Involving the Community by Teacher Academy

Altinova Elementary School

2016-06-13 06:19:02 UTC

Our school was established in 1969 in the center of Artova.Today, continues its academic activities with 8 teachers and 127 students. We graduated our school the mayor of Artova. Also our district director and Deputy Directors of other school also are people who are trained in our discipline. a graduate of our school of our County Director of social services on us again. full day training is given in our school. constructivist approach and student-centered education our curriculum is organized. district, municipal, hospital, police station, social services, and we are in continuous cooperation with other schools. school, our neighbors, our parents consists of. we are in constant cooperation with the parents of the students and we have meetings at specific intervals. we are also on the PTA. students who graduated from our school, Imam hatip middle school or , if they wish altınova secondary school will be able to go.

Olgica, Serbia

olgicaspasojevic — 2016-06-13 06:47:39 UTC

We have a great colaboration with our local library. We colaborate on many interesting activities, especially for younger students.

Eleftheria Karagiorgou

kareri — 2016-06-13 07:04:46 UTC

Our school, the 7th Senior High School of Trikala, Greece, http://7lyk-trikal.tri.sch.gr/ collaborates regularly with the Municipality of Trikala in participating or co-organising events and workshops for the local community. The pics below are from the CodeGirls workshops organised by the American Embassy in Greece and the Municipality of Trikala in our school.

Maria Boukorou

2016-06-13 07:43:03 UTC

Our school, the 2nd Gymnasio of Almyros, Greece, collaborates effectively with the Municipality of Almyros in participating events (like theatrical performances/ music festivals) and a lot of workshops (for example: joint actions for cleaning the coast and planting of new trees in our city forest) for our local community.

Akay, TURKEY

2016-06-13 07:52:32 UTC

Our school offers education to children between the ages of 6-10. Our classes when processing, we attach importance to the new studies. We love children. They are our future..

Isabel Cachada

2016-06-13 08:08:38 UTC

Our school, Centro de Reabilitação Profissional de Gaia, offers education to adults. We have a great colaboration with the Mucicipality of Gaia, for example; joint actions to take care of the gardens of the city. Also all our students are training job in the community.

Martina Toso, Italy

tosomartina — 2016-06-13 08:37:46 UTC

Our school, in Marostica offers good collaboration in occasion of the Social Day. My class this year helped "Caritas" (a social charity organization) to raise food for poor families. Other classes helped a town group, "Compagnia delle Mura", to clean the walls around the town and the paths to the castles. My class also had two more "professional" collaborations: they designed a 3D object and then a professional came to school with the printer, showed how it works, and printed it. The second was a visit to a local company that makes plastic parts. After both experiences students prepared a report with Spark and we wrote a report in English as well. I will not add these reports for privacy reasons.

Neus, Mallorca

nmajoral — 2016-06-13 08:41:53 UTC

In the school I work with, some teachers have started working differently in the first grade. They have two school hors just dedicated to work with products. They work about fair trade and they sell products. There is an orchard too, in which students work, grow vegetables cook with solar cookers and sell their products.

Michaël

mickmasson — 2016-06-13 09:36:08 UTC

For a few years now I have been trying to build a repertoire with different parents' jobs in order to contact them when necessary.

Enrica Maragliano - Italy

2016-06-13 09:41:34 UTC

My school has many contacts with organizations and people who can help to support our project. At the end of the year I always organize a presentation to families but I never thought to organize a presentation to some experts. If I go on with my music and trigonometry idea, we can invite somebody working in the Opera House of the town to give his/her opinion. It must be only to judge or also (maybe another people) to help?

Ola Djurić

2016-06-13 10:34:02 UTC

My school is a Maritime Secondary Technical School. It's for students between 16 -20 years old. After graduating the school, the students get a technical diploma so they have to do their apprenticeships during their stay at school. They usually do it in local companies, some of them find jobs there later on. So that's some contact with local business.
We also had elderly people taking about what was life like during the Second World War, when doing "Generations at school" projects. I really like the idea of using guests as judges, to whom you present your results. It makes it more realistic

Reda

redaklimanskiene — 2016-06-13 10:47:04 UTC

For several years we have been having practice to involve our senior students into 'teaching' process, i.e. they become teachers for primary school students :) Our 12th Formers prepare for a lesson (e. g. European Day of Languages) and give a lesson to 4th Formers. Experience is considerable!

Elnette Lucas, France

elnettelucas — 2016-06-13 11:55:29 UTC

Our school is a professional school for students who have finished schooling and are going on to study for a minimum of two more years so they have chosen a career path. One of my classes is a Tourism group and we regularly network with locals in the tourism trade and the students go out on day trips or do work experience with professionals from the region, some of which have been collaborating with the school for years.

Vilija, Lithuania

vilija — 2016-06-13 11:56:15 UTC

Our school organizes lessons in places out of school. Here students meet with experts or they even participate in their activities. This year one my group had to prepare TV programs which we went to film in the real TV studio. Even the professional cameraman did it. It was great! We had only 15 minutes for every group. Students had to concentrate, do their best.

Drazena, Croatia

drazena_potocki — 2016-06-13 11:57:43 UTC

Regarding
other projects we have cooperated with a local florist, landowner, and the like.
In the context of the present project see local builders and craftsmen with wood

Vilija Rakstiene, Lithuania

vilija_rakstiene — 2016-06-13 12:03:03 UTC

Our gymnasium has a career training course. here students find out about different professions, their pros and cons and have the opportunity to visit various schools. Also we cooperate with some universities and high schools. Their representatives visit us and give the relevant information to our students. Our students have the opportunity to visit these universities. We participate in different competitions together with other schools. Also parents are invited to share about their professions.

Funda ,Turkey

fgulenser — 2016-06-13 12:05:33 UTC

Our school is involved in some projects organized by different communities and we have chance to collaborate with them.

Cornelia Melcu, Romania

corneliamelcu — 2016-06-13 12:07:12 UTC

My school is involved in many local, regional, national and international projects so we collaborate and cooperate with different community representants

Pavel, Lithuania

stefanovic_pavel — 2016-06-13 12:09:33 UTC

I and my college organize the IT competition for primary schools in town. One of the main prize for students (6-8 grades) is to have a lesson in the university. They have opportunity to be trained by professors, so for them it is very exciting. The students like to go outside of the school. Also, sometimes in the class are invited the specialists from different organization to talk about practical usage of on or other theoretical subject. In my opinion, the students also are tired from same teacher, so sometimes it is useful invite new persons, especially specialist of different organizations.

Adina Oancea, Romania

carmenadin7 — 2016-06-13 12:14:28 UTC

My school has some partnerships within the local area, the city hall and so on.
I, personally, am a volunteer in an association working with children in care homes and there we have career days and also we invited one of the main figures in Romania regarding Justice.

Loris, Italy

2016-06-13 12:41:24 UTC

There are many people that students could engage with. Since the main project is open source, there could be contacts with experts from the local Linux User Group and with some software developer and/or software house in town. Users of the application to be enhanced with a mobile interface are other students and teachers (some in Italy, some abroad). It would be nice to get in touch with them asking for advice and a feedback. When developing the API for the application, it could be useful to get in touch, through one of the mailing lists dedicated to the topic, with some experts of the field.

Alfonso, Italy

pistorechiara — 2016-06-13 12:45:30 UTC

In my school, I collavborate with local agencies such as COmune, Fablab, Banck. They all toghether stimulate, not only economically, our projects. We collaborate also with volunteer associacion for disability or hospitals

Marcela, Italy

2016-06-13 12:55:42 UTC

We collaborate with the Local Authority, with other schools from the UE and Italy. We'll take part in an eTwinning project and an IT project ( Hour of Code).

Francesca, Italy

2016-06-13 13:03:49 UTC

Connecting with community is a key strategy to develop the skills such as working together, motivating and helping one another specifically being respectful and tolerant and clearly understanding the way the world really is.it helps to learn how to face difficulties and solve them!!!

Anne-Sophie, France

annesophie_compiegne — 2016-06-13 13:06:38 UTC

My school is involved in quite a few partnerships that are linked with the PBL project I aim to experience in my classroom but the problem is language. I'm a foreign language teacher and I'm afraid I won't find any native speaker coming to school to work with my students.
Some students have their last year 4 weeks work placement abroad but it isn't part of the project I'll be working on. I think the outside partners we can have won't work directly with the pupils but will provide brochures or information via mails or phone.

Beata, Edinburgh College

bwerner — 2016-06-13 13:16:10 UTC

As part of the course, student cover Preparing to Work and Work Experience Units. They learn about various aspects of work in the UK including Self Employment and Entrepreneurship. I am planning to engage students in a project will involve them investigating local businesses created and run by people of various nationalities that came here to live in this country. Polish shops, Turkish hairdressers, Pakistani and Indian restaurants - to name a few.

Wafa Sboui , Lycée Haffouz Tunisia

wafasboui9 — 2016-06-13 13:16:38 UTC

Connectiing with other communaty is so important but it's so difficult in my City

Cristina, Italy

tata_pandina — 2016-06-13 13:33:43 UTC

Connecting school and outside community is very important for making students in front of real-world problems. According with my experience of secondary school teacher of math in a professional school for chef, we already collaborate with some restaurants to organize stages during the summer. However, I would like to involve some experts chefs and confectioners even during the year but, because of lack of time and money, it is not always possible even if it is a great opportunity of connection between school and real world.

Nikoudis Nikolaos/Greece

2016-06-13 13:39:49 UTC

Work Experience of seconday School teacher of chemistry

Ahmet düzen-turkey

ahmetduzen20011 — 2016-06-13 13:41:57 UTC

local organisations are suitable.

Anne Fischer, Berlin

techieteach3r — 2016-06-13 14:31:51 UTC

Being in Berlin, I have the opportunity to engage with many types of people in the community. Another plus (since the school I teach in is in English), is that many of the companies here in Berlin are English speaking. Below is a list of people I could engage with based on the city I live in and the contacts I have.

1. Politicians and the government. One of the advantages of living in a capital city is the access to politicians and the ability to visit political places. My husband has some political connections to MP from his home state which makes it a bit easier to organise someone coming to speak with my students. As I work in a private school, many parents also have political connections as well.

2. Medical connections. I know a few people who work in hospitals here in Berlin as well as having connection with parents who are doctors.

3. Media/Marketing. A few of my neighbours are in marketing and the film industry which could give me an advantage if my students are looking into advertising or film studies.

4. IT and start ups. Berlin is the capital for start ups in Central Europe and depending on what the topic is, my students could have access to anything from Maker Spaces to 3D printing.

5. Caterers could probably be organized through our catering company.

Litsa Glarou/Greece

seagullitsa — 2016-06-13 15:06:11 UTC

I often involve my community to my class. I have invited a doctor, a physiologist, an agriculturist, a firefighter to talk to my students about relevant subjects of their profession.
My school's neighbor is Fire Brigade. I had invited a firefighter to talk to my students about his job.

Federica Italy

federica_armani — 2016-06-13 15:10:12 UTC

Involve parents and the community in the learning processes is very important and useful in order to create connection, collaboration and motivate our students.
Sometimes it could be difficult, but Is important for improve pupils' engagement and awareness.

Snezhana/ Bulgaria

s_tzonkova — 2016-06-13 15:10:14 UTC

Giving children's work an audience is part of the process and the assessment. Unfortunately, it could be difficult sometimes due to certain restrictions or due to cultural attitudes.

Ioanna

2016-06-13 15:16:06 UTC

Very often involve people from the community with our students. Traffic policemen on road safety issues, firefighters for fire protection, writers for book presentations etc.

Petra

2016-06-13 15:21:14 UTC

I involve parents and I've learned they like to be involved depending on their profession. Doctors and policemen are all involved considering health and safety issues.

g_marilia_santos — 2016-06-13 15:28:23 UTC

Pasqua Aida, Italy.

aidapappalepore — 2016-06-13 15:33:14 UTC

There are a few organizations and professionals meaningfully working in my community and with my primary school. The Public Library, the Civic Museums, The Conservatorio "Umberto Giordano" and the "Fondazione Banca del Monte" are doing something unique in education in order to engaging pupils from disadvantaged areas. These organizations cooperate with teachers and promote important cultural events such as a "Book Festival", concert lessons, Art labs, guided visits to our historic centre.
My pupils and I could ask them to participate in a PBL process about describing our hometown and our environment as unique.

Evaggelia-Greece

evaggeliasariggoli — 2016-06-13 15:33:40 UTC

We have different kind of guests throughout the school year in my school.We often have musicians from the town conservatory ,who show the different musical instruments to the kids and explain everything about music.They sometimes accompany us to our celebrations.We also have a writer /poet once a year and they are writers of children's stories most of the times.

Raminta

ramke27 — 2016-06-13 15:49:19 UTC

Involving actual professionals shows that the activities are meaningful. Also, it could give students some topical advice

Cristina C. Italy

cristina_casanova — 2016-06-13 15:49:43 UTC

I teach in Genoa, so I have some opportunities to contact local players to organize meetings about economy with my students.
1. Local Politicians
2.International associations
3.Shipping companies (we're in Genoa)
4. Bing international companies
5. local production base smaller companies.

Nils

2016-06-13 15:50:20 UTC

We work together with local companies to help students in writing applications. Today we had road safety training with local policemen.

Martha/Greece

2016-06-13 15:55:56 UTC

I like to involve partners or audiences from outside of the classroom or even better outside of the school, but I'm not doing this as often as I want becouse of practical problems. I use to visit a factory with my students, to ask from them to have interviews outside of the classroom and make video with these interviews.

Adérito

cunhaala — 2016-06-13 16:43:41 UTC

.
I have contacts with local professionals.
Organizations and people who are involved with the school on a regular basis are more companies that are involved in internships.
Some neighbors from my school could be addressed by teachers or school students, but there is rarely positive responses. Most of our partners are further.

Irina Vasilescu

2016-06-13 16:51:31 UTC

We mainly involve organizations through parents. For example, we had some nice activities with a National Biology Institute, for two years in a row. Students enjoyed visiting labs, making experiments and observations

Vania (Italy)

2016-06-13 17:12:44 UTC

I don’t have contacts to or knowledge of networks of local professionals but I think that our school can contact them. The school where I teach now has no tech tools! It is in a disadvantaged area with lots students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. But I think a collaboration involving people from the community could help students and it might be very challenging.

Maud ( France)

2016-06-13 17:17:42 UTC

We have frequent contact with local professional through parents or local organization . There are numerous partnership with libraries and universities.

Ana Paula Barão

AnaESJS — 2016-06-13 17:27:31 UTC

The most successful way for us to involve parents is when we plan some activities: theatre, song contests, ending term parties, etc... Since we also teach professional course there is a connection with the community because we need places for students' internships.

g_marilia_santos — 2016-06-13 17:35:56 UTC

Marilia
My school is used to:
- getting involved with the local community: local companies, city hall, local professionals,
- contacting different
organisations outside the local area, and also former students after they have entered the world of work.

Chantal, France

querrienc — 2016-06-13 17:43:30 UTC

This is a pretty easy and common thing we do in my school since we have a vocational curriculum in three different professionnal areas. The English curriculum of course focuses on these professionnal fields which are:

- lanscape-gardening
- pet store selling skills
- services for people orientated towards the elderly, the disabled, children
Thus our school has developped a network of professionnals originating from these different professionnal fields: local landscaping companies, town environmental civil services, nursing homes, hostital ward, community and leisure centres, tourist information Boards, specialised institues for the disabled..
In addition our educational sytem is organised in modules and curriculum is divided in objectives taken from professional referentials, it is thus very handy to develop PBL activities

My experience

ivanalocicero80 — 2016-06-13 17:43:59 UTC

I have often worked in schools that have encouraged the relationship between near structures and school. In the secondary school degree they approaching, usually ,  partners related at the school itself : hotel hospitality ( restaurants, hotels , conference rooms ) , agriculture ( nurseries , farms , food industries ) , etc. etc.
Usually we organize visits and experiences in one day . It may happen that the experts come to school to do demonstrations . If the experts are prepared and appealing , usually they work well with students .It may happen that the parents or friends of students have experiences to share that can please the boys . These are welcome. Maybe artists or writers . Once we invited grandparents who told how people lived in Rome after the war . They were beautiful experiences and also guests have felt good.It may be interesting to invite representatives of other cultures to talk about their lives and their values , their history and their problems . Sharing , I think , comes mainly from the understanding of the other .

Saudade

saudaderoxo — 2016-06-13 17:45:02 UTC

In Kindergarten there is a constant concern to involve the school community and educational partners in the development of all projects.
We usually work with parents, town hall, parish councils, industry and local businesses, firefighters, health center, cultural associations, museums ... promoting this way, the knowledge of the world and personal and social training.

Todor S. Siomeonov

2016-06-13 17:49:16 UTC

I haven't used that approach in my PBL, but I have tried and invited English native speakers (that live in our town) to hold discussions with my English language learners. I let students moderate the discussion themselves. I have also organised visiting of the Bulgarian Parliament, when we were studying Parliamentarism (Legislative power) in our Philosophy classes. Students had to communicate with the administration, visit sessions of different deputy groups in the Parliament and plenary sessions in the assembly hall in order to answer the assigned questions for the unit.

I would like to integrate PBL and this particular approach of engaging partners from outside for the next school year, as it proves to be essential for the students to acquire skills like communication, responsibility, inquisitiveness, problem-solving skills, etc. and learn by example in a real life, or simulated environment and situations.

SP

2016-06-13 17:54:54 UTC

Even with my very specific topic - the Spanish Civil War and the Transición -, I have always found both academic and non-academic members of our community simply through personal networks and asking around.

In my students project about "Saving Water - Protecting Life" parents play a very important role, because they can share their knowledge with the working group of students that includes their kid and come to very interesting conclusions...but most important of it is the involvement of the family in their kids education with an effective participation.

vitormncosta — 2016-06-13 18:09:43 UTC

Efi Douloumi, Greece

douloumi — 2016-06-13 18:12:23 UTC

I often wanted to find collaboration partners for my projects outside the classroom but the greek educational system is not so open and modern. It is forbidden to anybody to come to school and talk to the students except from institutions which belongs to the ministry of education.

Alexandre Martins, Portugal.

zenplanet — 2016-06-13 18:18:05 UTC

In our primary school there is a constant concern to involve the school community and educational partners in the development of all projects.
We usually work with parents and parents association, town hall, industry and local businesses, firefighters, health center, cultural associations, museums ... promoting this way, the knowledge of the world and personal and social training. It's very important to envolve the surrounding structures in education.

Inès Rosado. Spain

2016-06-13 18:28:45 UTC

I like to involve partners from outside of the school. Nowadays I'm getting over two projects with Czech Republic and Italy . We have produced some videos and ebooks to share our traditions and the way we work.

Anne Marie,Ireland.

annemarie6 — 2016-06-13 19:05:03 UTC

We are lucky in our school that we have outside partners come in at various stages during the year. We have a local man who is an expert on birdwatching and origami. We have a lady who has helped us with our school garden and we also have people from the business who run junior enterprise classes. Sometimes if a parent has a particular talent they will share it with the class.

Cecilia Cantizano/Spain

maricecicanti — 2016-06-13 19:28:53 UTC

Thinking about if my contacts or knowledge of networks of local professionals, I´ve experienced working with some in my class and I am sure to get them on a regular basis: Amigos de las pardelas, the school parents association organizes art and sport activities,
My school is in a small town center, by the Town Hall, Post Office, library and shops where it is not difficult to find some collaboration as well as asking pupils about their families and friends who can be able to do or know certain things.
My last collaboration was with a Heriberto Cruz, a singer who has written seven songs inspired in the work of a local painter, Antonio Padrón, whose museum has collaborated with activities during a school trip. Children watched the paintings and listened to the songs, read them as poems and created new poems and paintings as well as learnt some of the songs. At the same time they learnt about local landscapes, animal, jobs, food, traditions... As part of an eTwinning project, (Colorful Songs) this was also happening in other schools around Europe.

