find the inside Itwining who are willing to work with you and just take time, take your time, step by step and go inside to look for something that you like to do, that you like to work with these people and with your pupils in a cooperative way. That's very important. Once you are in, as we always say, Itwining, the problem is to stop to work with Itwining because generally you like that you get addicted to this kind of work. Okay, that's right. Thank you very much. And anyone more advice in relation to the finding partners for my project? Because I think this is one of the main concerns of people and not only that relates to our attractive profile, but something, how many partners are the best? Should I try and find the more the better or should I try and find just at the beginning one or two partners not to make our community too big? We're going to, from tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, it's going to be active sort of notice board on the MOOC on this extra week. We're going to have to allow people to advertise themselves and to make them know in this non-formal or this non-official context in the training of the MOOC. But do you think there is something applicants should know about this step in finding partners that can take the most out of our projects? Inside Itwining, there are two ideas and look at the other ideas. So you can find partners there. To admire it, it's very difficult to find partners there even it's possible because it's huge. You have to read thousands of posts published there. So the idea is to take the first step with a simple project, not with too many partners. Start, for example, looking at the kits. The kits are prepared to show you how to start a simple project with the shown all the things that you can adapt, of course, the kits. And you can choose the one that you like and find a partner who wants to choose the same kit, for example. Let's start about getting to know each other or something about exchange of mails or something very easy that you can start with and you can find partners. Finding partners is quite difficult as we say with the other ambassadors like in real life. So it's difficult to find reliable partners that work with you at the same pace. I would like to comment on that because Pauli is right. I mean, there are so many people that it's difficult just to go to the whole community, pick up somebody and he or she happens to be the partner you're looking for, the partner you need. This is very difficult. So that's what Paula was saying, that you have to find your partner in other spaces, in other environments. For example, you go to groups and then you will find a thousand hundreds of people, but they are all sharing a common point of interest, the topic of the group, or you register in a learning event or in a seminar, and then you find people and you contact them, you get to know them, you talk to them, or you find or you look for projects that are quite similar to the projects you want to do. And then you contact the people who have worked in these projects or you can join a MOOC made by the Spanish National Support Service and then find people working in the MOOC. So this way it's not so difficult to find a partner. But bearing in mind that it's not like going to the partner finder, putting some keywords and just find somebody. It's better to have some previous work and some previous, not work, some previous experiences with that people, with the people you are going to work with. And in general, as a general rule, if you want to start a project with somebody, before you actually start the project, before you register the project to be approved by the National Support Services, just try to negotiate, try to make a good exchange of emails between you and your partner, or partners if they are more than one, and try to have everything ready. Even if you can change anything once the project is approved, but from the very beginning you have to get to reach a concrete plan of action. So these are quite very useful tips to find your perfect partner. But in any case, there are so many people here that it's there. I mean, you can find it. We are all there. Okay. Thank you very much. So I think we already have, we are already going on with our project. We're already inside the screening. We have partners. Remember that we're going to devote this week of the MOOC to work with these using the hashtag TwinParner and using this notice board to advertise ourselves. And we will, but maybe it's been a very interesting discussion in the, especially in the Facebook group about some teachers, some people, some participants on the MOOC that found that they had an interesting project. They were engaged and their students too, but they found that they couldn't take advantage of all the sections of between them because they are not standard teachers. I mean, they don't work in a standard school with a principal and someone to sign the petitions. And I don't know if there is any possibility for them inside the screening or somewhere near the screening. Or if you can tell the masters of screening something that they can do something to help these community, these people who are somehow in the borders of the standard. Okay, first, as we said before at the beginning, safety, security is one of the main concerns in itwining. So to get, to be registered in itwining, you have to be a native teacher in a country belonging to the itwining program because you need a national support service to check your identity. That's a fact. So if you are not a teacher, a regular teacher in one of these countries, you won't be able to register in itwining. Okay, that's clear, that's sharp, but this does not mean that you cannot participate in itwining because there are other ways. Imagine if you have two teachers belonging to itwining, okay, two perfect teachers, two teachers, primary, secondary school, from France, Spain, Italy, whatever. Okay, from two itwining countries, they found a project and once they found a project, they have their own twin space. And in their own twin space, the twin space is like your classroom. Okay, we are all teachers, so we understand the idea quite well. The twin space is your classroom