Links With Schools in Other Countries

[John Simkin]

Education Secretary Charles Clarke has today urged all UK schools to build partnerships with other schools around the world, to help boost international understanding.

Under the Government’s new strategy, every UK school will be twinned with an overseas school within the next five years. In addition to increasing children’s understanding of the world, the intention is for schools to be able to exchange the latest ideas in education, offer educational support programmes to developing nations and maximise the contribution of education to the UK economy.

“Our vision is that the people of the UK should have the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to fulfil themselves, to live in and contribute effectively to a global society and to work in a competitive, global economy,” said Mr Clarke. “This begins with understanding the world in which we live, the values and cultures of different societies, and the ways in which we are increasingly dependent upon one another.”

The Department for Education and Skills is publishing ‘Putting the world back in world class education’, a report setting out the ways in which schools can work together, using a mixture of new technology, such as video conferencing, and more traditional methods, including penpal schemes.

A new website, ‘Global Gateway’ has also been set up to act as an international introductory agency for schools, with sections for teachers, students and local authorities.

http://www.globalgateway.org.uk/

[UlrikeSchuhFricke]

Sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe there then is some hope for my school to eventually find a British school which is interested in a partnership and an exchange. We have been looking for one for at least two years now. Most of the schools we sent letters to have not yet answered our letters or emails.

[Graham Davies]

Have a look at Section 14.3 (A classroom illustration of email in action) and Section 14.8 (Working with partner schools) of Module 1.5 at the ICT4LT site: http://www.ict4lt.org

You'll find some useful links and advice there.

[Caterina Gasparini]

The following is the site of the eTwinning initiative, which is part of the European Commission's eLearning programme:

http://www.etwinning.net/ww/en/pub/etwinning/index.htm

[John Simkin]

Sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe there then is some hope for my school to eventually find a British school which is interested in a partnership and an exchange. We have been looking for one for at least two years now. Most of the schools we sent letters to have not yet answered our letters or emails.

Let me know exactly what you are looking for and I will find a UK school for you.

[Juan Carlos]

The eTwinning Initiative is part of the European Commission's eLearning programme and is organised by European Schoolnet. There is a Central Support Service Helpdesk whose tasks are:

To set up regular chat sessions for live interaction with participating schools.

To help schools with concrete guidelines, tips, ideas, scenarios and eTwinning modules

To propose an extensive Frequently Asked Questions section from all the requests collected every day

To identify examples of successful projects to inspire current or future participants

To update schools on news from all European countries via an eTwinning newsletter

eTwinning Launching Conference will take place on January 2005 in Brussels.

[David Wilson]

I've been approached by a project dedicated to the promotion of foreign language learning by people with special educational needs. They want to link a group of 16-18 year olds in a British special school with a similar group in France for the purpose of exchanging photos, cards etc, but they have been unsuccessful so far in identifying anybody interested on the French side. Any suggestions? I've scoured the Web, but have come up with very little.

David Wilson

http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/