Andrea Ullrich, Germany

MrsU — 2016-06-13 19:33:02 UTC

That we have to open our classrooms to the world is out of question to me; for doing that I’ve been engaged in eTwinning for 8 years now. Our projects give students an audience outside school, even outside the country.
I teach English, so my main goal, apart from developing soft skills, is teaching language skills. Reading the blogs and ideas provided in module 2, I am again back to questioning my work. I can’t involve a nearby university; there isn’t any. Involving experts or professionals of the local community is difficult as I want to develop language skills. I think that kind of approach is easier for projects run in your native language. Of course, somebody might suggest we could talk to people in town in English, but that is far from being authentic, isn’t it? So I will stick to the eTwinning community and share some results of our projects with the local community.
Lately I also use Twitter to disseminate our projects, or we participate in contests like “Europäischer Wettbewerb” or “Together in EXPO”. Students are always happy to see their work appreciated. Don�O%�{�W

Tine, DK

2016-06-13 19:36:19 UTC

I have used resources from local community in class or outside class: lokal museum, older people, local history archive and local companies.

Ivana Štiglec,Croatia

2016-06-13 19:55:15 UTC

Through our previous projects we established a very good relationship with our local community, which can be continued using PBL, e.g. local authorities, different NGOs, museums and galleries,Red Cross, City Tourist Board, Volunteering Centre,media, local businesses,etc.

Annalisa A.

isaese77 — 2016-06-13 20:02:38 UTC

This year I worked in a school that encourages relationships with associations and local companies to promove social skills. I'd like to have more contacts with other school's communities.

Maria Laura Mas

mlauramas75 — 2016-06-13 22:39:54 UTC

When I was reading the assignment I started to think about the difficulty to find someone that speaks English to come and work with students but then I realize that alumni could be of a great resource. I had once a parent coming and talked to students about his job (he is an actor) it worked quite well eventhough this father didnt speak much English. The production that came from the students afterwards here facinating

Margarida Almeida

2016-06-13 23:36:27 UTC

In my school we have a few collaborative work with a few institutions : city hall , municipal library , health center , larde elderly , music academy, etc.

We also have a good relationship with the parents' association. But our school would like to have contact with other europens schools.

José Neto

netodays — 2016-06-14 00:32:29 UTC

My students publish his work on blogs or sites available online, so their parents or someone from the community can see and comment our work, but this is absolutely rare, although it has already happened. My strategic partners were being the Lisbon Universities where my students desire to continue his studies. They would like to know them to make a more grounded choose, and the Universities are always open to students' visits because they need to respect his market. Lastly, my school is close to Lisbon, just 20 minutes by train ;)

Maria Cristina, Italy

mctofoni — 2016-06-14 06:11:22 UTC

I have never thought about this before. It is a difficult question.
I think I could contact my school alumni and ask them to be my audience and my helpers in a project. For istance I could ask them to introduce themselves, their school and what they think they will do in the next future in front of the class. In a further step they could be the audience while my students introduce themselves.
Anyway if I think to the works I have already done with my students, even though I was not working with PBL, I involved the community in some way. We did some Padlets and linked them to our schoolsite. Everyone could see them. I must say tha tmy students didn't care that much....
https://padlet.com/mctofoni/27kzcc426idk

https://padlet.com/mctofoni/ssj5deh387vo

Daniela, Italy

dani_barb — 2016-06-14 06:46:42 UTC

I teach in a hotel management school and my students have a lot of stages in hotels and restaurants.So doing they learn on the field. Also my school has many collaborations with local associations and companies.

Aneta Popiołek, Poland

2016-06-14 07:27:13 UTC

My school cooperate with the scientists from University of Wrocław so I can easily involve such scientists in the project

Sevi, Greece

2016-06-14 07:47:27 UTC

In Greek education system it is difficult to bring local professionals into the schools. What we mostly do is to visit local industries, watch their work and talk with them. Altrernatively the last years arm professionals visit high schools, or people from environmental organizations. In most cases our "neighbours" are local industries.

Vicky Archondi, Greece

vicky_archondi — 2016-06-14 08:26:31 UTC

The parents' association is always very eager to participate actively in every project we are delving into. What is more, in the last couple of years we have established a wonderful connection with the Junior High School in a nearby village and we all together embark on the implementation of cross-curricular projects

Thomas Michels, Germany

2016-06-14 08:35:38 UTC

In our school we have a collaboration with some compüanies like LPI or CISCO. I think it would be a good thing to aquire them in the beginning and the end of the project to engage the students.

Stathis Likidis, Greece

slikidis — 2016-06-14 08:36:11 UTC

The parents' association of our school is very willing to take part in every project that we are making. Even more, in the last couple of years we have become connected with a junior high school very close to us. It comprises of like-minded colleagues and enthusiastic children who adore making cross-curricular project with us.

Maria Anna Casoria

goli291174 — 2016-06-14 08:36:39 UTC

Italy
http://infovol.it/young/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=6&Itemid=2&lang=it
In Bozen some secondary schools take part to a free local project exchanging a nd improving languages among teenagers.

Violeta, Lithuania

2016-06-14 08:41:28 UTC

My school has a lot of partners. We collaborate with basic schools, colleges and universities. but students are mostly only introduced to new activities and do not really work together.

Serdal ŞEKER

2016-06-14 08:53:17 UTC

Our school has a lot of project partner not only in Turkey but also in European. We know that collaboration is essential to learn new things

Niki Greece

chrysuniki — 2016-06-14 09:04:05 UTC

I live on Tinos, an island of Cyclades, so it is not very easy for us to collaborate with everybody we want. What we have done, is that as a part of our environmental program concerning the exchange of traditional seeds we have exchanged seeds a) with people from the local community and b) we have collaborated with organisations such as "Pellitis" and "Archipelagos" which take action in this sector within a national range.

in the didactic work with University of Perugia, The geniodel forest, a organization that supports us in the island of Elba, GAIA an association of guides operaeil rufting, GoLabs

dagato — 2016-06-14 09:23:02 UTC

Lefteris Plavos, Greece

plavos_eleftherios — 2016-06-14 09:23:30 UTC

The Town Hall and some local representatives are usually supportive and willing to engage in our school's projects. Even more, in the last two years or so we have established a wonderful connection with like -minded colleagues and students in a Vocational high School nearby and we make unique cross-curricular projects.

dagato — 2016-06-14 09:23:50 UTC

Daniela Ambrosi
In the didactic work with University of Perugia, "The genius of the forest", a organization that supports us in the island of Elba, GAIA a guide association to operate the rufting, GoLabs

Claudia de Crescenzo

maestradisogni — 2016-06-14 09:35:33 UTC

I teach in a school characterised by a great deal in its efforts to establish contacts with people and with society. On many occasions students are involved in projects or activities with external partners, whether they be parents, organizations or istitutions.

If students stage a performance, then represent it in a local theatre; if they create an exhibition, parents are invited to watch the results.

This year students from one of my classes (aged 15-17) have been engaged in translation of some novels from english to italian. Their products will be published in a book by a local publisher and the money from sold copies will be used to enrich our scholastic library.

Valentina P., Macedonia

Nastavnickata — 2016-06-14 09:57:46 UTC

Cooperation and collaboration with local community is important part of the learning process. I live and work in Skopje, the capitol of Macedonia and it's not very hard to find willing businesses or institutions that want to work with us. My students are 12-15 years old, so it's more of a cooperation with the businesses and institutions and less collaboration. Still, I use my friends as connections to collaborate with Cinematography society, ICT learning centers, library, State University etc. where students work on tasks, presentations and research, but considering the age, it's mostly the basic level. We also collaborate with high schools.

I wrote more about this on my blog.

Peggy Stefanidou

pegstefan — 2016-06-14 09:58:36 UTC

i work in an upper secondary school (comprehensive) in Greece.
We sometimes visit local industries, the court, the public library..etc
We usally bring at school psychologists, social workers, volunteer blood doners, traffic policemen etc it depends on what exactly we want to teach to our students.
We are working also on eTwinning projects in order to promote european identity and collaboration

Vasiliki Psaridou

psaridou — 2016-06-14 10:08:12 UTC

The last few years our school is trying to establish a collaboration with the local community. The fifth grade every year visits the Mayor and discuss local and European issues. Further more, we have as a school an annual program with the local environmental group called PELITI that give us seeds and we grow our vegetables.

Višnja Vasiljević

nastavnicavisnja — 2016-06-14 10:09:29 UTC

As a History teacher, I have a very good collaboration with our town Museum. We have had many workshops together in school, and in the Museum, and a project about fishing craft where students learned how to wave a fishing net, with a sailing trip on a Danube at the end of the project. I also organised an exhibition of the antiques in our school where students brought their own antiques, exhibit them and the museum curators came to judge the best exhibit.

Anthi Iliopoulou

2016-06-14 10:41:17 UTC

I am a teacher of informatics and in our city there is a Technological Educational Institution( TEI Kavalas), that has a department for computer engineers. I think that a connection to this department will be very beneficial for my class projects. We already make an annual visit to a technological exchibition organized for this department.
In some cases our school has cooperated with psychologists and sociologists offering their advice and organising special events especially for kids with learning dissabilities or various other problems

Juanlusz

juanlusz — 2016-06-14 11:13:35 UTC

My students are adult learners, in many cases, professionals who engage with each other and with the school if necessary. I remember last year: we celebrated a day of workshops by students.

Our neighbours are students at the Conservatory of Music. We have contact with them and organize language and music activities together.

Local businesses who collaborate with us on a regular basis are travel agencies and restaurants.

As for E-twinning, not long ago it was only for primary and secondary schools. We coudn’t take part. I am going to find out if that has changed. I would like to engage my school with other schools around Europe.

Loredana Conte

loredanaconte14 — 2016-06-14 11:14:10 UTC

I teach French and I'm an etwinner too, then I use to engage with external communities. For a project about heathy food and habits I collaborated this year with COOP, a great supermarket . Last year we spoke about safety in internet and we engaged with police who explained to students how to be safe in Internet. I found my partners for projects in etwinning and with some of them I did more projects.

Massimo Soranzio

2016-06-14 11:18:47 UTC

Specifically for my subject, English, I am lucky enough to be able to work together with a mother-tongue teacher who's in class with me one hour a week, but over the years I have also organised drama workshops in English with a professional actor, for example, who makes students work in groups for 2 intensive two-hour sessions, that make English class really special. My school's drama group has to perform in public, so we get visits from professional actors, and professionals judge the kids' work (this year I'm proud to say we had excellent reviews!) Most project work in my school, not only based on Erasmus+ activities, is supported by the collaboration of local professionals, associations, libraries, archives, museums, local authorities, so I can say my colleagues and I, and our students, of course, have a lot of experience in involving the real world out of the school's walls and bringing it in.

Oana

galab75 — 2016-06-14 11:20:33 UTC

I work with British Council on various projects.

Alessia Conti

codingID — 2016-06-14 11:36:21 UTC

Our school is very active in the local community . The Mayor and the authorities every year dirt or classes and discuss local and European issues . Further more , we as a school of an annual program with the group of authorities that supports us and visit with specific lessons .

Barbara Trivello

2016-06-14 11:53:41 UTC

In my school pupils aged 4 and 5 work, together with those of another class, with elders of Università della Terza Età (Third Age University): Ceramic Lab. Together we manipulate clay and make beautiful objects.

Every spring 5 year-old chidren also visit a primary school: this year the project was about health and security. Local Firefighters showed different videos and explained how to prevent accidents.

Rosaria Decaro

rosaria_dec — 2016-06-14 12:24:10 UTC

My school is connected with the world and the community around it. It is a vocational school so the link with other figures coming from the real world is necessary.

ROSARIACALABRIA This year, I have partecipated with my pupils at an etwinning project.

2016-06-14 12:52:16 UTC

To communicate we have used the twinspace and we have also made visio-conference. Children were haooy to see their virtual classmates.

carla

2016-06-14 13:04:18 UTC

I haven't got much experience with practice involving the local community in my town. We are not a vocational school and everybody expect our students to learn from books and from Scholars, not from real world. However, this year the students aged 16 have just started a sort of internship in a summer camp where they look after children in English. I hope it will be a good practice to continue

Lucia

2016-06-14 13:07:11 UTC

teaching sciences, and in relation to my PBL project, I would involve the local natural park director and hopefully some curator from the Milano Natural History Museum (but this would be really though I am afraid)

Nathalie Scerri, Malta

nathaliescerri — 2016-06-14 13:20:09 UTC

In my case, Malta is such a small island, that I consider all of it as the school's community! Well, as a teacher I involve my students annually in an eTwinning project. That opens their views and ideas to a world, culture and experience beyond our small island. In the past two years, we have gone abroad to visit and meet our partner teachers and students, and we have also opened our school doors to participating teachers and students.

With respect to local participation, I can recall two incidences when external guests were involved in our project. In the project Be Smart, Don't Start, which dealt with the health issues caused by cigarettes, I remember asking a doctor (heart specialist) and a midwife to attend an eTwinning session, during which students asked any questions related to the subject. This session proved to be very educative.

During this year's project, entitled Colours M@tter, a photography competition was organised. Over 500 photos were submitted. Final judging was done by external guests, and who are professional in the art of photography.

The photo below shows Dr Aquilina explaining the health hazards cigarettes cause.

Raffaella Aiuppa Italy

2016-06-14 13:32:44 UTC

We involve outside communities in many different way. First of all, thanks to the Etwinning and other International projects we take part to, our students get in touch with students of other school commmunities, they share thoughts, different ways of thinking and habits and they widen their cultural horizons; they even have the chance of visiting the partners and live an great experience which will influence their lives.
Local experts (doctors, policemen, magistrates, psychologists, engineers, ) also work with us on a regular basis for a lot of projects which enrich students' curriculum and put them in contact wih the real world.

Patrizia Brion

patrizia_brion — 2016-06-14 13:45:36 UTC

WHICH PEOPLE FROM YOUR COMMUNITY YOU OR YOUR STUDENTS COULD ENGAGE WITH

The parents' association of our school is very willing to take part in every project that we are making.

Daniela Pagnini

daniela_pagnini — 2016-06-14 13:50:29 UTC

The last school year I contacted a local middle-company manager for a learning project. My students (16-17 aged) had to plan an imaginary Italian company operating in the export of the “espresso” in the North of Europe.

Firstly the manager met the students in the classroom, then they visited the firm. With his passion, the expert helped immediately the students take their learning from the school and apply it into the real world.

Their final work was presented during a school meeting to the firm’s partners, the school headmaster, other teachers and students.

In my school it is uneasy to have a contact with networks of local professionals in regular basis, because the companies sometimes consider it a low-value experience. On the other hand, when the students link to the real-world, I see them more engaged and highly motivated in their learning approach.

In fact I think that field experiences are really formative for the students, because they feel themselves as an integrated part of the society. Moreover, the real approach makes it possible for them an easier collocation in their future world of work.

A precious collaborative resource is the school alumni, that often supports my colleagues and the students during some learning activities.

Furthermore, volunteers, non-commercial entities and local public bodies often collaborate with my school to enhance social projects.

Ornella Lasaponara

veraornellasap — 2016-06-14 14:03:19 UTC

My school is located in a very lively environment . Among parents of pupils there are many organizers of sports and cultural associations , as well as volunteer and political commitment . The school building is framed on one side by the municipal soccer stadium and the other by the Conservatory of Music . The school has been working actively with theater directors , sports coaches and intellectuals of the territory .

2016-06-14 14:10:06 UTC

Local experts (doctors, policemen, magistrates, psychologists, engineers, ) work with us on a regular basis for a lot of projects which enrich students' curriculum and put them in contact wih the real world.
Involving parents and the community in the learning processes is very important and useful in order to create connection, collaboration and motivate our students.

Chiara Marchesi

pippicalzelunghe91 — 2016-06-14 14:17:12 UTC

I think that in our community the best person who can collaborate with school is a journalist because a lot of students (ages 14-17) are interested in how a newspaper works and what really do a journaist or a reporter. At the moment I'm woking for a newspaper too than it would be easy for me to organise a project about that. Another good idea is the local museum because museums nowadays are changing: they're becoming modern and the traditional visit is being trasformed in something much more interactive, then perfect for a group of students!

dagato — 2016-06-14 14:19:08 UTC

Daniela Ambrosi
In my school there are some teacher that use pbl metodology

Manuel Cabeça, Portugal

manuelcabeca — 2016-06-14 14:20:56 UTC

usually I invite people outside the class according to one criterion, the existence of people (family members or others) who can add something to the contents being worked (understanding, closeness, experiences).

For example, I teach history, so, as I teach themes of the contemporary world, latest themes, invite family members (parents, grandparents, uncles) to speak of their time, show images, texts, memories of how they lived time and tell stories; more direct examples, the Portuguese colonial war which were involved thousands and are many of them alive to tell a living story, his memories,

onother hand, depending on the content and availability and because I work in agricultural area, I like to invite people connected with this world, or other content, local artists (writers, painters, architects) who can help in the interpretation of our world,

They are usually the students themselves to identify these people and to develop the invitation process,

with some my regret, its a process I must develop more regular and sustained manner; It is very punctual; It will be important strengthen this component;

Regina

regina_duarte — 2016-06-14 14:26:28 UTC

Whilst teaching Portuguese in the UK, we engage frequently with the Portuguese community living here. We have scientists coming to classes to do some content language integrated. They are role models for our students, as they work in very challenging fields. It really is rocket science!
We also invite authors living here to go to classes. Maybe we can include professionals from other areas as well. Going to consider it for the Project.

Josie

2016-06-14 14:33:50 UTC

Because I work in a summer school which is held in a boarding school in the middle of the English countryside, there are not many options for people from the community for them to engage with. However, the other staff in the summer school, eg. caterers, sports staff, could be used as objective judges of students' work.

Dhurata, Albania.

2016-06-14 14:36:34 UTC

Usually I would like to invite influential people in the community as a writer, old teachers, doctors, journalists, parents, etc. Pupils were running the interesting questions and more concentrated. The presence of professionals in different fields makes fascinating lessons.

Maria Sorvillo

maria_sorvillo_rosaria — 2016-06-14 14:53:41 UTC

I am a support teacher and I work in a second class of primary school.During the year we collaborated on some project Etwinning.It was our first experience and I can say really positive, there was a climate of collaboration and cooperation, both students and between teachers.

Maria Sourgiadaki

msourgiad — 2016-06-14 15:12:32 UTC

My reflections, in my diary http://mypblcourse.blogspot.gr/2016/06/finding-collaboration-partners-outside.html

Ozgu Ozturk

ozguozturkk — 2016-06-14 15:20:00 UTC

We organize a week at the second term of each year and invite our graduated studnets to talk about their life and job today. They do some activities with our students.

Maria libera Di Florio

mliberadfl — 2016-06-14 15:21:51 UTC

We're achieving with students of European countries an eTwinning project in this year, the first experience was been more excting and engaging, but we can make better - it's important working together and communicate also between different age pupils. As regards the second area students have contacts to local professionals (doctors, psycologists, also writers or artists) for projects or associations for stage, as in Reform of Italian Education - Scuola-lavoro.These experiences enrich students and put them in direct contatct with real world.

Triantafyllia Syvaka/Greece

sivakatr — 2016-06-14 15:49:00 UTC

The last two years I work with my students on etwinning projects and it`s an exciting experience to collaborate with students and teachers from other countries. Furthermore, my school is open to invite people, we don`t hesitate in front of the bureaucracy to take the permission. We invite professionals to inform us and to help us to do our projects. As an example I can say that we invite specialists on making movies because we have a tradition in our school to make movies or video-clips. Our teachers are open-minded and our culture is cooperative.

Ann, Belgium

ann_teblick — 2016-06-14 15:51:42 UTC

From my diary:
We already have theatre people coming to present the plays students are going to watch or people coming for workshops, but this doesn't really form part of larger projects. Maybe there's some work to do. For Latin, getting e.g. a geologist to talk about the eruption of the Vesuvius is nice - but it is so much easier to get the geography teacher to spend some lessons on the topic. Hm. Philosophy offers more possibilities: a psychologist for the happiness-project (this is an idea I particularly like!), a journalist/writer for the introduction to essay-writing OR to review the essays in the end (oh my! stress for me!).

puccio_antonella — 2016-06-14 16:02:43 UTC

I don't ever work with my students on etwinning projects, but I think it's an exciting esperienze to collaborare with teachers and students from other country. Rally 15 years ago I and my

Vasiliki Dogani,Greece

2016-06-14 16:23:23 UTC

I work with my students with blendspace. Our school is traditional and we don;t use twitter account for lessons.