and in your classroom you can invite anybody you want. You can take an expert to your classroom to talk to your students. You can even take other students to your classroom to get in contact with your students. So when you have started a project and you have your twin space, you can invite teachers from other countries. And these teachers can invite their students. It's some kind, I wouldn't like to say a backdoor to itwining because it's widely used. In fact, I can think in some projects with a lot of success with European prices in itwining. And then if you went into the twin spaces you have countries from Africa, from Asia, from America, from many countries. In Spain we have had experiences with Latin America as well, inviting teachers from Chile, Mexico or Argentina to our twin spaces, and they have gone very well. So you can work. Precisely the MOOC is a very good space for these teachers to contact European teachers. So they can enter, they can get in contact and they can enter a project once it is founded. In any case, that's also not a warning but something to bear in mind for teachers. You are also responsible for the security of your classroom. So please, you have to know who you are inviting. You are inviting somebody to share space with your students. So you have to make sure that this person is really a teacher and that he has some students to invite and to work with yours. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I think the idea is clear. There is an interesting question here, whoever writes we are twinning live. And there is about some teachers who want to know if it is possible to work inside the twinning, not just for a project for children, for students, but to work in a project about methodologies. For example, there is a group of teachers who want to do some research or who want to take in common some questions about methodology. What do you recommend, they say, to create a project just between teachers or to make a group in the twin space? Okay. Basically a group is the best answer. So groups are designed to stay. It's not like a project where it will, I mean, a project is designed to be there for a year or two. A group is something more stable. A group is more open to more people joining. Okay, you can do it private. You can have a group with the people you want to, but also if you want to expand your group and enrich it, you can do it more easily in a group than in a project. So a group is the best answer. And even before you start a group, we strongly recommend to have a look at the already existing groups and see if there is a group with the same points of interest you have. And maybe instead of starting one, you can join some successful one. In fact, when you start a group, the starting of the group is not automatic. There is a request sent to the central support service and they check if there is a similar group going on and they advise you, okay, you better join that or it's okay. There is nothing running on with this profile. So the group is all yours. Go on and good luck. It depends on a group. In some cases, but with this special profile, something limited in time and limited in participation, okay, it might be more appropriate to start a project. Why not? The origin of the groups are projects before we had the groups. Teachers started projects like that with 100 to 200 teachers there. So that's why we created the groups. But if you want to make a group for one year, let's say for example for training teachers in between and you know that it's going to be 20 people and in September you are going to finish with that. Then maybe a project will be fine. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Diego. And now there's another question here that seems to have happened to someone. What happens, Paola, from your experience, what can you recommend to a teacher who finds that his or her project has been or has gone longer than expected and it's isn't finished when the holiday arrives. Is it better to hurry up and finish everything before going on holiday or do you think it's a good idea to leave a project unfinished and go on after the holiday, after summer holidays with it? One of the best things in it winning, there is no deadline, there is no structure and it's not like an Erasmus project. You have not to certify what you have done and so it's on you. It depends on the agreement among the partners. Generally, in my experience, you start an it winning project with a very simple basic like exchange Christmas cards. That's quite typical. Children, the pupils like the project so much and they are so involved. Teachers are so involved and you don't finish at June and you let the project go on till the next one. It depends on the school structures. Maybe you have another class on the next year so you have two interests of your group and all the school can be involved in this kind of project. In my experience, projects that start, they grow time and the... So you can go on the next year, there is no official deadline that you can go on as far as you want. Just you have to decide when you want to finish, when you want to apply for a label, for a quality label, for example, you have to decide a certain deadline to show what you have done. But there is no the freedom inside between something that like the teachers very much. Okay, thank you. Yes, if I can insist with that, flexibility is a key word in between them. You start a project but you never know when you are going to finish. It can be shorter or longer, you can do whatever you want, you can have an idea for a short project and then the project expands in time for a year or more and then you decide if you want to continue with the same project or it has changed so much that you close it and then start a similar one. Just summarizing, it's up to you. You decide it's your project and then you just talk to your partner and you decide what to do with it. Okay, and this may be in relation with another question that there is here because it's happened several times in different spaces of the MOOC and of the social spaces. People ask if there is any kind of official recognition for taking part in itwining. We know there is, in the MOOC there has been discussion