June 2010
Ibaialde News 18
schools work together and find out how similar or different we are. The name of our project is "So Far, So Near" and these four words say more than anything else. Our countries have different languages, cultures, customs, climates... well, the list might be endless, but although these differences are there, we have discovered we have many more things in common. Dear Ibaialde friends, The first thing our teachers did was the set up of a virtual classroom with Moodle Platform. There we were all We feel very proud of your invitation to write in your registered with a username and a password, then we wrote magazine about what we have been doing during the year and our personal profiles and soon we were able to start working what we think about it. Many of you may with a foreign colleague. not know what we are talking about, so we Some of the productions made during the year will start from the very beginning. The first exercise we did was to introduce ourselves to our peers. We It all sarted for us in a September morning wrote short and not so short when Mrs. Grzyb, our teacher of English, descriptions about ourselves: family, offered us to cooperate with some peers hobbies, home, ‌ and even some of us from Spain in a school project sponsored recorded some video productions that by the European Union through their were offered to everybody as models. Etwinning portal. When everybody had introduced, we started to write in the chat or send eWe and all our classmates really wanted to mails to our partners. Now we were writing in detail about participate in the E-twinning project, we thought it would be many interesting things such as school, hobbies, and our great fun. Now, when we look back, we can say that our countries. Soon we got closer than we expected at first. Some project has been a great idea! It has given us lot of fun and real friendships were born very quickly! knowledge. Of course, sometimes it's been hard, but the work has been really rewarding because we've learnt many new In our second unit we were talking about "a person we really things we would have never learned just with the general admire". Everyone made a composition about her/his hero, syllabus and the usual activities. who in many cases was our mom or granny. In the end of the unit we voted for a quality we considered the most important The goal of the project was to make the students of both -10-
June 2010
Ibaialde News 18
in life. Most of the students, Spanish and Polish, chose frank, good-natured and cheerful as the characteristics we most value in a person. It shows that we admire similar features and we are looking for them in our everyday lives. In just a few days the snowball effect was there. Many of us were chatting, writing emails, uploading photos to the blog, … and we were always practising our English and having fun. In this project there have been lots of activities, but for some of us the most important and then rewarding one has been online conversations via Skype. Firstly, there were huge problems with understanding, it was really stressful to try to understand what the other side was trying to say, but soon things got better and our last conversations ended successfully, with laughter. One of the many things we have learned thanks to the project has been that we should realise of the differences in accent we may face when we talk to people in English because they will probably have very different backgrounds, which means different accents, but we soon learned that if we make a simple effort to understand we will not have problems to communicate. Some other activities included presentations about our schools and teachers, traditions in our regions, but the best moment was at Christmas. We wished all the best for Christmas to our partners in Spain and prepared for them, and then posted, a nice and big box with cookies and some cards. Last April our common project was awarded the European Quality Label and will compete for Best European Project
it really sounds great! We wish we still keep in touch when the project ends. Your friends Marysia DOLEŻYCH Marcelina BIENIAS Leszek MARZĘCKI
Besides this we also made a video where we sang carols and told them about the way we celebrate Christmas in Poland. But we have also had the chance to show some other hobbies and talents. Many students have uploaded photos to the blog or participated in the "Photo contest". In March there was also a "Video-karaoke contest". Participants who wanted to develop their talents in the making of videos and taking photos have had these two very special moments. It was very nice to see the best videos, and then the "Award Ceremony" we celebrated live on both countries thanks to Skype. This activity with music showed that we have a similar taste in music and we value it as one of our bigger interests.
The Teachers in Warsaw
Then some partners started to have their own ideas, and that's how the Spanish-Polish- English Minidictionary was born. Finally, in May we have worked in pairs to create, through our own wiki, some common free projects. All these activities helped us to get on very well. Thanks to Moodle and all the connected essays and sub-projects we've improved our language skills. Also we have realised that, although we live in different countries, we have a lot in common. We have discovered eTwinning as a modern way of teaching, and we think it is fantastic. It integrates learning and having fun. We hope that in the future our nations will follow this way of developing tools which encourage cooperation among the different peoples of the countries. Don't you think
Mr. Baile Mrs. Grzyb Mr. Grzyb -11-