Vincenzo Giampaolo

giaenzo — 2016-06-14 16:33:03 UTC

I try to work using some social tools. The favourites student tool has been Pinterest. The learners have build a board with their art works.

AnaŽČ

anaznidarec — 2016-06-14 16:33:53 UTC

I would like to connect to other Universities to build up on some simultaneous classes!

Maria Grazia - Italy

mariagraziasassu — 2016-06-14 17:00:00 UTC

The school where I work from few years offers students a number of projects promoting collaboration with local companies and profess
ionals of the agricultural sector. They are of beekeeping courses with the Regional Agency for Development in Agriculture (LAORE - AGRIS), but also courses on pruning of trees, of viticulture and oil (all products that characterize the local economy where we live). Collaborate with industry local experts is absolutely important for students, puts them in close contact with the reality and develops in them the appropriate skills to enter the world of work.

Kristina Kaučić, Croatia

2016-06-14 17:08:10 UTC

Throughout my previous eTwinning projects we established some connections with our local community: school alumni, Red Cross, City Tourist Board, parents ...

Francesca, France

LaprofOcchipinti — 2016-06-14 17:26:45 UTC

In 2012, my students were involved in a E-Twuilling project with a Polish school. It was amazing because they had to introduce their city to the Polish students and everyone was responsible of a part of the project (photos, writing, creating etc)

Andreas Roßt, Germany

MrRosst — 2016-06-14 17:48:42 UTC

Collaborate with professionals outside school is rather hard for a language classroom unless you teach German as a second language to refugees in Germany, such as I do ;)
So when teaching illnesses and a visit to the doctor's I'm going to ask a nearby doctor to visit us in class or we simply visit the nearby hospital to learn words like "Notaufnahme" or "Operationssaal".
In the further course of teaching I'll try to implement partnerships with schools from other countries that also teach German as a second or foreign language and to collaborate with them on further topics but also to share experience and materials als well as knowledge and other tools for teaching. Etwinning is the perfect plattform for this. I got to know it only about 2 years ago and since then I have been a fan of this fantastic way/tool for collaboration.

Gandolfo Cascio

2016-06-14 17:59:11 UTC

During this school year I have done a project with my students using eTwinning. The project is called "Nice to meet you". it was a wonderful experience during which my students have collaborated with students from other schools. They prepared several presentations of the school, the classroom, the traditions and typical products of their country. I'd like to rework this project with my peers of course.

Inma García

inmagarma — 2016-06-14 18:29:43 UTC

Hi everyone! My school is sited in a neighbourhood of the city of Cartagena. The community around the school (shops, parents, different professionals) is quite helpful and they visit us at school or let the kids visiting them with an educative purpose, but it mainly happens in Enfant education and first levels of Primary.

We are also in touch with a school in Nottingham and we send pictures, works, letters or videos to each other. Kids are looking forward to have and give news to their English peers. This exchange is not by etwinning but because a friendship between their teacher and me. We’ve been sharing experiences for two scholar years, We also had the visit of a group of Erasmus+ students from different nationalities, the kids were very amazed with them. I actually feel the need of going beyond with this kind of experiences as a way to fulfill more deeply my students learning, communication and understanding of the world.

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Luigi Alterani

Italianteacher — 2016-06-14 18:47:19 UTC

I teach in a vocational school, so our students are often in contact with professionals from various fields: mechanical, electrical, electronic, ITC, fashion. We are also open to all organizations in the area that we often host. For example, this year I have joined, in partnership with an association that deals with dog training an care, a project which was intended to make the students aware of the job opportunities related to the dog world as well as to sensitize them on the importance of the dog as a family member and as a citizen introduced in our society.

Alina Popa _ Romania

popalina21 — 2016-06-14 18:50:06 UTC

I teach technological disciplines so it is easy fo me to engage in practical doing projects. I think by doing and sharing the responsabilities are more accent , more due,more serious taken. In this case we can share our work, and can see others experiences in the same subject. eTwinnings are very very instructing and collaborative and appealls to a lot of skills that we want to develop in our students.

elena italia

emaccari — 2016-06-14 19:01:37 UTC

my students organized and then partecipated ina a project for the whole school called "donate your time" so they collaborated with various local associations (croce rossa, Aido, kids' help in homework, ricycling, single mother's help....) and then the associations representatives came into the school to give suggestions and feedbacks...We also worked on aproject to rescue a valley and made several works (projects on how to use it, handcraft works to collect money to realize the project, a show with poems and novels created by the students) and then invited the town administrators and parents to let them see and collaborate to the project

Nadya/Bulgaria

innovator68 — 2016-06-14 19:02:54 UTC

I have done some eTwinning projects with my students, so they have a chance to share their ideas with peers from different schools and they have successfully collaborated. They not only practice language skills but also they improve their IT skills.

Reyhan Gunes~ Turkey

gunesreyhan — 2016-06-14 19:32:28 UTC

I have contacts for calling local expert for my PBL and invited a programmer for my eTwinning project to talk about what the programmer does. An IT and catering company works for our school but I didn't think of getting help from them. That will a good idea for the next time. And there exits
neighbouring some govermental firms that may serve as a potential expert source. Furthermore the students have their parents and their neighbours can help as the outsite experts.

We had a project on jobs and success stories last year and we contacted our school's alumni and 9 different jobs were presented by the graduates of our school.We visited their working environment and at the end our students prepared an e-book and published it.

duygu_efe_turk — 2016-06-14 20:01:33 UTC

This was a good opportunity for the students to engage,explain and eloborate.

Luisa De Rosa

2016-06-14 20:35:36 UTC

The school where I teach is often opens to the territory and relies on the contribution of local social and cultural associations
http://www.scuolaindiretta.it/index.php
https://www.facebook.com/Polo.lettura/

Elena Balestrieri (Italy)

elena_balestrieri — 2016-06-14 20:46:30 UTC

The project Studenti-Ciceroni was meant to produce a multimedia brochure of the historical town of Nardò, on the south-east coast of the Apulia region. Students used the local library and the guide of its director. The students also had some interviews with an expert in Cultural heritage and communication from the town university, and with the owners of the old mansions included in the research, collecting material and data on the spot.

Iliyana, Bulgaria:

2016-06-14 20:50:03 UTC

I was a project coordinator of my school in Comenius multilateral project and our school really connected professionals from the community to really engage students with different activities. One of them was to visit the local restaurant and to make and record a traditional recipe for the project video film. In other activity students visited old women in a nearby village to learn how to make “survachka” for the presentation about Christmas tradition which we then put into an amazing presentation together with other school-partners.

Rosa Crispino

2016-06-14 20:56:08 UTC

My school is involved in an Erasmus+ project, so the children collaborate with other foreign students. It's the first experience for us and I have to say, as coordinator that it's very addictive. Furthermore we collaborate with the local library and we have also the collaboration of some parents and grandparents that bring in the school their experiences and memories. Every year the students of fifth and last class meet and organise some activities together with the students of middle classes. Also the children of last year of kindergarden meet the children of the first year of primary school and make some common activities

Pefkoula Stagia

pstagia — 2016-06-14 20:59:19 UTC

In Greece we have a lot of museums, both indoors and outdoors (archaological, folklore, modern art etc.) so one of my very best partners out of the classroom are museum educators. They are both educators and experts on a certain topic and that makes them ideal partners in the learning process, especially when we come to PBL, because they mostly adopt PBL methodology in their work.

pstagia — 2016-06-14 20:59:25 UTC

Barbara Licciulli

barbarali — 2016-06-14 21:06:51 UTC

In my school there are various collaborations but targeted to particular experiences: programmers for coding, parents to explain recipes or drama activities, police, first aid. But there are only experiences a lesson.

Amelia De Chiara

amelia_dechiara — 2016-06-14 21:14:54 UTC

My school collaborates with social agencies such as Comune, parishes, Polizia and Carabinieri, or local social and cultural associations. We also involve experts in our activities such as psychologist, journalist, engineer and so on. The school is connected to others schools of our neighbours in different local networks, it is also involved in eTwinning projects and has been enrolled for the first Erasmus+ project.
Periodically, our activities are shown to the community in “Open Day” events, in which the students and the teachers present their work.
The last school project that has involved students’ families, local authorities, students and teacher is our vegetables garden.

In the historical context, you can create a synergistic collaboration with the local comfy and with the offices of the municipality where is the high school for the study of contemporary history of the place. Students can play the role of historical research, dividing the work in specific areas and using the local historical material made available by partners outside the school. The work will be presented to all students.

2016-06-14 21:17:07 UTC

Maria Antonina

puccio_antonella — 2016-06-14 21:18:07 UTC

I don't ever work with my students on etwinning PROJECT, but I think it's an exciting esperience to collaborate with students and teachers from other countries. Really 15 years ago I and my colleagues did a cultural interchange with a primary school of Malta. It was a positive esperience. Must be open - mind and work in team.

Gülden Bayrak

guldenbayrak1984 — 2016-06-14 21:55:56 UTC

I have been conducting etwinning projects for more than two years now and I try to involve most of my students actively on those projects.Once we had to prepare a traditional food to be published on our multicultural school magazine and got help from two volunteer moms and made them part of the project.We prepared,cooked and served the food together at school.It was great fun.Sometimes writers,psychologists,firefighters or experts of municipalities come and visit schools every year but not as part of projects.This is a great idea and may be used for active collaboration for the new projects.Sharing responsibilities and engaging together would definitely increase the quality of projects.I have an environment project in mind for the next school year and I can collaborate with the department of cleaning at our district’s municipality and so on..The more PBL, the more concrete and collaborative ,real-life based projects...

Andrea Marri, Italy

noxruit — 2016-06-15 07:05:17 UTC

For my PBL project based on environmental impact of school mobility my students could get in touch with:
- local university
- township authorities
- school suppliers

Virginia

viralber — 2016-06-15 07:42:13 UTC

My school is a leader of a network of 18 school about teacher training project on teaching with technology; my institution has a patnership with the Castelli foundation , an association of local companies helps us in the funding of some projects such as the restructuring of the automation laboratory

or the availability of internships for students who participate in our projects Erasmus +

viralber — 2016-06-15 07:42:18 UTC

Sundari Vijaybabu

h_d_sundari — 2016-06-15 08:50:48 UTC

At the end of the course, it will result in designed a catalyst projects in which standards that are benchmark are set for students enhancement.

While student are enjoying themselves simultaneously they are learning responsibilities, authorities and this is how they would change the world they want to be in.”

Students get the opportunity to work with latest technology and to be in contact with the latest technology.

Maria João Carvalho

carvalho1968 — 2016-06-15 10:02:48 UTC

This year my 7th grade class developed a social solidarity campaign at our school to help a local organization that supports the homeless and families facing financial difficulties. The purpose of the campaign was to collect food and clothing.
Students made posters, flyers and gave speeches to their schoolmates in order to divulge and promote the campaign.
The organization came to our school and gave a presentation on their field work and the importance of solidarity and voluntary work for the community.
On a Saturday our students helped them prepare the food they would distribute among the homeless.
This project was a wonderful experience. Students realized that life is a harsh reality for some people and if we all get together and make the effort we can help those in need and make the difference.

Sónia

sonia_barbosa — 2016-06-15 10:20:26 UTC

My question is:
What amount of money we can do with the waste from our beach?
Possible partners:
City Camera
Company Garbage Deposit
Environment Association
Recycling company
Parents
School

Margarida Almeida

2016-06-15 10:43:45 UTC

It is not easy to envolve the comunity and parents. In my school we have little activities where they can act with community. For instance students made poetry and they recited in a nursing home.

2016-06-15 11:32:04 UTC

Raül Pegueroles

elpuentedetito — 2016-06-15 11:36:00 UTC

We have lots partners from outside of the school but maybe the challenge would be the students to take on the roles of connecting with the community also. This is a great opportunity to teach students how to communicate in a professional manner.An example of this outside of the classroom partners in my case could be:

Citilab Edutec / Aules d'Estudi Municipals Citilab where they help our students with programming, 3d printing, researching...
EOI Cornellà
School alumni, my colleges, specially the older ones, could give support in identifying the right people.
The Seminary of Physical Education works with local sports organisations like swimming pools and tennis clubs.
My high school also promote cultural exchanges with other schools in Holland, France and Germany.
We have also external informative talks by the police about internet safety, by the public health department about cigarettes, sexuality...
We also lend our auditorium and invite community members to take part in events, such as end-of-project celebrations and exhibitions of learning, dancing classes, theatre acts...
We make active collaboration with schools, day of the maths, Olympic games, English little helpers...

Irene Confalone-Italy

2016-06-15 11:54:03 UTC

Last year I was the responsable teacher of a multilateral project registered on eTwinning platform.We managed an amazing dinner for our students and 60 people coming from 9 different european countries.It was a huge party with the cooperation of the whole town. Lord mayor, headteacher,local press and parents were involved in the party. It has been the result of the collaboration of six months work.

Spasija Neshkoska Cuculeska

2016-06-15 12:03:28 UTC

Our school signs Memorandums for cooperation with different organizations and companies from the NGO and the business sector. We also sign memorandums with partner schools whether it is a mobility, virtual project or bilateral partnership in question. Experts visit quite often and give lectures, share personal experiences or discuss subject topics with students. They also partner up in different real-world or fictional projects. Our students visit various entities to job shadow or other. The Municipality and the Mayor himself are closely included in the work of schools and have an ‘open door’ policy as well.

Dimitra kouskoumpekou

dimitrakous — 2016-06-15 12:21:52 UTC

Each member of community that may be of different background contribute by sharing experiences, customs etc from their country. Furthermore, students can connect with other students from around the world

Alessandro Ruffino/Italy

2016-06-15 12:50:58 UTC

I teach in a vocational school so it’s necessary to have contacts with different local enterprises that they collaborate with us to build the competencies requested to students! Also we keep contacts with low schools of local area to orientate their pupils so as with university or job counsellors to orientate our students to make their choice. In add we collaborate with local authorities and some training agencies to face some problems regarding our students such as drop out, neet, special needs, etc…

Mariangela - Italy

2016-06-15 12:53:09 UTC

I believe that involving the local community is a plus for eTwinning projects and PBL because students feel their work is really meaningful and a real task.
In my experience we involved the local community for specific activities connected to projects, e.g. a Chemical Company or some shops for interviews or a local Senior Residence to share activities on the eTwinning projects’ topic. This is not, however, a regular involvement and it would be a good idea to plan it on a regular basis. A tip I got from this course is thinking about the school alumni – I think I will try it starting from eTwinning alumni.

Ingrida

2016-06-15 13:16:28 UTC

In our school 10% of the curricular teacher has to organize differently, meaning teach lessons out of school. So, mainly we visit some interesting places like museums, national parks, business companies, etc. also we do shadowing in the workplaces. All activities are related to the topic and the lesson has all its stages. Some professionals come to school to give some lessons as well. So, I could say that we have very strong relations with our local communities, different organizations and companies and we are lucky that they are willing to help to make our learning/teaching process different. -

Mario,

marxerri — 2016-06-15 13:34:52 UTC

Living in a very small community quite isolated to as it is a small island, I consider the involvement of outsiders a fundamental. In my area of Computing, occasionally I asked old students, who are now graduates and successfully working in engineering and programming fields to pay visit or to connect online. Students really appreciated. However these are one-offs. At times school organizes visits too outside school eg. to university. This year as part of the eTwinning project I am involved in I took participants to an Atmospheric research Group . It proved to be a very helpful experience.

Chiara

ch_ferronato — 2016-06-15 13:52:22 UTC

I strongly believe that involving the "real world" at school is extremely important.

For this reason I've chosen a wiki where to post all my children's work and where I share many activities with them and with everyone is willing to follow us.

This year an important local company gave us 7 iPads!

Antonia,

chanja — 2016-06-15 13:56:25 UTC

Before stepping into the eTwinning world involving another European school in a PBL project, I would first like to try a PBL project within our local community and learn about the pitfalls and mistakes before presenting a project on a European level.
Although I am teaching at a vocational school where there are plenty of opportunities to get the local community involved, I think we don’t do this within a PBL learning structure. Most of the time the teachers structure the project in such a way that students are not in control of the process but follow the path given.
We do have a cooking project representing the different cultural backgrounds of our students. The students prepare dishes from their culture and sell these on a school market. They decorate their own stand and show artefacts from the represented countries.
Family members and people from the local community are invited to have a look and taste the food. Put this means that the outside world is not really involved in the shaping of the product. Well, that is not entirely true as a lot of the recipes used for the cooking come from outside experts; the family members. But still.

The school could reshape the project by inviting local restaurants (presentation, recipes), grocery stores (product information), marketing offices (promotion), elderly home (judges), accountant office (budgeting) etc. to get a more PBL project.

Katerina Kostaki, Greece

katkos2003 — 2016-06-15 14:22:14 UTC

I think that the real world connection facilitates students with an audience that they need in order to present, evaluate, elaborate their work. In my school we always have this in mind and we try to invite real world professionals in all subject areas. For instance, this year we invited a director for the drama club, an author for the library club, a musician for the choir, a graffiti artist for the etwinning project, an engineer for the technology class, etc. When it is not possible these professionals to come to our school, we visit them in their workplaces.

Željka, Croatia

2016-06-15 14:34:59 UTC

I work in a small place, we often invite "real world" in our classrooms. Doctors, psychologist, police officers, our retired teachers, poets, actors, athletes. But we are always looking for new people to bring in and to go to.

Natalja Švaibovič, Lithuania

2016-06-15 14:39:48 UTC

On the first week of the February we always organize “Safer internet week” events in the school. On this week, we always talking about safety online, about computers security, etc. Also, one of the event is, to invite a person from outside of class to talk about safety. Last year we have a person from Microsoft. He talk a lot of about safety in a Facebook. It is very useful to invite person from outside of the school and if this person is from well know organization it will be like a double effect. In our country we have a website “Who needs that?”, where you can find organization and persons which can come to the school to make a presentation for students. The themes are very different: IT, geography, technologies, etc.

Catello de Sinno -Italy I am an eTwinning member in my school. At the core of eTwinning's pedagogy stands the PBL approach. Teachers from all over Europe can use this course community of learners to find like-minded colleagues and easily find project partners and organize joint projects. As well students can share experiences, knowledge, culture. Each sort of collaboration with actors outside of the classroom prepare students well for the future workplace.

2016-06-15 14:53:20 UTC

Teaching daily

IovanValeriu — 2016-06-15 15:04:45 UTC

It becomes necessary and study outside school hours, a survey relaxing and intriguing ...Iovan

Pauline Griffin

paulinegrffn99 — 2016-06-15 15:05:58 UTC

I totally agree with getting the community involved. First of all i don't have all the answers and my students deserve the best ie. the voice of an expert. i have experience of many state run initiatives here in ireland which i have seen work wonderfully well especially in terms of motivation and self-esteem. I hadn't really thought of it at t amore local level until well ..now and yeah there are definately a few possibilities. Parents can be a huge and often under-used resource. There's an old folks home and a factory near-by. Involvemnt in your community is a life-skill , a verye important one. kI suppose as a teacher i could do more to engage my students with the communitythey are growing up in

Next year I'll take part to Etwinning whit my classroom. But until today we have involved many people. For example: 1) a biologist who students had to explains results of their experiments 2) a rugby player, a major and a youtuber who students had to interview 3) an agronomist whereby the students had to implement your own vegetable garden.

2016-06-15 15:13:37 UTC

Simona, Italy

Catello de Sinno -Italy- I am an eTwinning member in my school. At the core of eTwinning's pedagogy stands the PBL approach. Teachers from all over Europe can use this course community of learners to find like-minded colleagues and easily find project partners and organize joint projects. As well students can share experiences, knowledge, culture. Each sort of collaboration with actors outside of the classroom prepare students well for the future workplace.

2016-06-15 15:16:13 UTC

Nicoletta

2016-06-15 15:29:29 UTC

A few years in my school we enjoy the project 'fruit at school'. Every week, an association of local farmers, brings to children fresh fruit to consume during the middle breack. At the year-end we organize a meeting where teachers, parents and students meet to talk about correct eating habit.