about this and it's clear that there is a bond, a digital bond at the end for those people who have passed the evaluation, the assessment. But for taking part in itwining, do you think there are schools or teachers that can have any kind of official recognition? Okay, the main problem with that is that in itwining we are 42 countries and there must be about 67 kinds of official recognition in the 42 countries so it's crazy. There is not an official common recognition for all itwining. You have your certificates on the platform, you have your participation certificate, you have your quality label certificate if your project gets a quality label and you have your European price certificate also if your project gets an European price. For other kinds of certificates, I'm aware that some countries give official recognition for career credit for things like that Spain, for example, give some autonomous communities in Spain to that. The only thing we can say about that is talk to your NSS, write to your NSS because each country is a very specific situation and deals with that in a very specific way. So talk to them, talk to your NSS. Okay, all right, thank you. There is another question here, maybe a specific one but I think from your experience specifically Paola but maybe also Diego. They asked, do you think it is possible to create a room for video calls using the itwining platform? Is it possible to make specific video calls in the platform? It's possible, it's the new feature we have and we all are very happy with this. There is a, you can have a video chat inside your TwinSpace so you open your project, you can set a video chat, children participate and it's very important because you don't have to go to like Skype or the external one. You have inside your TwinSpace the tool that allows your classes and teachers and pupils to stay in contact through video conference and works quite well. Then you have also outside the TwinSpace in the itwining live you can organize a meeting, an online meeting with a video conference and you can there meet your colleagues or other college children it's just for teachers and you can have a meeting for example about your project or you can have a video call about something that you interest or you can follow live events with video conference from other itwinners so you can follow other conferences and so on. There are quite a lot of this live event with video call inside the platform that are only for, it's not for project but only for the teachers. In fact the video tool works very well and the only reason we are not doing this meeting, this hangout in this tool is that it's only accessible for itwinners for people registering itwining but it works quite well and it's very easy to manage and only a small question about the video conference in the TwinSpace so because the concepts of children and video conference in the same sentence used to make parents and principals feel panicked so the video conferences in the TwinSpace can only be started by teachers then they can take their students in the classroom and organize a collective video conference but students cannot start a video conference on their own from home without the surveillance of a teacher so the teacher must start this video conference. So I guess there is no need of special permissions of children to take part in these video conferences because they have already got the school permission to take part in each project there is no need for those. And also they cannot use it as a private communication means a communication, they cannot use it It's something you do in your classroom. That's fine. And talking about classrooms and computers and technology there is another question that is recurrent in some way. Do you think it's essential? Do we need computers in the classroom to create a project? Is it necessary to have computers and a good internet connection and everything working fine? Or do you know of even good projects that have been carried out in another way without digital environment? Do you think it's possible to do well projects in a non-digital context? I can tell you that my very first screening project was back in 2007 and we had I think just one computer in the whole school and we started a project with a school in London I was in Rome and they were studying Italian as a second language so we started to connect maybe once a month lots of drawings and envelopes and something very physical children loved it and then we took photos and we uploaded the photos into the platform and then we had to video chat with Skype and it was so successful that after three years we went to London with a class from Rome to visit our partners and the children were 10 years old so everything is possible. Of course if you don't work at home you have to do something at home with your computer but tablets works fine as well and I think they are improving something that also smartphones can be useful to connect to twin spaces and to the platform so everything is possible the core is not the technology it's about cooperation you can do as you want always with the paper and send postcards to your partners it's more important to have all your limits in mind when you are planning the project if you have in your school a poor broadband a poor internet connection if you don't have many computers just take this into account when you are planning the project and try to adapt to your circumstances as Paula said it started in 2005 and nowadays more than 10 years later I'm still using some projects for 2005 and 2006 as examples of group practice and any school nowadays has more better facilities better connection, more computers than any other school 10 years ago so just try to adapt even if it's not 100% digital school it's possibly much better than the ones started at the beginning and you have wonderful projects at the beginning made with very poor, what now we think very poor facilities or very poor resources there is another concern that many teachers have and make us know about situations they specifically ask if do you think it's a good environment if there are possibilities in training for students with special needs students who have different kinds of handicaps if