web2.0 for European teachers

[Taru Kekkonen]

There is a new project coming up:
A European Comenius-project called " [e-mail] – Learning community for Web 2.0 teaching" plans to set up a European community for teachers who are interested in integrating web 2.0 in classroom or distance teaching in school. The idea is to provide teachers with inspiration and motivation by providing interesting show cases, good practice examples, video tutorials, success stories of pilot projects and enabling communication with experts in a discussion forum. The community will focus on teachers who are beginners in implementing web 2.0 in classes.

The project is coordinated by Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Institute for Innovation in Learning) and it has six partners around Europe, Otavan Opisto (nettilukio) being one of them and me being the contact person at Otava.

The project will start end of 2009, the kick-off meeting is planned for October.

The idea and aims of the project sound very similar to sometu and I'm sure sometu-people will have a lot to share with the European teachers involved in the project. I also regard the project as a perfect opportunity for sometu to go international. So, let's go for it! :) I'll let you know as soon as I know more.

[Tsui-Shan Tu]

Thank you for the information! This project sounds great! I am really looking forward to knowing more about it. :)

[Timo Rainio]

Wonderfull. Let's hope that this project will be a good link between Sometu Finland and "Sometu World" alias [e-mail].

[Anne Rongas]

This is a great opportunity to create more contacts between teachers in the various countries. In my opinnion Le Mill would be one forum where we could arrange real co-operation. Wow-points to Otavan opisto!

[Tuomo Turja]

I feel this will be wonderful opening to get the spirit of learning community in the stairlight of education professionals!

[Patrizia]

May our national schools keep pace with the Web2.0-skilled teachers and get far better equipped with adequate ICT-Resources! Unfortunately I know the frustration caused by being unable to carry out lab activities in which I invested so much time and energy:-(
Anyway best wishes from Italy to everyone involved in the project, I' ll stay tuned!

[Patrizia]

Great! I succeeded in posting ... my Finnish is improving:-)

[Patrizia]

http://www.teacherportfolio.cambridgeesol.org Do you know this Teacher Portfolio? A tool to exchange information , "reflect and record your teaching past, present and future". I don't know if I'll ever use it, anyway I' ve registered:-)

[Kurt Linderoos]

Nice to meet on union level. I think the time is soon ready for my Personal EU dream.

[Taru Kekkonen]

It's been pretty quiet in this forum... but in the meanwhile the project has moved on. During the first months of the year the partners have been collecting good (and bad) practices, made literature reviews and interviewed teachers. At this phase the work is still carried out among the partners in a closed community but I do hope the work can be opened for public soon.

In the good practices we wanted to give the teachers a voice, to let them tell their own stories - how they've used social media (or web2.0) in their teaching, what has worked well and what hasn't worked at all, what do the pupils think about it all etc. Below you 'll find three stories from Finland (2 videos and 1 text). I hope I'll be able to share the stories from other partner countries with you soon, too.

Wiki - a simple tool to start with
On the video Aki Luostarinen, a psychology teacher describes how and why he has used wikis in teaching psychology in an upper secondary school

Blog - a window to a classroom
On this video Jukka Nikkilä, a class teachers tells about the blog of his small pupils - How and why

My Ning experiences in teaching English as a foreign language
In the text, Henriikka Laiho, an English teacher tells her story on using Ning in an English course at upper secondary school