Anna Marisa, Italy

2016-06-15 15:30:26 UTC

I think that involve external local professional add a value on education and teaching. Real-world comes in classroom and students can be supported and enriched from this meeting. School “must” open its door to host local professionals, companies or sports organizations so the learning has a sense.

Maria Teresa / Italy

teresarughi — 2016-06-15 15:32:08 UTC

Working on etwinning projects is a good starting point to let students practise some necessary skills like collaboration. The exchange with students from other countries enhances the opportunity to compare their abilities with those of their partners: good communication, responsibility, use of ICT to say but a few. It represents the first step to approach PBL in its true meaning: real context for real activities.This year in our project all school-partners sent to their local administrations suggestions to help refugees and asylum seekers. Not much, but a positive example of active citizenship and cooperation.

Georgia Alexouda, Greece

alexouda — 2016-06-15 15:39:00 UTC

In my opinion, it is very important for every school to be open to the community. I have organized a day, where professionals presented their profession to our students in order to help them to make decisions about their careers. Also I collaborate with the university in order to implement new teaching methods. Moreover, our school alumnus are very organized and we are in touch with them. Furthermore, we have collaborated with many other schools. All this collaborations increased the interest of our students and motivated them. Now I try to design a collaboration with an advisory station.

Silvia - Italy

laprofsilvia — 2016-06-15 15:45:46 UTC

Last year my class took part in 2 e Twinning projects. This has not only developed in my students a sense of belonging to the European Community but, study with their peers in Europe and try to achieve together a project has really motivated them.

Next school year, I will be working in a new school. some of my ex colleagues and I would like to still work together .. just on the exhibition about the Constitution or about the Divine Comedy .. We'd like to create a traveling exibition, in collaboration with the associations present in our towns.

Usually Italians pupils from different schools meet at sports meetings and compete against each other. The opportunities to build something together are harder .. We would like to try!

Lucilla

2016-06-15 16:02:32 UTC

in my opinion, it's important involve the community because there is a lot of richness and professionists that we can contact, a good school and then a good teacher has to cure the relationships with the territory. i'm an italian literature teacher, this year we have involved a local publishing house in order to learn how a book or an e-book is created. The professionist came to school and talked about his job , we wrote a serie of questions. A month later we went to his office, we tried to do things such as cure the editing of a text or the graphic of a cover.

Helena Paixão

helenagpaixao — 2016-06-15 16:34:57 UTC

In my school, we often request the collaboration of several local entities, namely health center, firefighters, police, nursing home, day center, companies.

Stefan (Malta)

talbiology — 2016-06-15 16:41:33 UTC

We participated in a project a couple of years back that involved local creative artists working with our students. It resulted in a theatre production that was based on work developed by the students themselves under the guidance of these artists.

Although the concept was interesting, I think that there was some element of self serving on the part of these particular artists, which was a pity really as most of the work done was fantastic. But we (the teachers involved) got the feeling that the students were taking second place at a certain point, as the artists involved tried to take the process to levels only they were understanding.

The moral of the story, I guess, is that while involving experts in the field can give students experiences beyond what we as teachers can give them, one needs to be very selective in choosing the experts that will be working with them. I think the term that comes to mind here is that "one has to cultivate a rapport" that eventually leads to real learning.

Mariapia (Italy)

mariapia_borghesan — 2016-06-15 17:03:54 UTC

We partecipated in eTwinning project and the impact in the student was relevant. We also collaborate with a local group to prepare handmade objects to sell. The experience is really positive for both students and people!

Claudia Massaregli (Italy)

2016-06-15 17:05:30 UTC

in our school we promote the link with the territory hosting representatives of social communities (dentist, nutritionist, writers, sports clubs) and doing guided tours to local businesses: oil mill, farms, bakers, bookshops, museums, research centers and schools senior.

Michaela-Romania

2016-06-15 17:06:32 UTC

Our private kindergarten and primary school benefit from the implication of the children' families in our activities. We organise very often events like: science fairs, Christmas and Easter fairs, Christmas and Summer shows, charity events, workshops, ecological actions, thematic visits, trips, expeditions and so on. Beside the children's families other members of the community are also invited and join us: school inspectors, teachers from other schools, specialist in different fields of activity, musicians and actors, sports trainers. Our students have permanent contact with various environments, performed different tasks, investigate, experiment, learn by doing and have fun.

Jurgita, Lithuania

jurgitakved — 2016-06-15 17:09:45 UTC

It's very important for every educational institution to stay open and collaborate with local communities, enterprises and ect. A great role can be played students' parents in this case. Last we had a wonderful project related with various professions and future career. e.g. one girl's mother who's a policewoman invited us to the police station where we had an integrated lessons performed by police officers and also students had a possibility to try on police officer's profession.

Emiliana Rufo, Italy

emiliana_rufo — 2016-06-15 17:20:36 UTC

Involving students with community is one of the aim of my school. We collaborate with a lot of associations, such as: Sports organizations, IT companies, English mother-tongue teachers, Police Station, Carabinieri, the Town Hall, Music schools, Theatres, students' inclusion and integration entities, volunteers (such as parents who dedicated their time to explain their jobs or hobbies to students). Examples from the school website I administer:
Associations in collaboration
Annual Projects

Edit Rathne Toth,Hungary

tothedit0610 — 2016-06-15 17:21:50 UTC

I have contacts with local professionals by living in the city for a long time, I know experts, politicians, teachers from other schools. Our school has connections with the local TV, newspaper, the environmental company, police station, town hall, local government and several local companies.There are several neighbouring schools, where our students can build connections. Students can get in touch with one another personally, via the internet, telephone or any of the community pages. Me and also my students could ask for support in identifying the right people. Moreover my students' friends and parents could also help us to achieve this aim.

My school is very sensible to collaborate with external partners. Usually we have contacts with the other school networks, political , healty, juristic, economic, social, psicologist, sport experts. About school alumni, in the past the school contacted them for helping students in difficulty to improve their knowledge

idadinatale — 2016-06-15 17:22:48 UTC

IDA DI NATALE

Grazia Paladino

graziampl — 2016-06-15 17:33:54 UTC

I deal with Flipped learning science with my students of 6-8 grade and I'd compare my way to make their lessons with other European colleagues who teach their students using the same methodology. They are also an active member of the Italian Association of flipped classroom called Flipnet (www.flipnet.it) so I could share experiences of association also as a trainer of teachers. My pupils are already used to explain to others what is the flipped learning. In fact, during one of the meetings of Italian Coder Dojo they have presented themselves our findings to an audience made up of teachers, school principals and parents receiving many compliments

Oleg

2016-06-15 17:55:47 UTC

We are technical school and would like to more cooperate with factories but they don't have enough time for cooperation. We would like to solve real technical projects. I hope this course will help me.

Ljubica Ruzhinska, Macedonia

rljubica_78 — 2016-06-15 17:58:11 UTC

My reflection on which people from my community my students and I could engage with.

Since my school is in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia we don't have problems finding professionals from the community to come and work with the students. We have always had a successful cooperation with different experts from different fields.

Few years ago, while working in my previous school, we did a project - investigating the past of our city, Skopje. Our project was divided into four main locations: in the classroom (where we used referents books, posters and internet to do our research, collaborated with each other and shared our learning with each other and with other students in our school), at home (where we did most of our online research and did our presentations and other activities), the local environment (where we did our field trips to museums and landmarks, as well as interviews with older people in order to find out more about our city's past) and finally online (where we used our educational platform Edmodo, to communicate with each other, share ideas and solutions, give each other support and feed back on our work). The students involved in the project had numerous communication and contact with different field experts in order to gather information about the city's past. Here is the project website where you can have a look at the activities and the various activities the students did with the professionals.

Madalena Quental, Portugal

madalena_quental — 2016-06-15 18:03:30 UTC

Search for collaboration and partners outside the classroom can be a way to motivate the students, broaden their horizons and knowledge. The contact with the real world allows them to develop content, knowledge and skills in a more comprehensive and complete way. I usually invite, as partners, several nearby organizations, such as the military from the School of Arms of the Portuguese Army, the staff from the Mafra National Palace, the staff from National Hunting Grounds of Mafra and the Iberian Wolf Recovery Centre (IWRC).

Maria Papadaki, Greece

maria_agglika — 2016-06-15 18:04:37 UTC

In my country, when we want to bring somebody from outside school to present something or work with the kids, we have to follow some bureaucratic procedures, for students' safety reasons. So, inviting somebody to our school is more complicated than taking the kids to his/her place of work. What we usually do is educational school visits that are related to the content of certain subjects.
Next year, I want to start a sea related project since we are a coastal school. What I really want to do is to organize a visit with my students to the waterfront of the village and meet, talk and work with fishermen, fish tavern cooks and hotel owners to discuss the importance of the sea in their jobs and therefore get a substantial idea of how important it is to keep the sea clean for the sake of the economy of their village and their own well-being in a protected marine environment. I prefer outdoor activities to meet and collaborate with the locals.

Mario Yúfera, Spain

marioyufera27 — 2016-06-15 18:12:26 UTC

My school is located in a town with 14000 inhabitants and thinking about it, there are many people, and a lot of opportunities to collaborate with because as it isn’t a big town, we know a lot of people and we have many relations with businesses, shops, workshops, factories, etc. Although sometimes we have been some projects with the town hall and primary schools, for example, last year a group of students performed a play to primary schools, and this year another group have built some toys for kindergarten children, I think that we are missing many other activities. So, let us do it.

Inés Rosado. Spain

2016-06-15 18:20:48 UTC

I'm a primary English teacher and personally I think that it's very important to have an opened mind and collaborate with different schools. Nowadays we are ending two european projects related with the school and traditions where students had the opportunity to share their routines and also the way we worked. Last activity we shared was a communication through skipe where students were very excited so that they could ask about the questions we worked previosly in the English lessons by cooperative groups.

Cinzia, Italy. I teach in a small mountain town and my school works with local institutions, the library, the red cross and the disabled center. I think helpful for my students to have contacts also with peers in Europe because is very important to have an opened mind. I think to activate Edmodo in my class next year.

cinzia_girardi — 2016-06-15 18:35:38 UTC

Teacher Dragana, Serbia

2016-06-15 19:04:25 UTC

In the past several years, our pupils have taken part in different workshops at the local museum and found out more about the history of our town and the jobs of an archaeologist or ethnologist. A lot of local professionals have talked to our children or showed them what they do. We have also visited small businesses.

Rosi Flórez, Spain

rosamflorez — 2016-06-15 19:04:42 UTC

We have lots of outside collaborators from our community. Our high school usually organizes two-day activities and workshops and experts are invited to take part in lectues, exhibitions, discussions about many extra issues relevant to implement our students education: bullying prevention, internet and social media security, sports and health, sexuality, handcrafts, .... I'd find interesting to attract parents to collaborate as well. I think we could find eager collaborators if we asked

Evija, Latvija

evija_makejeva — 2016-06-15 19:19:18 UTC

I worked in a children's library, we are cooperating with the nearby kindergartens and schools. We offer children to get to know the library, we tell them about the latest books, famous book authors and organize a variety of interesting activities and workshops. Recently, together with schools, libraries and volunteers from different countries organized a "Big reading festival" with various activities and book author participation.

Anabela, Portugal

anves14 — 2016-06-15 19:32:21 UTC

In my opinion, it is very important for every school to be open to the community.
The tools I use to collaborate with my students are: Google Drive; Prezi, Tackk and Wix.

Marijana Dvorski, Croatia

marijanadvorski — 2016-06-15 19:35:02 UTC

We try to involve parent of our students to come into our classrooms and introduce themselves, their occupation, tell stories and similar. We visit local sports clubs, specific medical institutions (dentist and so on), school in the neighbourhood. We are involved in paneuropean inciative Move week like volunteers.

Diana from Venice

2016-06-15 19:46:41 UTC

I agree on the fact that whenever students are into contact with outside professionals , they feel more engaged and motivated to ask questions and to trust what they come to know. This happened when, in order to celebrate the Memorial Day, my students listened to an old woman who told them about her experience as a young Jew of their age during the WW2. She lived in Venice and she had to escape. Another good opportunity to involve the community is during my CLIL project when a mother-tongue teacher who wa alss an artist did art lessons with them.

Maybe next year I’d like to involve the Australian mother of a student of mine to help me run a project on Australia.

Giovanna

juana_tanzi — 2016-06-15 19:50:18 UTC

We have lots of outside collaborators from our community. Our high school usually organizes meetings and experts are invited to take part in lectures or discussions about many extra issues relevant to implement our students education: bullying prevention, internet and social media security, sports and health, sexuality, alcohol. But the most relevant introduction this year has been the ASL (alternanza scuola lavoro) also in licei. It has been for a long time only for vocational and professional school, but from this school year also students attending licei must do it. There is a specific amount of hours to do and are compulsory (200h in three years starting in the third year 11th level students). Of course for this kind of students is more difficult to take part in a real work process because of the features of their studies typically humanities. But in some cases they have been able to collaborate and work on a definite project. For example a group have collaborated in the school library to digitalize the archive of the books in it according to Dewey code; or having participated to an Erasmus plus project (RESET) 50 students of different school coming from different European countries have planned a demonstration in the main square here in Latina (two weeks ago) where they competed in a friendly race with an eco-kart built by themselves all collaborating at the same project. For this purpose they have looked for sponsors.

In April a girl coming from London came and spoke to my 11th level students students about voluuntereering just because we were dealing that topic. I think it is really good that schools open their doors to territory and build real competences.

In two of my 9th level classes, we have planned a webquest about a travel agency and the person that will evaluate the students’ work will be a German teacher who works in our school but they actually don’t know. You can see the webquest here http://createwebquest.com/webquest/trip-rome

Caterina (Italy)

cate_67 — 2016-06-15 19:59:10 UTC

In the past years I called at school some friends of mine to talk with children( a politician, a journalist, a writer, an astronomer...). After their lesson, I worked with my student in real situation (f.e. make a municipal council with resolutions, discussions and poll). Many times parents come to school and make with children art activities or help them with the vegetable garden.I took part in e-twinning projects and these projects allowed children to work in group, collaborate to product something that they then shared with children all over the world. I think that the connect with the real world is very important and children work with more passion and less hard work because they like it.

Tiziana from ITALY

Tizianateacher — 2016-06-15 20:07:35 UTC

I have been working in secondary schools for many years now. In my country we're used to having collaborations with some groups who bring the outside world into our classes.
Usually we need to have a long established relationship with such institutions but sometimes teachers can ask for help and get support from parents who are involved in working in specific fields. For sure it is difficult to run projects when we do not have the money and often people who come to our schools they come without being paid. For some projects we look for big organizations that can help us with funds but again it depends on what we want to do.
I feel that the type of school where you work and the location can make a difference. Personally I do not work in the same area where I live so contacts are established by teachers who live in the area. For international projects we rely on a network that supports all the schools in the area. It is important to have links with the outside world and be open as schools need to have contacts with realities that are in relationship with real life and work.

Konstantina, Greece

konstantinachry — 2016-06-15 20:32:44 UTC

We try to involve the local community in the learning procedure of the students. We call professionals to talk about their occupations, esperts to talk about recycling, birth control and other important issues. We coolaborate with organisations about bullying.

Luljeta Koçi, Albania

2016-06-15 20:45:57 UTC

Around 1year ago, in my school wasnt any idea for e twinning projects. Now we have joined in many like this projects, with susteniable of comunity

Valérie (Italy)

2016-06-15 20:47:19 UTC

I am an English teacher and so I think I must get in touch with people who know a little bit of English.I thought of trying to get in touch with local tourist guides, with the chef of our canteen, with parents who can seak English , with local businessmen, with a leader of our school community so that the project becomes important.

Myriam (Italy)

myriam_roson — 2016-06-15 20:59:35 UTC

I work in a High School which is not vocational and basically prepares students for university studies. We do have experts coming in to give talks/conferences about different topics from the humanities to the sciences, however this year, with our third year students, we started a collaboration with a fashion company and got our students to set up a virtual company themselves with the help of these experts. It was a great opportunity for them to come into contact with the working world and it was certainly very more motivating. In another class of mine I had a former student, who is now at university, to come into class and work on Shakespeare's play "Hamlet" with them. It was interesting to see how they had a different approach to the subject and responded to his lessons.

I believe it is esssential to try to bring the outside world into the classroom and am extremely interested in eTwinning experiences, since my students study three foreign languages and are therefore greatly attracted to the idea of learning more about other cultures, traditions etc. I however also believe that parents could also be a precious resource in this type of activity, since we often would like to have the community's support but don't know how to go about it. A network of families who understand our needs and the significance of these types of projects could certainly be helpful.

Monica Giansanti

monicagiansanti — 2016-06-15 21:00:46 UTC

Between me and my colleagues the slogan is: School have to go out of school!

A summary of what I tell in my LD.
How we are traing to build collaboration:
- profitting of resurces present on the neighborhood (library, documental centre of women, little museum of musical instruments of all over the world) with whom we build learning activities;
- working on open classes modality (groups are composed of students of different classes)
- experts in classroom to introduce secrets of historian's profession
- historical witness tell their experience during the second world war or at work in ancient industries fallen into disuse
- eTwinning projects

Each of these experieces introduce different but powerful occasions of improving different kinds of competences and of managing different roles and, at the end, lets achieve a diverse assessment and an authentic self-assessment.
(To deepen see my LD).

Spiros Spiris, Greece

spirisspiros — 2016-06-15 21:03:19 UTC

I teach at a Music School so our school is open to the community. We often bring musicians, conductors, opera singers and generally people who are in the music profession to talk to our students and inspire them. We also invite journalists and producers from the local TV and radio stations and sometimes we visit them. When we do so, our students get the chance to talk on TV or the radio and see how a radio/TV station is run. Moreover, when students from other Music Schools in Greece visit our town, they visit our school and perform to our students. We also do the same when we visit their schools. This way both teachers and students exchange ideas and good practices. Finally our school alumni are actively involved and they help our school by being present and by participating in our concerts.

Ilaria /Italy

2016-06-15 21:18:58 UTC

I teach in a II grade Secondary school for Agriculture development. We have contacts with local farms and factories. We produce wine and flowr cooperating with them.

Isabel Graça - Portugal

isamg — 2016-06-15 21:29:32 UTC

I’m happy to see in the examples given a little bit happening already in my small village school. We have a culinary club running and we invite parents or community personalities to come over and teach new or traditional recipes.

Look here!

Maria Pia, Italy

mariapia_cascone — 2016-06-15 21:38:42 UTC

Locally we are in touch with professionals who hold conferences or workshops on health, law, safety...We have experienced cultural exchanges with French and German students. It's hard to find the right partner especiallly when he/she lives far from us. Up to now we have always been in touch and collaborated with teachers we have already met.

Lucia,Italy

luciacaccioppoli — 2016-06-15 21:45:46 UTC

I teach in a technical school and in particular, on business and tourism courses. Frankly speaking, students in my school have a lot of opportunities to meet professionals from "the real world". School often organizes meeting,conferences and stages with professionals of different areas.In regard to the PBL, engaging these people to come and work with students could be a bit difficult but we could ask some local tourist guides, or someone from the tourist office willing to support students to organize their work .

Clara Elizabeth Báez, Italy

2016-06-15 21:53:13 UTC

I'm a spanish teacher and I teach in a technical school on bussines, informatic an d tourism, as I said, in Reggio Calabria: we have contacts with local professionals,
meetings, conferences etc. The students have the opportunity to make experiences school/work, and they also went and go abroad often with Comenius before and Erasmus+ now. They was choosen like guide tourist, in economic offices etc. for 3 weeks and for 400 hours in 3 years. We understand very well what is to open the doors of the school to the territory

Luisa Pascarella, Italy

luisapascarella1965 — 2016-06-15 22:21:45 UTC

I think it's very useful to involve the community to cooperate with the school.
The students in my school, have the opportunity to do a lot of experiences with local professionals but also with learners of other schools.

I'm an eTwinner, from february, and I believe that it's a great way to collaborate with peers and share PBL projects.