you think it will be a good idea it will be rewarding for them to take part in the betweening projects there are lots of projects who includes children with special needs I think that yesterday I was at a meeting in Madrid where there was the presentation of some Erasmus project it was a very important project we used the betweening platform too that was for special children and then they are working now they are working with let's say normal schools and special education schools so it's possible there are projects about arts there are projects that are working together with other countries there are lots of things that children can do in my experience in Italian school there is no special school and all the children are integrated into the mainstream education there are not special classes or so on so I used to work in a school in Rome with a high percentage of children with even severe handicaps and they could do a lot of things going into the platform and working with their mates of other countries nothing is possible and it's a very good work with the inclusion of these children and this year is the year of inclusion in betweening so give them a chance, they can do it so definitely the answer is yes and we correct it if I may show you something, yes if I go for example who is that, sorry, I wanted to show you the partner finder if you go to the partner, oh I lost it, sorry if you go to the partner finder and just look for special education needs you will have more than 200 people with these words in their profiles if you look for SEN, S-E-N you will also have more than 200 people or if you go to the forums and write special education needs you will have more than 500 posts in the forums talking about projects with this dealing with this issue so you have a really wide range of opportunities with SEN pupils so definitely the answer is yes and you should try, you should try not only is it possible, but it is advisable there is one more question that I think it's very connected to the moment we are living in the MOOC which is about assessment we are involved in some way most of MOOC participants in some way are involved in assessment to peer any advice, is there any piece of advice for teachers who want to know how to assess between a project, is it better to do an individual assessment to assess them as school work normal standard school work or is it better to include the school community and to do a more different more alternative assessment what is your experience about that when Paula maybe you have both opinions about the topic you are online now Paula is gone she will come back sure it depends it depends on your objectives you have to assess many things it is advisable to assess your project from many different angles and one of the reasons to take some time and effort to assess is that time is saving for your next project and it will also make your next project more efficient first you have to assess the satisfaction of participants if teachers and students have been happy during their work in the project but you also have to assess the impact of the project and when you assess the impact of the project you have to go outside the project as well you have to go to the Itunin community you have to go to other teachers, to parents to families in general to the community around the school it depends on the scope of your project try to assess as much as possible because in some occasions you will get surprised at the real impact of the project I've seen many projects where families were not intended to get involved it was just a project with students and teachers, no families and that but then some teachers started to ask the families and they found out that parents were there the parents were interested in their children they were curious about what their children were doing they followed the project, they saw the project and the project had an impact on them so try to get out of the project and assess the project from the outside as well okay, okay Hey Paola, welcome back Any advice about assessment? What's your experience with the topic? Project assessment inside the twinning Welcome to start at the beginning when you plan, it's better if you have a look of what are the requirements for the evaluation of the project for your national support service for example, it's very important that we work together and that there is a real collaboration because at the end you have to show real collaboration among the groups of children so take care of this and the twinning project is just not in the room and do something and you work there in Madrid and you do something similar and then we upload our work it's something you have to create a new something new that you create together and that's very important starting from the beginning don't worry too much about evaluation because it's not something you have to get marks on this topic it's more related to work than to marks but you have to take care of doing your step together with your partners and plan the evaluation at the beginning so you have to know how your project is going and you have to assess on yourself the needs of an external evaluation but it's better for you you are going well you are going on yes, very so when we were talking about recognition we talked about quality labels which is a recognition that national support services give to some good projects that ask for this recognition the quality label is not a prize for very big or sophisticated or complex projects so it's not a prize it's a recognition for efficient projects from an educational point of view I mean it's a quality project in the twinning it's a project which works that's all we have some very simple, short projects which are really high quality so if you go from the beginning to this quality criteria and even if you know for sure that you are not going to apply for any label or for any prize, just forget that I'm not going to apply I don't want to apply for a quality label I don't care just try to have a read this criteria and try to follow them because this criteria will lead you to a project that actually works in your classroom with your students and this criteria will help you to achieve the educational objectives