eTwinning: ‘Virtual’ European school partnerships come of age

The proportion of European schools participating in the European Commission’s eTwinning programme more than doubled in 2006, from 4% to over 8%, after just two years of operation. The eTwinning initiative promotes the creation of international ‘virtual’ school partnerships over the internet, and is available for free for schools across the continent. In recognition of these achievements, Ján Figel’, the Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture, and Youth, will be awarding prizes to six shining examples of eTwinning school partnerships at a prize-giving ceremony on 23 February in Brussels.

The eTwinning scheme was launched in January 2005 as the main action of the European Commission’s eLearning programme. The aims were two-fold: to encourage greater use of computers for communicating between schools, and in so doing, promote inter-cultural dialogue. The scheme differs from the European Commission’s other action programmes in the domain of education in that it does not give grants to participants.  Rather, it provides free access to a computing infrastructure, the eTwinning Portal, which facilitates the establishment of partnerships between schools across Europe. Schools are entirely free to decide on the type of cooperation they want: from short-term projects lasting a few weeks, to long term collaboration on joint curricula, for example. The subjects covered are also up to the participating schools. This freedom of action, combined with a minimum of administrative hurdles are the key characteristics of the scheme.

Ján Figel’, Commissioner in charge of Education & Training, said: “the eTwinning scheme can bring all corners of Europe to our children’s classrooms. By participating in eTwinning, school children get to appreciate other cultures and other languages, while sharpening their computer skills. In this way, eTwinning not only brings Europeans from all over the continent closer, it helps develop the kinds of skills that our increasingly ICT-dominated economy needs.”

Although the eLearning programme ended in 2006, the eTwinning action continues life as part of the new Lifelong Learning Programme 2007-2013. As a celebration of the success of the scheme, each year, prizes are awarded to the best eTwinning projects. With the number of schools registered for eTwinning doubling from 11 300 to 23 200 schools in 2006 alone and more than 8 000 schools already participating in a project, competition in this year’s awards ceremony is even more intense.

The six finalists for the top three prizes have been chosen from a total of 350 submissions by an independent panel of experts composed of representatives from the European Commission, the Pedagogical Advisory Group for eTwinning, the Central Support Service, and national Ministries of Education.

The six winners and six runners-up are from the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Spain.