Tito Portugal

titoliviofilipe — 2016-06-15 22:24:51 UTC

In the experiments with diferent type of work's with my students those who are more successful and originate more willingness to work by the students are the ones that have a direct link with the extra school environment

Arjana, Croatia

MsBlazic — 2016-06-15 22:26:42 UTC

When it comes to the community engagement, I'm really pleased to say that we involve the local community in school life on a regular basis. In the photo in my LD, for example, you can see two IT experts from the Nikola Tesla Ericsson company who came to our schools to talk about ICT in their company and how our students can get ready for the world of work. There have been a dozen workshops this spring that this company organized for our students at our school as well as on their premises. We also regulary invite native speakers of English and other languages to talk about their countries and people. In May we organized a walk around the school for school alumni, neighbours and friends of our school, entitled Jane's walk. The link to it is in my diary too.

Beate Vollmer,

2016-06-15 22:54:17 UTC

2.4. Finding collaboration outside the classroom
The video claims that outside experts are important to make PBL more relevant for pupils and to make them give more attention to detail. The cooking contest in Middleton School certainly showed exactly this extra motivation to finish the project in style, since the outside experts were meant to judge both taste and presentation of the meals.
If outside experts are included, one should certainly consider for which purpose they are invited. I think they should enrich the project by providing an insight into their expertise and to highlight the real-world significance of the project task. I do not think they should really be part of the evaluation process, since they only see the final outcome, not really the process of work. They should not really function as a ‘jury’ but as expert helpers giving some inspiration in the course of the project.
Our school has established many contacts to outside experts and these also enable cooperation on a long-term basis:
In the field of natural science we are in a network with other schools to promote MINT learning.
Some pupils are part of the Junior Engineering Academy. We have collaboration with neighbouring schools and use their high tech laboratories for certain project tasks, we collaborate with universities.
We share our sports facilities with local sports clubs.
The local council is contacted when there are international exchanges and we have a reception at the mayor’s office.
We have contacts to local companies because our pupils also do a three-week work experience.
A big chemical plant also offers some form of pupil support. We regularly visit nearby farms with the smaller classes.
In my projects I have visited a local mosque twice, we invited a nun who works in the local hospital. We also invited Young European peers to inform pupils about European exchange programmes.
Parents work as volunteers in the school library and caféteria.
Our former pupils come back to school regularly for some type of ‘Job speed dating’ to inform pupils about their experience in jobs or at the university.
There are organisations that try to promote ‘Fairness’ and they run events at school. We also cooperated with an NGO to organise a charity run. Experts from a ‘family planning’ institution come to talk about sexuality.
We used to support a children’s hospice whenever money was raised due to some project activity.
We have project days and a man who makes ovens from clay was invited to build an oven with pupils. School garden furniture was built with an expert carpenter.
15/06/2016

Vânia-Oporto, Portugal

vania_correia — 2016-06-16 00:38:47 UTC

I think is very importante to envolve students with the comunity outside school. It makes they see new prespectives and gain some new ideas.

Leah Luchsinger - Hoping an American can join etwinning.

2016-06-16 04:08:48 UTC

I recognize the importance of taking education outside of the classroom and there by making it more meaningful. I have been working with Rutgers on ice core studies, Solar suitcases... I am trying to find partners in my immediate area but am having a hard time thinking of where to look. I am excited about etwinning and hope that America will be accepted into the group. As it stands there is no way for me to sign up for the group except by saying I am in another country which is dishonest and not to the point. I look forward to seeing what ideas others have.

Fabio from Costa Rica

2016-06-16 04:12:10 UTC

it is common to have our students working with students from different classrooms. However, this interaction have never incorporated the ideas of PBL learning. It would be really nice to have students from my group working together with students from a different group (it is not necessary for them to be at the same level). With a little effort from the teachers, learners can be encouraged to carry out a project and present that project to the rest of the institution.
Working outside the school might be quite difficult, since we want to make our students interact in English and my country's mother tongue is Spanish. So, I should look for a institution in which people talk in English or where people from English speaking countries do volunteering

Meritxell Formiga, Spain

2016-06-16 04:36:19 UTC

I think connexion with the real world is a key to success in PBL. This year course we made some real contacts with different entities: it was quite easy because there's lot of people outside the school who wants to collaborate with us. And this collaboration makes students more motivated to learn. They also care more about the quality of their work.

Monica Boccoli, Italy

mobocco — 2016-06-16 04:47:54 UTC

I have contacts with CoderDojo because my coleague Simonetta Anelli and I have founded the Dojo in our town. I also published with a famous publisher . This publishing company donated a 3d printer to my class. We will use it for the next Dojo.

Morita from Ireland.

maireq — 2016-06-16 05:00:38 UTC

The nature of collaboration happening in our classroom andoutside of the school is evident. Every month each class visits an eighty bed Seniors Care Community. Students as a class decide which songs, games and activities they will prepare to engage with the elderly. Last month grade 6 decided to play scrabble, bingo and different card games with the elderly. They also choose to bring their ukuleles and sing some hymns and songs for them. Finally they all worked together in different groups to design different crafts for them e.g. cards, origami flowers etc

They also took part in Read to Succeed programme where the Vancouver Ice Hockey Giants came to the school and spoke to the students about sports and fitness and also presented them with free tickets to an ice hockey game.

Maria Nikolova

maria_n_ss — 2016-06-16 05:12:34 UTC

Recently I use "World cafe" as model to work in groups. It is suitable to discuss problems in the literature classes and civic education. This explore problems in class in informal setting and expectations of students to the learning process. I invite parents, other teachers, students from other classes.

Éva Pató Szebéé

2016-06-16 05:44:22 UTC

The closest istitution to our school is the police station. Police officers visit our school regurly and held lectures for our students about traffic rules, crimes or drug problems. I think we can use this good relationship for further collaboration.

Naděžda Nováková

2016-06-16 06:50:16 UTC

We often have people form various fileds having lectures or running workshops at our school. Once a year we hold the Science Week and the Week of Languages - full of workshops, projects and other activities which are partly run by other proffesionals or people from our community.

Simonetta Anelli, Italy

simonetta_anelli — 2016-06-16 07:01:36 UTC

I have contacts with CoderDojo because my coleague Monica Boccoli and I have founded the Dojo in our town. I have contacted a famous local confectionery industry and it donated the snacks for Dojo's children . A local shop of technology donated each child a virtual translater in 8 languages at the end of the Dojo.

Sharon Brissoni, Australia

2016-06-16 07:20:00 UTC

We have a school kitchen garden that needs to be incorporated more into our curriculum so I am thinking of getting members of the community (such as gardeners, florists, cooks etc) that can support the development of the garden and also advice on what the students can do with the produce of the garden (i.e. flower compositions, preparing food for the school canteen but also exploring the possibility of sourcing the produce to shelters and volunteer groups that support the homeless).

Valentina, Bulgaria

valia_tr — 2016-06-16 07:36:35 UTC

I agree with the colleagues that involving students with the community outside school is very important. It give them opportunities they could meet new people, communicate, see new perspectives or gain some new ideas.

Carmelo Salvatore Benfante Picogna, Italia

salben — 2016-06-16 07:46:37 UTC

Since several years school is called to interact synergistically with the territory and especially with the world of work. The agreements and collaborative agreements are intensifying and students have the opportunity to meet, while they study, the world of work, with the associations of the territory. Students may attend internships in local companies. In addition, many students create associations of alumni and carry out the interests of the class and of the territory where their former school is linked. ins��<�)>�

Annalisa Tosi, It

19annalisa_tosi82 — 2016-06-16 07:53:36 UTC

In the school where I have worked this year, there has been a very active involvement of the local community in school projects. Students enjoyed very much the fact of talking to the local police officers about traffic laws and creating a short video about safety when riding their bicycles. They also took part to a series of workshops, held within a project about healthy eating with the help of a local expert in dairy products, where they produced butter and cheese to eat instead of the usual snacks. Other activities which got a lot of success were that of creating a local "tourist gude" describing the small village of Masserano, its history and the natural beauties of the sourrounding areas, then accompanying the students of the primary school to visit these places, or that of making a short movie about the life of Piergiorgio Frassati - a local churchman beatified during the 20th century - exploiting the places where he really lived as a "film set". All of these activities contributed to produce a very high level of cooperation among students, allowing them to better know and appreciate the place where they live, the food they prepare on their own - which is, as they said, much better than that bought in a supermarket -, and making them more aware about the rules of living together and using the communal areas. This not just made the learning process more effective, but even much funnier!

ALBERTO GARNIGA(Trentino, Italy)

alberto_garniga — 2016-06-16 08:04:20 UTC

in Trentino we activated the so-called "school-work alternation" (https://www.vivoscuola.it/alternanza-scuola-lavoro), which ask us to spend 200 hours pro year outside the school or in projects involving outside companies. This is the best leverage to set up PBL projects! This year three of my classes collaborated with real protagonists of the territory

Christos - Cyprus

2016-06-16 08:14:43 UTC

In my school we do engage organizations or people but not in regular basis. As a school we do different school events and depending on the event we involve the appropriate organizations or people to come and visit us or to visit them. Now concerning my classes, every year I participate in an etwinning project with schools from other countries in Europe in a specific subject. This year our project was about Immigration and 3 countries were involved - Romania, France & Cyprus.In this way my students learn to communicate and collaborate with students from other countries, practise on ICT tools and English language.

Aušra, Lithuania

ausra_mokytoja — 2016-06-16 08:30:54 UTC

I have contacts with CoderDojo. nvolving students with the community outside school is very important. It give them opportunities they could meet new people, communicate, see new perspectives or gain some new ideas.

Sérgio Leal, Portugal

sergioleal — 2016-06-16 09:04:12 UTC

Task 2.4 - Finding collaboration partners outside the classroom
Community that I can involve is the Municipality, experts in Universities and members of others schools. Depending of the projects we can develop is also possible to connect with some companies (IT companies, ...), and ONG's, for example. Most times are students and teachers together that approach this stakeholders.

Ana Fonseca, Portugal

2016-06-16 09:19:16 UTC

In my school there is a real concern about involving students with the local communities, so we have several partnerships with local entrepreneurs and facilities. The Town Hall members, the Police Officers, the Fire Brigade, the local Hospital and others are in close contact with our school. Besides we try to make a less regular contact with Portuguese writers or artists. For students in professional courses we usually make their lessons more attractive by arranging meetings with companies related to their specific areas (multimedia, sport, electricity and safety at work). We take students to their environments to learn in the real world or we invite them to come to school and do some real work here with our students. Now my students are completing their 3 year course and they are working with different partners outside school and so they are learning in a real working environment.

Carmela Cundari, Italy

melcunda — 2016-06-16 10:02:29 UTC

In our school we engage organizations and people from the real world on a quite regular base, specially local institutions like the library, the red cross, local police officers. We have school projects and events carried out together with organizations working in our neighborhood, that enrich students' curriculum and allow them to face with problems of the real world. Recently, for instance, we ran a project with AVIS, a volunteers association for blood donation, and children were asked to reflect on the topic of “the gift” and to create a poster for a contest . The project had a final event in which all the involved schools performed short songs, made games, showed their posters… and collect money to buy a defibrillator for each school of our small town.

Vitalija, Lithuania

2016-06-16 11:38:23 UTC

Regarding the inclusion of people from local community, our school maintains regular relationships with strategic partners mentioned earlier, e.g. Vilnius Gediminas Technical university, also partnership with the Chinese Embassy which resulted in establishing a special classroom of Confucius. Our students benefit a lot as they are given a chance to learn from lecturers, enter and do experiments in the labs, learn Chinese and about its culture from a native speaker. In addition, there is tight collaboration between our school and Education Development Centre which promotes the expansion of STEAM school network by providing internship or workshop sessions both for teachers and students.

However, bearing in mind projects related to English classroom, we have made very few attempts to promote partnership based on our temporary needs. To make it more successful, the potential of mutual co-operation with British Embassy could be exploited to a greater extent. Rarely do we contact school alumni or other professionals outside the classroom. Therefore, the implementation of PBL will contribute to reconsideration of other potential partners.

Eleonora, Italy

eleonora_mauriello19 — 2016-06-16 12:07:00 UTC

I think partnerships are fundamental if we want a school that is really engaged in its cultural context.
Experts, librarians, chefs or local businessmen could (and should) be involved in daily activities, laboratories and projects in order to create a real sinergy between schools and other social actors.

Vincenzo Fino, IT

2016-06-16 12:30:30 UTC

Before I became a teacher in secondary school, I worked many years as a fellowship chemistry researcher at University and still work in academic projects, so It is natural to me see at the University Research Groups as partner in school-work partnership that can engage students in small activities both in pure and applied research.

Vasileios Boskos

2016-06-16 12:58:43 UTC

I live and work in a small town, Kilkis, where everybody knows everybody. It is really easy to find professionals to engage with the school. As for organizations, only few are based in town, but Thessaloniki, the second biggest city in Greece is very close, so a visit would not be a problem. At the moment, my school does not have any partners outside the classroom but I think it would be great to engage our students to the local community in a more formal and educational way. �% ``�

ROSA MEDEIROS

rosa_medeiros1 — 2016-06-16 13:18:55 UTC

In my community we find easily people, companies and organizations that collaborate with us. Eg police / Bulying, driving school / rules of pedestrians, professional school / cooking,, mothers / cooking; craftsmen ... Town Hall / recycling; University / awareness for animals, Scouts / respect for natiureza; Hospital / oral health, balanced diet, Gym / sports etc. They all have been great collaborators on projects with SEN pupils.

ElsaPereira PT

elsammhp — 2016-06-16 13:31:44 UTC

In my school, we usully go out in field trips. We have local business entreprises involved in our daily activities.As we have vocational classes,we have a partnerships in the local business.

Sara De Santis,

desanti56 — 2016-06-16 13:42:13 UTC

In Italian Secondary High School most of the engagement with the community are scheduled for 3rd-4rth-5th class (out of 5): students spend a few weeks as trainee in an entreprise, or public service agencies. (is it really a project? I don't know)
Within this kind of activity, the school where I worked were in contact with:

-restaurants / hotels (for tourism, chef vocational school)

-schools, hospitals, other social/health services (for social-healt vocational)

Sure every type of school have their own contacts in correspondance with the kind of school orientation.

I taught in 1st - 2nd classes in vocational schools, where Science contributes to create a general culture in students. So I wonder:
is it worth to make a project with an external partner (it might be: a natural history museum, a planetarium, an acquarium, a University, a research centre, an agency for environmental monitoring, a natural protected area) if their vocation (and maybe motivation) is, for instance, design or cooking? Of course if vocation is agriculture many could be the external partners.
The external level of partnership can vary according to the subject/school orientation/ class.

Fortunately Italy is the country where we do accomplish many missions thanks to "reference" and tradition and we have many small entreprises, so I guess it's not hard to find contacts for external partnership. Councils, private service, small factories or entreprises can be available (maybe to find the good one and good compromise it's not so easy... ). I have never faced this experience.

Daniela Lanzo Italy

daniela_lanzo — 2016-06-16 13:43:11 UTC

Involving the local community is what the Italian schools have been asked to do for many years and is what we are still required also by the new law on Education. So in my school we involve local professionals on regular basis like local police officers, civil protection officers, local public doctors and psychologists, museums and even other teachers of lower grades. Students are invited to collaborate on projects proposed by the local community representatives on traffic laws e.i.. on medical prevention, on peer education etc. This year a group of students of Human and social studies courses have been involved in training projects with teachers and pupils of the lower grades :13110�B��g

Olga Passalidou, Kozani, Greece

2016-06-16 14:07:37 UTC

It would be fairly easy to involve local professionals. Although personally I have no contacts of note (I did not grow up here) my colleagues who are locals probably do; the city is not very big. Besides, the local Commerce Chamber or any other relevant Union (e.g. the lawyers’ one) would probably be willing to suggest a member that could help with our specific task (often a high-ranking one). A great many people from parents to caterers visit the school on a daily basis and again, most would be willing to help in some way if approached politely. The Police, the Fire Department and Rescue Teams are also usually willing to answer questions relevant to their fields. School alumni might be an excellent source for students to see pathways to the future. Our local Teachers’ Union, our local Education Authority, the local Careers Office, the Local Council and the Prefecture would also be sources of information about whom to approach for an activity planned. Overall, I have not heard so far of great difficulties reaching out to people in my school when needed.

Renato de Sousa, Portugal

renatosousamail — 2016-06-16 14:21:58 UTC

Involving the local community is what my school does on a regular basis. We constantly involve local professionals such as police officers, who promote awareness for many dangers like surfing on the internet, walking outside school, etc.); nurses or doctors, explaining how can we deal with sick students, or specific deseases, like diabetes for example; psychologists, as students may have the need to talk about many issues.
The students are also invited to engage with the local community, to attend training sessions related to medical prevention, volunteering, etc.

Carmen Stanciu, ROMANIA

carmenada69 — 2016-06-16 14:22:31 UTC

This year we were involve our school alumni in a some first aid activities and a local professionals for a study visit -construction rocks

Tatjana Waldek, Estonia (kindergarten)

2016-06-16 14:30:31 UTC

Local administration, parents of different professions, museums, theaters, neighborhood - they all are involved with what we do with kids. Parents come to tell kids about their professions or even to assist teachers. We are very open to community. Openness is one of our values (as well as collaboration, creativeness, trust).

In Italian Secondary High School, expecially vocational high school , contacts with external partners ad professionals are common. Besides a training period is compulsory for all students . Training periods are scheduled for 3rd-4rth-5th classes : students:they spend a few weeks as trainees in an entreprise, or public service agencies. Students spend a few weeks as trainees in an entreprise, or public service agencies. (is it really a project? I don't know). The school where I work in is in contact with: advertising agencies , shops/stores( for Graphic Design vocational school); schools, hospitals, other social/health services (for social-healt vocational) - accountancy offices for Accounting vocational school. Student find training experiences very interesting.

2016-06-16 14:31:27 UTC

Michela A (Italy)

Monica, Italy

chitarramarconi — 2016-06-16 14:33:39 UTC

about my discipline, guitar, I must say that every year my students participate in a guitar competition, so they have a comparison with pupils from other schools. Except this year, they usually participate playing in group. Perhaps the evaluation is not complete because it takes place only through a vote, there are not exact parameters and indicators that can provide guidance to the students.

Stella Greece

stellaspanougr — 2016-06-16 14:50:56 UTC

My school is in a small village near Thessaloniki. We tried with success many times to collaborate with the municipal library. The kids loved it every time. About professionals I don't know if this could be possible because maybe this could be considered as advertising...?

Florina, Roumania

florinaorz — 2016-06-16 14:52:03 UTC

My school has a very good collaboratin with the community...the policeman comes every ear to learn us about the circulation rules... the bread factory gave us the opportunity to make cakes for Christmans The kids lovesa lot this activities .

Patrizia Roma (Italy)

patrizia_roma60 — 2016-06-16 14:57:39 UTC

My school has strong ties with its territory. Our students have regular internships programs with local companies and there are lots of initiatives which involve local authorities or businesses. This video is taken form one of them. Every year we organize an event called Start up Day and students show their creations to a public of parents and representatives of companies, university and local authorities

Angela Gordino (Portugal)

angelagordino — 2016-06-16 15:02:32 UTC

Which people from my community I or my students could engage with? Which organisations or people engage with the school on a regular basis? Sports organisations? Who are your school's neighbours? Could they be approached?
Here are some interesting questions when finding collaorative partners outside the classroom. In my school 's reality, I always try to engage them in activities of collaboration, through our school Library which promotes activities with other schools (by having written, reading, contests among different classes or among schools of our community, work presentations). There are also activities promoted by book publishers, by our Ministry of Education, our district University (Aveiro), by the local administration (City Hall) or just by the group of teachers from the school that develop clubes like "Gardening", "Eco-friendly", "Reading and writting". All these partners create a motivating environment for looking at school and learning with different eyes.
Our school also promotes with local authorities and parents some meetings regarding safety and internet, how to help you child , by sharing their professions....

Annalisa Di Pierro,Italy

adipierro — 2016-06-16 15:23:09 UTC

I have been teaching for many years in a Technical High School, where there are many different sections: Mechanics, Information Technology, Electrics, Aeronautics, Biotechnology and Telecommunications, students carry out internships in many companies of their sectors of studies during the last three years (3 out of 5 years), for these reason the school has set up many ties with the city companies and with the city university departments.This is really important for the youth and it creates a bridge between the school and the world of work, students are very keen on meeting and training in businesses.