you are posting for your project independently as Paola said it's not a question of Marx okay, forget about that nobody is talking about Marx here about passing or failing this is not much between if I can say but these criteria are a great help this is what we intend to do with them okay, thank you it's clear the topic there is one more question, maybe the last one so far talks about or asks about the possibility of including physical exchanges I mean exchanges home to home inside an betweening project or inside the betweening context do you have experience in this is it possible to do student exchanges they are going to traveling I mean involving traveling children in schools or should they try another Erasmus possible, of course not budget only the problem is you have to pay on your own yeah, there is nobody involved basically, betweening has a very big advantage we have no money that means if there is no money there is no bureaucracy there is no deadline there is no quota of projects so inside betweening as such you are not going to get funds for mobilities what you have to do is to go for another kind of Erasmus activity like Key Action 2 or Key Action 1 for some job shadowing or whatever what happens is that if you are going, if your school is going for Key Action 2 for example the best way of planning, developing and closing a KEA2 action is using betweening that's for sure it's not an extra work it's a save of time and effort to develop all this Erasmus action inside betweening because it will help you to plan all the activities okay, from the very beginning it will help you to find partners it will help you to get ideas from other people it will help you to plan your project at the beginning and to plan your application for funding and then it will help you to develop the activity once the project is already approved and then you will have also a place to keep all the work you have done after the KEA2 project is done so you have planning, you have partner finding you have developing of the project and you have also visibility and sustainability of the project there so this is what we advise, go for betweening because it's more efficient in terms of effort and results but no, inside betweening as such there's no funding for a project okay, now we have the Move to Learn to Move initiative by the European Commission I remind everybody who is listening to us that for projects with students which will be 16 year old by the end of this year and half a quality label they apply for a quality label before the end of May they will have the chance to apply for some funding for the Learn to Move Move to Learn initiative which will give money to buy train tickets and some other help for students to move and go to visit their partners or wherever but this is an exception, it's happening this year we don't know if it will continue next year but now under this circumstances you have participated in an activity project with a quality label or will apply for the quality label in the next couple of weeks and your students will be 16 or older at the end of 2017 go for that and apply for the funding you will have it in the same form that your quality label application we'll put it on the net too, on the network and we'll give the information on Twitter and on the Facebook group too this is as much as we have so far we don't have more questions I don't know if there is anything you would like to add before leaving is there anything you think you wanted to say and I haven't given you the opportunity No, thank you very much for all your questions you helped a lot okay, thank you Paola, did you want to say anything? between the nerds I would like to remind the existence of the groups and there is a special group that is called Virgilio that is in Italian run by three Italian ambassadors and it's about the guides word, so we know that starting between them can be scary sometimes because there is so much to do that you can feel overwhelmed by the things you can do so we started this group and it's called Virgilio you can find the groups and they are to find some friends and some guides to help you in your first steps in betweening yesterday we reached the 6,000 between nerds, so it's quite a large group you can find everybody there not for the opportunity sorry for the bad quality of my audio and thanks for the help you did to us okay, well there is a last minute question there is a last one here I think it's going to be quick is just someone wonders if there is limit we said before that betweening is basically no limit but say how many betweening projects can you have in your school at the same time how many projects is it useful to have yeah, in the same school as many as you want maybe one for class one for groups or just one all together it depends on you it depends on the level one for level common sense is the limit common sense is the limit to remind at least what you are working in in a project or in the other just remind if you can remember the title and the topics you can go on you can go on if you get engaged in too many projects so many that you just can't manage them you will create frustration among your students so just use your common sense with not many of them and then try to spread the word of betweening in your school and go for more and more projects that's all there is no formal limits I guess it happens the same with the number of languages involved in projects I mean there is no limit in saying just two languages or three even if it's a language it's not being studied at the moment at school it's possible to have it involved yes to very young children that can draw there are a lot of projects with so young children for preschool children they don't study any language at all but they can communicate in the same way so no problem with this just communication with the community all right well I think it's time to leave too it's almost six o'clock in Spain, in Madrid and well, thank you very much I think we've had a nice time this afternoon with you and I hope it's been useful for anybody who has been following us or who can read and watch us later in the recorded version of this chat thank you very much and see you in the MOOC okay, goodbye bye