Tânia Coelho

tcoelho76 — 2016-06-16 15:26:47 UTC

My school because of its features has the support of universities, parish council, local businesses, local companies  that contributed to the development of huge projects.

Irini Pougounia, Gree

pougounia — 2016-06-16 15:33:08 UTC

We usually ask local professionals to visit our school and share their knowledge. Parents or other relatives or even alumni are also asked to contribute in our projects.

Anna G, Italy

annag — 2016-06-16 15:42:32 UTC

This aspect of PBL is very hard to me: I can understand that it is very important in the process of learning, but it really does not suit my personality.
Anyway, I'll have to think about it and to try to overcome this wrong feeling of mine.
In my area a lot of people from the community want to engage students: local community organization know that students are the best way to reach their families. Children love doing these activities but my question, as a teacher of English, is : how is this experience relevant to a foreign language acquisition? I'm starting to think that sharing these experiences on an eTwinnning project could be a possible solution.
For example, the volunteering association 'Palio del Pettine' ( a typical kind of maccheroni) came to school in order to teach how to cook this dish that belongs to our local food tradition.
I'll have to think about it.

Vânia-Oporto,Portugal

vania_correia — 2016-06-16 15:51:13 UTC

Before getting the comunity envolved, teachers should search who are the best people to go to classe and talk to students.

Agnes, Italy

2016-06-16 17:00:59 UTC

The school I have worked in for 2 years has strong links with the companies in the area. A lot of professionals come and visit our students (who study mechanics and electronics) to talk about the on the current themes of their sector. They have also come to our school to evaluate some projects of our students and they gave them a prize. This is great because students learn how to deal with professionals and perceive a link to the "real world".

Ana Ventura, Spain

anavenmolina — 2016-06-16 17:45:53 UTC

I think my students could engage with other religious schools which are nearby or which belong to the same community as ours. They could also engage to NGO that also work near us.

Jessica (Italy)

bb_jess — 2016-06-16 17:57:00 UTC

My school has already the support of the University of Cambridge, the Ministère de l’Èducation National, Cervantes Institute, Confucio Institute, University of Siena, Kulturministerkonferrenz of Germany, University of Turin, and AICA.
Students parents are lawyers, teachers, professors, but I don't really know if they hava time and want to meet the students just as "teachers".
I will think more about it and then write on my Learing Diary.

Emanuela Boffa Italy

2016-06-16 18:23:28 UTC

In etwinning project my students and I have the opportunity to collaborate with peer and other school in other countries, but also with the territory . During last etwinning project each country had to present a traditional recipe . I asked ,in according with my school head, the possibility to utilize a kitchen that it belongs at the Alpine group located in my village. Furthermore I asked for a dad, who is a chef , to cook for us the "risotto" a typical North Italian dishes . This is an activity that connected school with territory and also with foreign pupils . Obviously it has been a successful .

Sara Viotti

sara_viotti — 2016-06-16 18:46:58 UTC

In my school we're very lucky: we collaborate with 4 different partners in Spain, Portugal, Belgium (E-Twinning) and Germany (a teacher of german organize a language exchange with a Gymnasium in Freiburg). I also can mention as orrganizations engaged with the school on a regular basis: University of Genoa, Prestige Idiomas Internatonal (Rosas, Spain), a school of English in Brighton (GB).As the main building the school owns is an ancient XVI century palace, we are involved in "Rolli days", when tourists can visit for free the Palazzi dei Rolli, in Genoa’s historic centre (late 16th and early 17th centuries) that represent the first example in Europe of an urban development project with a unitary framework. Furthermore, our students often take part in short periods of training in museums or attractions of the city. We organize study visits to IIT (Italian Insitute of Technology), we have been visited by the president of UNHCR and two italian different members of European Parliament. We have a good relationship with the Chamber of Commerce of Genoa and in these days we're managing the possibility to offer the visit of Villa Spinola to owners of the LAnterna's enter ticket.

Vassilik Yiannou, Greece

2gelevosmou_logos — 2016-06-16 19:12:13 UTC

In our school we run many projects than need collaboration with outside parteners: eTwinning, previous Comenius, rhetorical games, etc. in which I participate as supportive teacher. As a school librarian this year, I invited a famous greek writer, a university teacher and some of my Physics colleagues to have a dialogue with the students on different subjects each time. The goal was the same: make students lent and read moer books.
You can see pictures of the activities here, in our library blog (it is in Greek though!)
( Underneath, a photo with Yiannis Kalpouzos, a gamous Greek writer)

Maria Vasilopoulou, Greece

mbasilopoulou — 2016-06-16 19:14:32 UTC

As far as the way our local community is involved with our school community there is the parents’ association who are willing to help in school affairs either these concern the maintenance of the school premises or their contribution to bazaars for fund raising for the school needs. There are no organisations which engage with our school on a regular basis as this is a very fresh idea and there’s some skepticism on the part of many colleagues. More specifically their concern is whether the involvement of local businesses to our school ‘projects will entail their involvement to the school running in general.

I believe, however, that if local businesses were presented with the students goals they would respond positively.

Dr Keratso Georgiadou

keratsog — 2016-06-16 19:57:44 UTC

As a principal in a junior high school during a four years period time I invited to the school 28 professionals like doctors, professors of the local universities, nutricians, researchers, workers in local bussineses, and many others to speak to the students and inform them on several topics. Every yer we organized the day of

Margarida Pato

margarida_pato — 2016-06-16 20:08:12 UTC

At my school many teachers try to engage with the community and explore the resources it has to give us. Some of the institutions we usually go to for support are the Town Hall and the Health Centre. However, for some projects we ask for the participation of old students and experts working in several areas.
Personally, I usually engage with the community when I am organising Comenius projects or even eTwinning projects. In my classes I seldom do it - definitely a thing to consider!

Anamaria Golumbeanu, Romania

2016-06-16 20:19:02 UTC

Our school has support of the local Community . I use eTwinning to improve our projects with collabiration of other schools and students.

Egle Sala, Italy

sala_egle — 2016-06-16 20:40:35 UTC

Every year, my school involves many organizations like Falco or C.A.I. They are organizations about environmental safeguard and they work with children, at school. On the other side, most of the families are always ready to collaborate with school, providing their own support.

Angela Antonucci, Italy

2016-06-16 20:43:11 UTC

My school is a secondary school specializing in modern languages, human and social sciences, over the years we collaborated with partners in France (E-Twinning projects), Austria, as well as Greece and Russia (Intercultura projects) to class exchanges. Organizations or Institutions such as Alliance Française (Ministère de l'Education Nationale), Cambridge University, Cervantes Institute, Goethe Institute, are involved with the school concerning language level examinations. Universities in our Region collaborate each year in guidance activities. Students are involved in Training work-experiences and internships with local institutions: museums and travel agencies (tourist guide projects), hospital (clown therapy project), hotels (reception). Every year the school collaborates with local schools and pupils of the lower grades during open days. Local professionals (police officers, magistrates, academics, doctors and psychologists, etc. ...) give lectures regularly. So the school is linked to the territory but much more can be done to involve parents and other authorities

Carmen Cassarino

carmencassarino — 2016-06-16 21:10:36 UTC

I the town where I teach there are several people and organizations from the comunity we are engaging with. One of these is the local Library whose nice librarian, Lucia, collaborates with some classes in the reading project called "Città di Carta". Last year we also created a reading event on occasion of the national even "Libriamoci" : students and teachers had a relay reading at the town theatre in the morning and then at the town library in the afternoon. It was fantastic !

Another interesting outside contact is with the local Gruppo Ambiente ( Environment Group) and GAS ( Ethical Purchasing Group) .Occasionally we have collaborated in some projects. Finally, since 2011 we've been collaborating with ATS Brescia in the project Life Skills Training Program with the aim of having students develop life skills like decision taking, anxiety and anger management, assertiveness, and eventually avoid smoking, alcohol and drugs.

Margarida Sotana, Portugal

2016-06-16 21:12:06 UTC

During some years I taught several classes of CEF (a kind of course with a practical perspective). Besides the traditional subjects (languages, maths, sports…) they have practical subjects of a particular area, for instance table service and restauration. Besides the School’s subjects these classes have traineeships in restaurants and hotels. School establish partnerships with several entities. And in the end they realize a proof open to the community serving a lunch to members of parish councils, firefighters, members of hotels, restaurants, teachers,… It’s a way of establishing a good contact between students and the real world. Community also approaches School and see what we do and feel they can collaborate to achieve a common goal.

Susana Varela, Portugal

7suslucas — 2016-06-16 23:23:09 UTC

For the next school year, my main priority will be to participate in a project with another class through the eTwinning community.
The projects developed this year, highlight the partnership with a nursing home in our community. This project aimed at promoting reading and writing by sharing between generations.

Violėta Deksnienė

2016-06-17 04:41:19 UTC

Our Adult and Youth Education Centre has partners abroad and in our country, and town. participation in various kind international, national and regional projects allowed to wide community and share good practice not only as organization but for every person who is involved in it too.

Agita Ozoli

2016-06-17 06:53:27 UTC

My school has already had a lot of meetings and collaboration work with people from universities, community. But I'm still thinking how to do in my English class.
First of all for the next school year I'd like to participate in a project with another class through the eTwinning community. I'll try to develop the project this summer to start it in September.
Next, I hope our Erasmus+ project will be approved so we will work together with 7 countries.
One more thing: I'm going to organize special afternoons with people from another countries to tell my students about their experience.

In my school it is now three years working on a project on the law that has seen the outside of many voluntary associations that are part of international cooperation organizations . This type of collaboration ( which happens for free and therefore does not embarrass the school that , notoriously , has economic difficulties ) it is a very precious added value : it is in contact with many different realities , with volunteers but also with experts, local issues , national and international , experimenting different ways of working . I enclose in my D.L.il project that we created last year with the fifth class which saw the intervention of Emergency, Amnesty International and the Association CEFA .

luisabosio — 2016-06-17 07:08:56 UTC

LUISA BOSIO

Jovita: Lithuania

jovita_michnioviene — 2016-06-17 07:43:16 UTC

At my subject projects students could be helped by university lecturers, municipal employees or those who work in public sector with strategic planning. Unfortunately, it is very hard to convince them to come and help students.

Reneta Raicheva

2016-06-17 08:09:11 UTC

Our favourite collaborative platform is eTwinning. We've got a lot of partners from different European countries. Our PBL with them is really successful. Here's the great experience with Italian team & amazing friends from Francavilla in Sinni...enjoy it! :)

María: Spain

2016-06-17 08:29:54 UTC

In order to involve the community, our school could collaborate with different local organisms such as the town hall , libraries and so on. Apart from this we are in very good terms with the Local Entrepreneurs Association. In fact, we have already shared an European project.
Besides, we foster some e-twinning projects. We have quite a large experience on this field.

Raffaella Maggio

rafmag16 — 2016-06-17 08:31:18 UTC

Our Community is eTwinning.Our partners are from Poland,Romania,
Bulgaria and Spain.The eTwinning project gave pupils a sense of importance and motivation.I hope to integrate PBL strategy in next projects.

Francesca C.

frccpz66 — 2016-06-17 08:33:34 UTC

The school I've been teaching this year is a vocational school and I must admit there is a close link between what happens inside the school and the world outside. The community is closely tight together and there are a lot of collaborations, both looked for and spontaneous with the professional and adult world in general.

In some interesting projects made by my colleagues, parents and grandparents were willing to participate, sharing knowledge with the students, teaching them how to cook typical local dishes, giving information about the origins of some traditions. In other situations, experts from the scientific world came to school to speak with the students, giving lectures about topics chosen by the students themselves.

The fact that the community in which the school is set is small and proudly thick is a great help for the students and the teachers as they can always count on the external help.

Matina

skarathanasi — 2016-06-17 08:52:56 UTC

In my school several times we involve in teaching members-proffessionals from the community such as dieticians-people working in safety or people who have been involved in a situation we investigate in class.
It is very helpful to students.

Massimo

2016-06-17 09:23:27 UTC

I teach in a middle school in a provincial town of about 3000 inhabitants. Our school does not have contacts with local companies, but constantly cooperates with sports clubs and voluntary associations (es. the association of blood donors or the Red Cross) and especially with local authorities. I think these are the real strength of the schools because they are in contact with professionals of various kinds that may be active on two fronts:

1) to raise motivation and interest in students

2 ) be the ideal bridge connecting with the real worl , which happens to be one of the essential characters PBL approach.

Pierluigi. I think that it would be a good idea to get involved in our school some associations that work in our small town. For example, we already work with an association which collaborate with us about the management of our library. We also want to get the students involved in this kind of work who like collaborating a lot with teachers and volunteers.

2016-06-17 09:36:16 UTC

Anna La Montagna (Italy)

2016-06-17 09:58:46 UTC

From this school year is required to start from the third high school classes a path of school-work. In my third health biotechnology class the school contacted the food industries near the school. From next year the students divided into groups of six or eight guys will go to industry and should concretely see how preserved foods. During this school year the classes were conducted mainly in the classroom.
I think ASL (alternating training) is a new and a good approach to learn doing but it requires careful selection of the facilities that can accommodate pupils and a great collaboration of all the teachers of the class council. This isn't so easy.

Michela Furia

mickymicky — 2016-06-17 10:00:07 UTC

In my school there are every year projects. One involves students of the final year of primary school and the first of secondary. Students and teachers work togheter. This year we learn t
he activities were about coding. Other connection to the community is the project" Baby mayor" in which students of primary and secondary school vote their mayor.

Bianca Giangrande (Italy)

giangrande_bianca — 2016-06-17 10:37:37 UTC

I teach in a middle school in a provincial town (RIMINI) Our school does have contacts with local companies,Hera e SGR.
There are many project every year.

I think these are the real strength of the schools because they are in contact with professionals of various kinds

Alessia (Italy)

alessia_lalomia — 2016-06-17 10:56:42 UTC

Connecting with the community is an important goal wich every education system should evaluate. I work in a risk school so the educational institute collaborate with Trade’s Square Foundation and other educational institutes of the area to contrast social disadvantage and promote occasions of working. This partnership consists of campaign awareness, testimonies of workers, families, volunteers who increase the spirit of collaboration, empathy and healthy conversation about social problems. Another significant project is “Erasmus Plus”, during one specific part of the term students and teachers from different part of the Europe welcome in our school, every class participate creating a product that ends with an exhibition.

Fernanda Vicente, Portugal

fernandavicente — 2016-06-17 11:02:18 UTC

School must be connected with the sorrounding community.
Last year I found an outsider partner: the main library of the city . During the all year we develop several activities and enlarge our partnership. My students did some lecture sessions to nursing homes that were coming to the library to ear the students reading. We celebrate the poetry day... etc.

Adelino, Portugal

bemarinhas — 2016-06-17 11:13:18 UTC

Now, teaching visual education, is not very realistic to me engage people from community in class.However, being a school librarian, I usually invite writers to speak about books that students are reading and share his experience and participate in writing and reading contests we organize.
In the past, when the curriculum included projects working, the local Natural Park staff was very often engaged in collaboration in the development of projects, coming to the classes, and preparing visits.

ladyrandal — 2016-06-17 11:17:44 UTC

My school usually has collaborations with local artists, who help realising set designs and costumes for plays, and with sport organisations. A lot more could be done. We could build up collaborations for projects about our cultural heritage with the organisation Italia Nostra: we could have meetings and they could become our "project client" if we succeed in creating a good research and a form of promotion/ protection (web site, booklet, drama ecc.) for the forgotten historical sites in the area. Collaborations could be established with the bishop too, who holds a wonderful private archive where students could make research. In my town an association organises an annual event which tries to recreate the '50s atmosphere for a couple of days. It would be great to involve students, linking this event to a broader in-school project. Since we live in an agricultural area, we could arrange a project on agricultural change and invite farmers to explain their work.

Ayşe Gül Özbilen, Turkey

ayshezbil — 2016-06-17 11:18:21 UTC

Our school has no collaboration partner right now. There is just two museum in Adana and they are close usually. There is doctors to work with, about systems of our body, healty feeding, contagious disease, or genetic desiase but when I orientated my students to them the doctors didn't want to spend time with my students. There is airport near my school, and my students are really interested in with plains. Maybe I can collaborate with them to touch the frictional force or thecnological development of transportation.
Also there is Military Campus near our school. We can contact with them about our national days, or history lessons. Once I cooparate with my theacher in university to observe the birds on environmental education project.
My students were very satisfied to using big cameras and lenses.
I don't know who else can collaborate with us.

Ines Matusin, Croatia

2016-06-17 11:41:41 UTC

My school usually has collaborations with local artists, city representatives, sports organizations, domestic agricultarilss and other organisations that can be found in our city's neighbourhood. Students of English language can make videos on English language, presenting and promoting our city cultural, sport and natural treasures. They can also connect witl local business people to share their experiences. Students successfully colloborate with their teachers during interdiscplinary projects or assignments. The teacher also collaborate with the teachers from other schools to form creative school network.

Angelo Chiarle, Rivoli, Italy

Angelo — 2016-06-17 12:02:54 UTC

Since 2004, since when I started to practice authentic assessment, I realized that the real tasks require real evaluators, who are not teachers, so that they may take the role of coaches and facilitators, not of judges.
Until now I have never succeeded in my Liceo, partly because of my teaching subject (Latin).
However, this year a new law has introduced the requirement for K11-13 students to do some experiences of school-work outside school.
This could be a new beginning, but I see a risk that the school-work is reduced to a kind of a class vacation. The challenge is to involve external stakeholders in the evaluation of the learnings that the studentds do acquire in school. This needs a new mindset.

Susana in Faro, PT

2016-06-17 12:20:17 UTC

Teaching Maths to 1st year students of various degrees not in Mathematics (Pharmaceutical Sciences, Biochemistry, Environmental Sciences, Computer Sciences) I don’t have enough knowledge on their field of expertise to properly identify the best outside partners to look for. What I can do is to contact the directions of the degrees and the associations of former students to come and be the audience and judges of my students work.

Serenella Ursitti, IT

serenella_ursitti — 2016-06-17 12:38:04 UTC

At my school, we cooperate with local authorities and with other schools in the area. The next school year will participate also to an Erasmus program and our idea is to make contact with other schools in Italy and abroad

Maria Nica, IT

mariellanica — 2016-06-17 12:59:43 UTC

My School organize a lot of activities with stakeholders in Penisola Sorrentina: hotel associations, foundation Sorrento, cultural associations, music. Organizes school work alternating with hotels, tourist agencies and created a network with the other schools in our area.

Jelena Alekniene

2016-06-17 13:04:58 UTC

In Lithuania there is a collaborative platform "Who needs it?". (http://www.kamtoreikia.lt/)This platform is an intermediary between the different areas of professional, willing to share their experiences, as well as schools, seeking to give the students real life knowledge. Often at our school we have a professional form various fileds having lectures or running workshops. With their help, every year we organize events and projects of a Safer Internet week, of Code week or Career week.

Vali,Romania

2016-06-17 13:12:55 UTC

My school has a tradition in volunteering for people in need; we often organize charity activities. We also act for environment, we participate to contests, cultural days. The stakeholders for our projects are from institutional partnerships, the Parents Comitee. We are developing a national project called FOR A NONVIOLENT SCHOOL, which arrived to the 3'rd national year , with participants from more than 15 counties. So, our staff and the students are ready for the next step, an international project ( we tried, no grants yet). The NGO's, other types of organisations have their serious role in proposing and developing educational partnerships.

Jessica Bruini, Italy

bruinijessica — 2016-06-17 13:37:36 UTC

- Associations or organizations related to the historical background of the area: we held some historical exhibits in our school as well as conferences and meetings, where these associations were also invited to bring their contribution. Thanks to this collaboration our school has received from those associations some funds and we were able to send all the students of third grades on a schooltrip to France;

- Some teachers have started collaborations on eTwinning for 2-3 years;

- We are partners in an Erasmus Plus KA2 project.

But most of all I think that the first people to involve in school life are our students' parents and families. They are the first link to the community the school is settled in. So they are the first stakeholders who can bring in commitment, resources, motivation and involvement. Starting from that we can make circles larger and larger until we get to higher levels, like for example the municipality and its representatives.

Caterina Falanga, Italy. The most of the tools used in collaboration were presented. I use Edmodo in my activities.

falangacaterina — 2016-06-17 13:54:56 UTC

Elena Pezzi, Italy

elenapezzi — 2016-06-17 15:06:01 UTC

I work with students between 17 and 19 and I teach them Spanish literature. One of the activities I always do at the beginning of their "literature adventure" is getting to know the author of their text book (she is a friend of mine). She comes and speaks with my students to show them the process of writing a text book, how to work with literary texts. They ask her questions, interact, learn how to "ask" information from a text etc. We set up a little workshop where she and I act like supervisors and they are the authors of a chapter of their "literature dream book". They are always very interested and engaged; it does not often happen to them to know a writer and discover how to be authors themselves!

Maria Georgiadou, Greece

mariageorgiado2 — 2016-06-17 16:11:52 UTC

I work with students between 12-15 years old. I teach them french. People that I use to invite and have contacts with ,are always the parents. I start from them. Then, according to the subject of our project we organize videoconferences, which is , for me, a perfect waw to boost communication. What better if your project has to do with pedagogy and you invite on skype Zoe Redhead, the principal of Summerhill and daughter of the great pedagogue Alexander S. Neill?

Bartolomeo Corbo - Italy

bartolomeo_corbo — 2016-06-17 16:40:56 UTC

My school is very much interested to engage people of our community. In this schoolyear we have engaged on a regular basis one sport and one music organization. Our students (if they want, because we have only the morning lessons)) can take part to sporting and musical activity integrated with morning lessons.

We are working with a Coderdojo for coding and robotic, with some teatral companies and with some organization for legality.

Sometimes, also this schoolyear, we partnered with UNICEF and “Legambiente” (an italian organization for the nature and enviroment safety).

Often we host artists and writers who meet pupils to talk about their works. The last year we have hosted a scientis of our town which non works in USA in a prestigious university research institute. The students are always very happy to meet real people who are serious and work for the good of all.

Of course we also have contacts with government and religious institutions, with other school of our of our territory.

In my school, some of us take part in eTwinning and we think it is a powerful means of collaboration and openness to the world.

Andrea Checchetti

dreache — 2016-06-17 16:49:05 UTC

I recently started a project on the eTwinning portal. The community is made up of teachers of chemistry and English from different schools of the province where I teach. The idea, making use of CLIL methodology, is to create learning scenarios for chemistry by incorporating the use of laboratories online and apps to support teaching and learning activities in the IBSE methodology (Inquiry Based Science Education). Inside the Go-Lab site is possible to use tools and implement inquiry spaces. The aim is to create a community of practice promoting the sensitivity of teachers and students to CLIL methodology in the context of integrating multimedia technologies to realize Inquiry Learning Space (ILS)

Alina Popa

popalina21 — 2016-06-17 16:53:15 UTC

On my first etwinning project I needed the help of local member of city where I live. Specific there were some factories: Treatament Plant for quality Water and Boilling mineral Waters.  The collaboration was open. This helped students to understand more clear  the dues in the project. We had some visits at factories which were so wellcome for the benefits of etwinning project (because there was an European Certificate), for school , and for continuing collaborations with the Public Institutes.

Bruna, Tuscany

rotondi_bruna — 2016-06-17 17:03:54 UTC

Our school takes great pride in the close relationship that has developed over the years with the local community, professionals, organisations, universities etc. Some of these contacts became very important recently when the new law in Italy introducing compulsory work experience for high school pupils came into effect. Our school engages with a number of organisations etc. on a regular basis.They include local ambulance services, animal rights activists,blood donor associations, photography groups, prison volunteer groups, social workers and a local health clinic.We have contacts with university professors and researchers in Pisa and Florence.Two years ago I personally set up a partnership with a university museum in Pisa and this year a second museum in the " Sistema Museale di Ateneo"was added to this joint project.Some alumni living locally or pursuing degree courses around Italy or abroad are also in touch with our school via social networks. Sometimes alumni happily return to give talks and I think others would be available to do so. Lido di Camaiore is a tourist destination and our school is ideally located with an interesting variety of neighbours. Important contacts for projects and/ or work placement opportunities for our students are wide- ranging and include schools, hotel businesses, libraries, bookshops, art galleries,tourist information offices, local newspapers, and garden centres. One of our most important contacts is the local hospital where our language students work as interpreters in Accidents and Emergencies during the very busy summer season.Considering our school is located in an important tourist area I personally think it would be interesting to approach and connect more with experts in tourism namely tourist guides, museum staff, interpreters, translators,or people involved in tourism destinationbranding.Teachers and students could ask the council/ relatives/ friends to identify the right people to engage with.

Diana Gheorghe, Romania

lady_dy40 — 2016-06-17 17:09:05 UTC

In eTwinning project ,, Little ecologists " I have worked with RoRec (Romanian Association for Recycling - is a non-profit collection of waste electrical and electronic equipment) where they collected home appliances and batteries.

Karolina , Croatia

karolina_brlekovic — 2016-06-17 17:26:45 UTC

I work in a high school math teacher. Students aged between 14 and 18 years.
The school is working with the local community, but it is hard to find at this level associates the outside area of Mathematics.
It would be good to talk to former students (students) or parents.

Giuliana Zucchi

gizeta22 — 2016-06-17 17:36:41 UTC

My school has many collaborations with professionals, hospital, university where students do stages during school time or summer.
I bring students to visit astronomical observatory or physics laboratories where they can speek with scientists and work with them for a while

Caterina Musumeci, Sicily ,Catania

2016-06-17 17:36:57 UTC

My students and I together with others in my school have been recently involved in an Erasmus + project based on etwinning platform. The topic I dealt with them was about "migration" and as you know Sicily is the First harbour for thousands of migrants. Our students got in touch with local volunteers' associations , such as "Centro Astalli"whose first goal is help them find a house and integrate with the territory . They met refugees from Syria, Afganistan, etc and asked them several questions they prepared in groups.the result of the first etwinning year in my school has been a great success.
.

Brigida Clemente

brigi_clemente — 2016-06-17 17:55:21 UTC

Italy, Foggia
Hi everybody! My name is Brigida. I am Italian and I live in Southern Italy (Puglia) where I teach English as a foreign language at a Primary School from 2005. From that year I'm an eTwinner so I teach with etwinning as methodological to integrate a European project in teaching. Since 2008 I am an eTwinning Ambassador to promote and enhance the use of this important resource to develop language and computing student's skills.

Thanks to the comunity eTwinning I can improve and increase my teaching skills through constant use of technology and the English language in my daily work and its training proposals provide me with new inspiration for innovative teaching and learning.
This school year I teaching in two schools from two small towns of my province. In this schools of mountains people are few and for this reason classes are conposte of few pupils 15/20. In both schools there is only one class for every age level. I teach English in all classes and therefore I'm in contact with all colleagues. Both pupils and teachers are very supportive of new experiences!

Ida B. Italy

2016-06-17 18:55:42 UTC

I thought I did not really need to go through section 2.4 because I already had in mind to carry out my project with eTwinning... but I was wrong. The videos and especially my colleagues's contributions in the padlet gave me great ideas: why not engaging our students in writing leaflets and materials for local museums in English? Why not engaging them into planning a campaign for a local attraction or the town itself? Why not engaging them in preparing a performance in English for parents? Why not involving them into volunteering as guides for tourists? And so many why not keep coming up in my mind... so why not bringing the real world in my school and, especially, why not bringing my students out into the real world? ;)

Clara Abegão

claraabegao — 2016-06-17 19:05:35 UTC

Portugal
My school has very good and strong relations with the local university Universidade do Algarve, and with other superior schools.
We have also good relations with local companies where our professional courses students are training in work context, such as the district Hospital, clinics, hotels and other touristic facilities, spots organizations, IT companies, and other, related to the professional courses we have at school. My school has an “Open day” in which everyone who is interested may visit the school, and even attend to some classes where students explain what they do. This is a very important activity, specially for those students who are not quite sure want they want to do in the future. It’s important too for partnerships with enterprises. Our partners use to go to school to cooperate in days when students expose what they do when working out of school. Our local University is always present, helping students in their project, not only with materials but also with experts. We work a lot with them.

The local authorities support us, too.

Lina Mosca

2016-06-17 19:50:49 UTC

My school has many collaborations with community partners. Students get a taste of real world when experts of local organisations come visite our school. last month came expert of local industry and they work with them and show how a plastic bottle can become a sweather.
my school neightbours are also green association like "Legambiente" with whom we work during the year, organise some events and go out with our students to discovery green areas in our territory and how safeguard them.
we have elevate engagement too when we invite mother tongue teacher from local school to assess language skills in our students.
Once a year we invite parents and they assess pupils work or buy their products

ToniaC- Italy

tonia_calo — 2016-06-17 20:25:40 UTC

I teach at a Secondary high school with three different branches so a lot of activities are run according to the different curricula , but we as teachers always try to share common projects . For example running or joining eTwinning/ Erasmus + projects; training work experience in local firms ; meeting with local officers for e-Safety etc. We can rely on the support of local administration and on students’ family as well

Ana David - Portugal

ana_david1971 — 2016-06-17 20:25:55 UTC

My school has a collaboration with the our parish council and other schools. Thanks to this partners our school can do a very different range of projects and activities which engages and motivates the students.

Pedro Costa, Portugal

pedro_mmco — 2016-06-17 20:41:28 UTC

I know several people involved in etwinning projects, as well as some projects and I am registered in etwinning platform. I have not been directly involved in any project with my students, but will be something to think about the future, because I would like to develop projects also in this sense and can promote exchange between students from different schools and countries.
My school has partnerships with the local authority and with the parish that allows the development of various types activities such as solidarity. Next school year we also organize various interdisciplinary activities of different areas that involve all students, school community and external participants.

Maria Pereira

prof_majoper — 2016-06-17 20:54:30 UTC

This year I was involved in an eTwinning activity.
Some classes in English subject sent information of our students and our country to classes in seven European countries. We received, by mail, the postcards and letters of these students. There was an exchange between students from different cultures.

Ivana Luptacikova, Slovakia

2016-06-17 21:09:29 UTC

I don't have enought experiences with collaboration outside classroom, outside school. One way is eTwinning project and I try do it thenceforth I engaged to eTwinning community. Other way of collaboration outside is inviting people from our community - our parents, some civic Association, educational companies to school. These people come to us but not regular basic, only for one meeting. Almost every year we invite people from Astronyx, educational company, which prepare very interesting popular science lecture. This school year I cooperated with one of our parents and we did some lesson about financial literacy. I think that we don't have enought opportunities for collaboration outside, from our neighborhood.

MarcoFelice, ITALIA

2016-06-17 21:11:09 UTC

My school works with local entities on security in the region and also with local artistic realities musicians actors singers and dancers , but not only art and culture and sport take part in the school situation during the academic year , even doctors psychologists for laboratories science and engineers for the computer lab. For next year there are plans to a computer lab -based 3D printing by doing so the children can not only create their projects on paper but also see them realized .

Charikleia Thomaidou/GR

haditoc — 2016-06-17 21:17:41 UTC

Every year I am working at another school. All of them involve the community in the learning procedure of the students. We invite or visit organizations like Action Aid, initiatives and municipal movements for stray dogs, experts to talk about bulling or nutrition etc., sometimes we have a guest author who reads out of his book and discusses with our students. In my German class we developed a partnership with another school from the nearest region. First they wrote letters to each other and later met together to sing German songs and exchanged gifts.

Cinzia Spogli. ITALY

cinzia_spogli — 2016-06-17 21:20:24 UTC

I know some people involved in eTwinning projects and I am in eTwinning platform. I have not been directly involved in any project with my students, but I would like to next year. I teach literature and history. My school has partnerships with the local authority, several firms, voluntary associations, many other schools and it's involved in many different projects.

Argiro Zikouli, Greece

azikouli — 2016-06-17 21:21:06 UTC

Well, psychology is my area. I teach different topics, from Neuropsychology, to General Psychology, to Personality, to Experimental Psychology, to Cognitive Psychology, et.c Privacy is a big issue for us psychologists. I would like my students of neuropsychology to have the opportunity to visit a hospital, in order to see neuropsychological patients, but this would not be allowed. However, I could try to contact my university and the department of psychology, to share resources or to ask them to allow us to be part of a lecture at the postgraduate level. This would inspire and motivate my students to see "what's next" (in the academic level) as well as have a contact (even intermediate) with neuropsychological cases, who have been approached and studied by students of the university, who met them and assessed them. Another think I could do is to contact other professors of my college (who teach management, advertisement) and ask them to interact with my students of general psychology, as to how psychology could be of practical application to real life, and particularly into a very demanding area, that of advertisement. This way they would realize that what they do is tied to real life and has always a practical/applied application. Another think I could do to help my students of Psychology of Personality understand the concept of personality testing would be to ask people from my college to discuss with them criteria for hiring people at the college and what is the role of personality assessment (either formal or informal) in that process. I could go on further thinking about other people from my community, that I have never thought about engaging before!!

Eugenia Papanikolaou, GREECE

eugpapan — 2016-06-17 21:45:23 UTC

The last two years my school was involved in an Erasmus+ project about student entrepreneurship. We contacted and invited to our school parents of our students which were successful entrepreneurs to talk with the students, we visited local businesses, we made contacts with Universities. I live and work in a small town and it is not so difficult to engage people from the local community. We could also contact and ask for support non governmental organizations, museums, scientists regarding the theme of the project.

Marisa Rocha, Portugal

2016-06-17 23:26:03 UTC

Cork is a 100% recyclable and, although it is produced mostly in Alentejo, in the south of Portugal, it is in my area, in the north, that it is transformed. As a Citizenship teacher I develop a partnership project in which I involve the class I tutor. In groups, students make lists of restaurants they want to establish partnerships with and then they go to those restaurants and collect the corks they have gathered for us. We then hand in all the corks we collected which in turn will get recycled and also contribute to the plantation of autochthonous (indigenous) trees in collaboration with QUERCUS, a national environmental organisation.

Olga Keramida/Greece

olkeramida — 2016-06-18 03:46:38 UTC

We call many times in kindergarten authors talk about books,, doctors to talk about health, fire fighting to exercise us for earthquake, it is part of the curriculum of the Kindergarten.

Rosario Lynch/ Ireland

rosariolynch203 — 2016-06-18 05:31:16 UTC

We invited professionals from citizen information centres to participate in a number of workshops on Interview techniques; students were highly motivated; they prepared their own CV working, discussing and sharing ideas in small groups .First they worked on drafting their own CV, discussing ideas; searching in the internet for best formats. They continued to research on the types of questions they may asked during a job interview. They also participated in Role-plays, simulating interviews while the professional gave them feedback and recognition for their creativity and enthusiasm .

I feel that involving members of the community in the learning process gives students a sense of reality, as the link with their learning to the real world, becomes more meaningful.

LenaR, Greece

rossiou — 2016-06-18 05:35:29 UTC

I do coordinate a group of students named as VOLUNTEENS and the aim of this group to enhance volunteering in students' Life. For this we do cooperate with a range of non governmental organisations for common activities and/or sharing their volunteering aims and work. The issues of our activities are Personal Development, Environment, Humanism and Health. And we have set up an eTwinning project for it!
And we have set up an eTwinning project for it entitled "WE Volunteens, WE change the world!"

Michela (Italy)

2016-06-18 06:29:12 UTC

In Italian Secondary High School, expecially vocational high school , contacts with external partners ad professioials are common. Besides a training period is compulsory for all students

Training periods are scheduled for 3rd-4rth-5th classes : students spend a few weeks as trainee in an entreprise, or public service agencies- The school where I work is in contact with: advertising agencies , shps/store( for Graphic Design vocationale school); schools, hospitals, other social/health services (for social-healt vocational; accountancy offices for Accounting vocational school ;

Students find training experiences very interesting

Giampaolo, Italy

giampaolo_squarcina — 2016-06-18 07:29:02 UTC

One way to involve external actors is interact with parents. Many of them have professional activities and/or a network of knowledge from which to draw. Moreover, even the alumni can be important for this.

Francesca Lovece (Italy)

flovece — 2016-06-18 07:42:24 UTC

I have no experience of collaborating with professionals in a personal project but in my school there were many examples: librarians, writers, consumer associations, military corps. The problem is that the collaboration is often limited to an event, a conference or two, but PBL requires a total engagement. For the problem that I'm elaborating, concerning search for employment, it could be useful to involve a recruiter.

Sylvie / France-Tunisia

2016-06-18 08:19:53 UTC

There is some natural synergy at school: Parents are invited at school meetings or pupils’performance. They help in school trips. They also vote on “social” aspects of life at school.

Due to security measures, we organize Skype sessions with experts: Artists, architects, teachers….

What remains to be improved is to involve the whole school community whatever its position: cleaning agents, accountants, ...

Panagiota Papaioannou, Greece

2016-06-18 08:40:23 UTC

Parents are the closest people of our community we could connect with. According to their professional field, we could ask them to our class or go to the place of their work.

From time to time, we have asked firemen to show students what to do in case of fire, policemen in order to guide them through being responsible drivers and pedestrians, dentists for the right care of their mouth hygiene, nurseries for the right body hygiene and basic first aid consultation and dietologists for healthy way of eating.

Kleri, Greece

evriklia19 — 2016-06-18 08:42:11 UTC

My school is a music school and that why it is open to every sollaboration that comes from the music world. We often invite professional muiciancs to come an play with our students or to have a concert and a masterclass with them. It helps the students think about their future in music industry and get to know the difficulties and the pleasures of that profession. We also try to visit other places like the museum of the city or have archaeologists organising projects in the school in order for the students to understand the rich history of our region better.
We also visit some local companies.

Barbara Horvatic, Croatia

2016-06-18 09:06:02 UTC

My school is a small public school, in a small village. We try to connect with the local organisations , like firefighters or traditional dancers, and the local bakery. And then we organize competitions, shows or Christmas plays... We have alo interacted with local doctors and they have had their presentations. We have organized the meetings with children's writers, and the students love these inteactions very much.
We could try to involve our parents more, and ask them to present their work, and organize the project days with them....
There are so many great ways and ideas how to connect our school with the society:-)

emma giurlani

2016-06-18 09:28:20 UTC

As I said in my first presentation, I teach in Mirandola , a small town in the North of Italy in the Region Emilia-Romagna . I 'm a convinced eTwinner and I have an ongoing collaboration that lasted for several years with many eTwinners and I had the opportunity to share many useful experiences and to learn a lot from them. Now I'm thinking about the next project for next year. We have ,as a school of a one of the most developed and active biomedical districts in Europe and in the World, regular collaboration with many members of the work community in the area . We share with them the conviction that PBL can benefit both students and future employers . Students have already participated in several projects which have seen a regular collaboration with external experts not only from the biomedical field .

For my next eTwinning project I could collaborate with the regional portal for the Tourist of our region, Emilia Romagna. We could contact first of all our Tourist Information office of our municipality at email address underneath or by visiting their face book page under this link https://www.facebook.com/turismo.comunedicarpi

Turismo IAT Comune Di Carpi

@turismo.comunedicarpi

I could contact also some of my former pupils who are now working for travel agencies and who collaborate with our local government , asking them to collaborate with my students for the next project which is all about advertizing our region → I could contact also the father of one of my students who is a journalist for a regional newspaper: Students could collaborate with ihm learning how to write some aticles in a proper way in order to write an article for the local newspaper explaining their ideas to advertize their region by using the five senses

An other usefull contact could be the local Television : we could ask for some tips about how to design “construct” and conceive a good video presentation.

Manuel, Italy

2016-06-18 09:39:53 UTC

I have not yet started my teaching career, but I think incorporating the local services,such as policmen and fire fighters is a good thing. They are mostly looked at as role models and kids are generally interested in what they do. They can give many examples of positive collaborative efforts

Jasna, Croatia

jasna_sojer — 2016-06-18 09:44:37 UTC

As I work in a School of Midwifery, our activities are often open and connected with the community. Our students are almost every day in hospital learning in practice, they are involved in different health campaigns, also they visit foster homes to care about babies and held lectures in surrounding schools for elementary school students about the importance of washing hands for young ones and about the dangers of early sexual activities for teenagers

Helena Serdoura | Portugal

2016-06-18 09:50:43 UTC

During 2014-2016 I've been coordinating in my school an eTwinning/Erasmus+ in Financial Education - Keep Invest Donate Spend [KIDS] - and some of the thought activities involved liasion with the local community. For that matter, Ss had the opportunity to visit local groceries as well as supermarkets and understand the core business behind the whole structure; bank clercks visited their classes and presented some key issues for debate related with the financial system and banking terms. Later, Ss had the opportunity to visit a bank and understand the functioning structure behind it.

Amalia Di Mascolo, Italy

molinaro_lia — 2016-06-18 10:12:32 UTC

I am sure that no school, and then its students, can work and grow regardless of the environment in which it is inserted and of which it is part.
I work in a technical school and it is situated in a large commercial area in which there are many small businesses.
So, often we ask entrepreneurs, businessmen, accountants for a collaboration in projects so our student feel part of this environment and they don't feel school and work two different worlds very far each other

2016-06-18 11:01:52 UTC

Margherita
COLLABORATION from the outdoor. Collaboration with other partners, either other classes of the school or from other schools, like in etwinning, is very important. In my experience my students had great collaboration experiences thanks to etwinning projects. Moreover we find that developing a class exchange can be a great project. for example a good experience was with the project " was beauty in Roman times like in ours?". We developed this project with a class in France and the students prepared bracelets and jewels in Roman style, then compared Roman baths with the modern spa.Moreover at school we often invite experts, people from associations, voluntary groups or from professions. Anyway I find that the challenging events occur when the students have to make or to show their outcomes to someone, or have to take part to real-life events like it was in the activity " Paint the World" when they drew and painted a murales in town.

Maria Vincenza Giglio

mariavincenzagiglio — 2016-06-18 11:10:21 UTC

My school is open to the territory, has many partnerships with associations and organizes events as you can see in
Lapoloindiretta and in Polo.lettura. So I think there will be problems ask for support in identifying the right people.

Elena FP, Italy

2016-06-18 11:20:30 UTC

My school is coordinating an Erasmus+ project on the theme of sports: during this first year of the project, we have been involving quite a few people and associations with whom we are collaborating. It has all been a matter of networking, let's say: people know people and on and on... We started from friends of colleagues, or former colleagues who had useful contacts in the local community. This way, we managed to involve sports associations, local authorities, sports doctors...and we organized conferences, lessons on various topics (doping, healthy eating...) as well as sport events (a race, lessons of unsual sports like climbing, etc.). As part of the project, we also involved young athletes of different sports: our students met and interviewed them on their training, daily life etc.

I think the main thing is being creative and getting started. If we don't know anyone ourselves, some colleague or friend can have useful contacts in the local community. It's very important not just for a PBL activity, but to the whole school to open up to the community and engage with real-world problems, persons, activities.

Michela Italy

2016-06-18 11:29:21 UTC

In Italian Secondary High School, expecially vocational high school , contacts with external partners ad professioials are common. Besides a training period is compulsory for all students

Training periods are scheduled for 3rd-4rth-5th classes : students spend a few weeks as trainee in an entreprise, or public service agencies- The school where I work is in contact with: advertising agencies , shps/store( for Graphic Design vocational school); schools, hospitals, other social/health services (for social-healt vocational; accountancy offices for Accounting vocational school ;

Students find training experiences very interesting .

Vittoria, Itay

vtrepic — 2016-06-18 11:41:05 UTC

I teach in a school for boys aged 14 to 19 years of age in Italy. In our country it has entered into force a law making it mandatory for all high schools an alternating training path. Through these paths the third, fourth and fifth have relationships with those companies, associations and local authorities that allow them to have a first contact with the world of work

Ljubica, Croatia

2016-06-18 12:35:15 UTC

I work in two schools, one is small public school in suburbs and one is in the center of metropolis. Both schools have great collaboration with parents and local community. Some parents are firefighters so we go and take part in their exercise. Some of them are doctors, teachers, bakers, hairdressers, dancers, singers, athletes etc. They all bring some of the real-life situations in our schools. Or we go outside of our schools and visit them. We go to museums, theaters, opera, we meet with the writers or athletes... This is really a good way to collaborate with the real-world.

Giovanni Capogna

2016-06-18 12:39:44 UTC

The school where I work does not have contacts with local companies, but constantly cooperates with sports clubs and voluntary associations and especially with local authorities. I think these are the real strength of the schools because they are in contact with professionals of various kinds that may be active on two fronts: to raise motivation and interest in students and to be the ideal bridge connecting with the real world , which happens to be one of the essential characters PBL approach .

lamjed , Tunisia

2016-06-18 12:43:50 UTC

In my country , involving the community is almost impossible. 1-It's forbidden for teachers to bring outsiders to their classrooms. 2-It is also impossible to take students outside the school.3-There are no English-speaking partners that students could engage with to practise their english.

Sandro

rovels — 2016-06-18 13:09:15 UTC

my school try to implement collaborations with local economical environment . A lot more could be done. We could build up collaborations for projects about our cultural heritage . Important to succeed in creating a good research and a form of promotion/ protection (web site, booklet, ) Collaborations could be established with the bishop too, who holds a wonderful private archive where students could make research. I also try to implement collaboration with larger company but not easy at moment.

Gina Naples Italy As I’ve said before, the school where I work is located in an area considered at high risk. We work with a great organization of volunteers called “centro Ozanam” The Centre has become a meeting point and social presence in one of the areas most at risk of the City of S. Antimo. It focuses attention and effort on the child and adolescent world, creating a real educational project, aimed at preventing, reinserting and integrating minors within the social fabric by stimulating their psychological and cultural learning. The areas on which they insist the activities that the Centre plays is characterized by: a) heterogeneity of the population, since a high proportion comes from the City of Naples with difficulties in social inclusion that has repercussions on the behavior of children; b) assistance to dialysis and awareness to their issues; c) families with big economic problems; d) family disintegration due to imprisonment of either spouse; e) the absence of reference points acts to socialization and training to ethical and social values; f) of truancy problems; g) risk of involvement in juvenile delinquency; h) abnormal family situations and / or non-regular. With the help of the volunteers we organize activities during and outside of the school hours trying to involve students in constructive projects. The projects involve different activities such as sport, drama and music Also during the spring we have the legality month project and we plan many activities to implement good citizenship and ethic values.

2016-06-18 13:34:51 UTC

http://www.centroozanam.it/home/chisiamo.asp �

Raquel Sánchez. Spain.

rachelsan — 2016-06-18 13:58:05 UTC

Our school is a large school in Fuerteventura. We have around 1000 students aged 12-18. We are partly vocational school, in the field of Catering and Hospitality, so we also count on +18 students, from this professional fields.The school participates in many projects, related to the most different fields, so that we are linked to many parts of our community. Some of them are:

Public institutions are always present in our school. We often collaborate.
Teachers working at the vocational school, in the field of Catering and Hospitality, have many contacts to hotel managers, restaurants, and Tourist information points.
Chamber of Commerce has also a good relation to school.
We collaborate with Health services, who come weekly to school in the frame of our project "Health promoting schools network"
The local police.
Aula 3i, in the field of ICT.
Radio stations and local TV have also worked with us before.
We collaborate with sport institutions who use our sport facilities in the evening. We have further connections to sport institutions, like the sailing school or the Herbania football club.
We work with 2 travel agencies, whose owners have children in our school.
Some of our students come from Germany, so there is a number of parents, who speak German, and could be interested in participating.

After this reflection, I realize I might count on a lot of professionals to cooperate with my students in their tasks.

If I want my students to prepare a TV show, showing their partners in Germany what expects them here when they visit us, I think I might count on the professionals from the tourist industry, who can help my students with information about the island. And depending on the topics my students decide to talk about, I might count on other professionals from different fields, such as sport, or catering. Of course some help from local TV professionals would be perfect when recording and editing. The problem might be that most of these people are always very busy. For this purpose we also count on a group at school, called Project TV. They started working in the frame of our Erasmus+ project, and they count on cameras, and knowledge on editing software that can be very helpful.

AnnaliFe/Italy

dseconda16 — 2016-06-18 14:23:10 UTC

In our school the contact with the local reality is very strong.

Three examples:

- The months of educational guidance for the eighth grade involving school alumni (who are in the classes to tell their experience), teachers and principals of other schools (full day is dedicated to this activity), and School Board of the province organize meetings to inform students about the possibilities offered by the territory;

- Teachers organize meetings with the artisans of the city and its surroundings, and at school play an afternoon of work, in which they work alongside the pupils, to show the characteristics of their business;

- The "social day": an active citizenship and participation project aimed at young people throughout Italy; in our area it is promoted by the “Fratelli dell’Uomo” (“Frères des Hommes”). The boys plan to manual work (painting, paint, work in the shops, entertainment, cleaning areas, baby-sitting, car wash ... but in any territory concerned they do something different and original in accordance with private, non-profit reality, institutions and schools).

Sandra Maljavac, Croatia

smaljavac — 2016-06-18 14:43:39 UTC

Our school includes a variety of vocational courses, but is probably most known for its Chef department. This is because their teachers are also well- known chefs and professionals in the field meaning they make sure all of the students pass practical training. Apart from the activities and tasks they do for school grades, they are highly involved in public life and are a regular guest at all local manifestations where the local community can also get a real taste of their work and improvement. They don't only learn how to cook, but they also know how to present and finally sell their products.

Maja Loborec, Croatia

maja2016 — 2016-06-18 14:43:56 UTC

My school is a very small school in a small village. Our community communication is not as strong as it could be in my opinion. The only teachers in my school who actively communicate and collaborate with the community is the 2nd grade teacher who organizes a project about the "olden times" where the grandparents of her pupils come to school to show the pupil how things were done when they were young. And the other teacher is our PE teacher who organizes sport competitions with a neighbouring school.

I think there is opportunity to communicate and collaborate with our little community by talking to the business owners whose children go to school. There are a couple of animal produce businesses in the village I work in that I believe would really like to work with us in a new way (other then supplying us with food).

Mihaela Popescu-Romania

2016-06-18 14:44:03 UTC

My college I work in offers good examples of successful engagement of outside professionals in the PBL work of students. For instance, students in the 10th grade or in the 12th grade, having tourism and public alimentation as their specialization are doing practice at some luxurious hotels and restaurants from my town. They are cooking, serving food at tables, offering relevant information, making reservations in specific restaurants and hotels, our college has professional contracts with. In this way, students learn how to collaborate with hotels or restaurants’ staff, enjoying real communication in an authentic context with real-world clients, colleagues or professionals, while also practicing their skills, competence and receiving recognition, money and professional support. Surely, this practice in the field students are interested in will help them in their curriculum vitae and implicitely, in their future employment. Indeed, my college keeps a close touch with school alumni, inviting them periodically to specific meetings where styudents can receive answers at individual questions related to a particular field – in this way, students can gain confidence and enjoy professional support for a future career in the field they are interested in.

Angeliki Kougiourouki, Greece

akougiou — 2016-06-18 15:08:19 UTC

I teach in an Experimental Primary school which is connected to the Local University and more specific to the Department of Pedagogical Studies which trains students to be teachers. A lot of them every semester come into my classroom to practice either watching me teaching or teach themselves. All the teachers of the school collaborate with the professors from the university. Apart from this the school has a Supervisory Scientific Council that consists of a professor from the university, an education consultant, the head-teacher and two other teachers from the stuff. This Supervisory Scientific Council approves any innovation or gives support to our teaching strategies. As far as concerning the development of national or eTwinning projects, I often involve parents or other organizations, such as the Municipality, environment organizations, or others (depending on the topic) who stand besides us and help us when we “knock their door”. I believe that connecting the pupils with professional from the “real –world” makes them more responsible. They behave like adults who ask for a respect to their work.

Rosalba, Italy

rosalba_cerrone01 — 2016-06-18 15:16:57 UTC

Last year at school my students took part in several projects engaging local organisations. For example third year students worked on a history project about secon world war and the representatives of the local veteran association were invited to tell their experiences in a conference held at school. The town police officers were invited to have seminars about road safety, while digital experts had some lessons about cyberbullying. So, thinking about the PBL activity I'd like to carry on with my students I think I might ask for support to several people.

Marica Jurec, Croatia

mjurec — 2016-06-18 15:39:08 UTC

In my class, I often involve "real-world". We learn in the museum, at the airport and the zoo. We visit the theater and cinema. In my classes I include parents, grandparents, actors, etc. It is very important for learning. And my students are very interested and happy.

Daniela Bunea, Romania

arghir_daniela — 2016-06-18 15:45:06 UTC

I am especially fond of the visits to the museums and to the zoo, where experts talk to us, and involve us in hands-on activities, and learning happens in the real world. :-)

Elisa Saraiva, Portugal

elisasaraiva6 — 2016-06-18 16:16:39 UTC

I work in a small town of the north of Portugal called Vizela. This year I had coalborate with the comunity in a project about entrepreneurship education. The project involves the schools of 8 cities of our region. The students need to develop a
business idea, implement it and disclose it in the community.
I have worked with local partners in order to help my students to acomplish theire project.

Elena

eloiz123 — 2016-06-18 16:46:41 UTC

I teach English as a foreign language. I could involve the local community in our projects but I'd have to make sure these people have a good knowledge of the language.
I feel that etwinning projects give us the chance to use english for real communication.

marasofia84 — 2016-06-18 16:48:03 UTC

Mara Pinto, Portugal - Guinea Bissau
These are my students and this is a visit to the near hospital that had a campaign to give blood. We were working Didactic and how we should do a study visit, so we did one planed by the team and then we where confronting it with reflection questions. In the hospital we knew all the places and staff and we did some activities.

As I work with special needs children, I find that it is always a good thing to engage them in the "real-life" situations and activities as much as possible, and to provide them with the occasions to practise and raise their independancy at basic living skills. We would like to, for example, host a person with the training dog so that students could excercise their skills of approaching the dog, taking care of it, feedin it, learning about it's needs, providing for it's basic needs, etc..

marija_fg — 2016-06-18 16:55:18 UTC

Marija, Croatia

Paolina Martorana

paola_martorana — 2016-06-18 17:04:05 UTC

I teach English as a foreign language in a private school run by Jesuits. I'd really like to find Jesuit schools in different countries willing to collaborate with us.

Nuno Proença. Helping our municipality on their website

profnunoproenca — 2016-06-18 17:16:04 UTC

My students went outside gathering georeferencing information in important places on our municipality (monuments, pharmacies, etc.) They processed the data and it was placed in a map inside their website.

Artashes Torosyan

2016-06-18 17:22:29 UTC

eTwinning project TOP 5 OF MY NATIVE PLACE

Online event with students from Ukraine.

eTwinning (Els Teerlinck, Belgium)

els_teerlinck — 2016-06-18 17:57:21 UTC

For a couple of years I work on different eTwinning-projects.
An exchange of christmas cards was what I started with. Now I also have my own project. It's called: my world, my life, my passions.
Every month we agree on a theme we can work on: our friends, our pets, our country, pop-stars. We share that with children of other countries

Ana Abaladas (Portugal)

ana_abaladas — 2016-06-18 19:10:51 UTC

The school and the community must work in partnership. In Portugal, the Parish Councils and Municipal Councils are often partner schools, providing school transport, as well as developing projects. Firefighters and police also promote awareness-raising to schools. Also, allow you to conduct study visits at their premises. In this way, students get to know better their community.

Anabel F (Barcelona)

aformos2 — 2016-06-18 19:27:40 UTC

We normally engage families to collaborate with the school. They come as experts talking about their job or their hobby. We also use families or members of the educative community to participate in activities with the students.

Isabel Nunes, Portugal

2016-06-18 19:30:39 UTC

The school has been establishing partnerships on special education with special education institution to develop projects destined to students with severe special educational needs, namely at the level of hypo therapy and hydrotherapy. Still on the students’ level with special educational needs we have established partnerships so the students could develop training and environmental protection projects with the city hall and with the company responsible for the appreciation and treatment of urban residue. Also with the nursing home to pass on traditions. }G{X��

Tihana Svoren Kolarec, Croatia

t_svoren_kolarec — 2016-06-18 19:35:53 UTC

I am an English teacher in a small village school. We have done some collaboration with people outside the school for some projects but I think that it is still not enough.Last year we had a project Respect the differences so I took my 5th and 6th graders (who are catholics) to visit mosque where they learned more about the muslims and their religion. Also when we had a project on entrepeneurship parents who are bee keepers showed students everything needed for their business, they also talked to the president of the bee keepers organization. We also collaborated with some parents who were in the war for independence, and with a neighbouring printing company. We invited representatives from different high schools every year to present their schools to 8th graders to help them decide where they want to go after primary school.

Athina Kossyvaki, Thessaloniki, Greece

akossyv — 2016-06-18 19:36:32 UTC

Our school is a small one but every year we've got the habit to invite local professionals, school alumni and the parents of our students to present their profession, to talk about their work and to answer to our students' questions.

Evanthia Kontogouri, Greece

evikont5 — 2016-06-18 19:46:11 UTC

I teach in an upper high school and the only people whoare aloud to engage with our students are those who have a permission from the ministry of education, or professionals who are hired by the state to work with the schools, such us for vocational guidance or health education. But an easy way to involve other people is to organize a visit to a museum, a factory, a sports or science center etc.

Vasilica Gazdac,Romania

vasilicagazdac — 2016-06-18 20:00:36 UTC

Visits in local community workshops traditional craftsmen, visits to museums, contribute greatly to establishing connections between their classroom in the real world .

Francesco M. Manno, Perugia

franzmanno — 2016-06-18 20:01:52 UTC

Inviting professionals from outside school or let students make working experience other than usual activities a good way to put them in the real world and making them acquaintances with with the productive environment.

eliansum — 2016-06-18 20:19:34 UTC

Eliana68
The main mission of my school is legality, and this year we have focused on the environmental education. By means of a partnership with a public utility involved in recycling, we have organized meetings with the pupils, which at their turn, organized meetings with their parents and local inhabitants with the aim to be involved in a correct recycling.

Luis Miguel Miñarro. Spain

lmminarro — 2016-06-18 20:25:15 UTC

It's true that you can find more knowledge out of the school than inside, so why not to use it. The school comunity can offer to you quite a lot of opportunities and of course resources, the only thing you have to do is going out. Children enjoy a lot. I like a lot going to the Public Libray with my students to listen a storyteller or just to get the librarian recommendations for reading.

Simona Curreli (Italy)

simonacurreli — 2016-06-18 20:26:40 UTC

Personally I didn't contact any local professonals for a lesson. I do not have experience in it but I think that if I have to contact knwledge of networks of local professionals in my city it could be difficoult for me. Maybe I can ask people that I know well to meet my students for a "special" lesson.

I do not have a long experience in teaching but in the school when I worked there is a caterer so I think it could be possible to create activities with this business working.

Perhaps as teacher we can ask our students to do a list of people they want to meet to learn about their jobs, after this they can prepare a list of questions and activities they would like to do with.

After it the teacher can organise a meeting and an activity based on students curiosity and requests.

It is more common in the school when I worked that students have experience going out in field trips.

Catarina Rodrigues, Portugal

canrodrigues — 2016-06-18 20:51:55 UTC

I live in Estarreja, a town with 27 000 inhabitants. In my town it’s easy to involve people from the community in student’s work. The city hall is a member of our school cluster with some other organizations. So, for me this is not very difficult to do. Nevertheless, what I think is a very important challenge is to align learning activities and learning goals with the interests of people from the community.

For instance, Estarreja has a very important municipal museum: Egas Moniz Museum. This museum was the holiday home of the Nobel Prize for Medicine António Egas Moniz (1874 - 1955), how was neurologist, researcher, politician and Portuguese writer (he won this Nobel Prize (1949) for his studies related to lobotomy). The city hall has some activities in the museum but all held in a very tradicional way.

http://ensina.rtp.pt/artigo/egas-moniz/

http://casamuseuegasmoniz.com

We could also work with a local Youth Association – Cine-Clube de Avanca – that promotes with the city hall an important film festival: International Festival of Avanca film. This is one of the main international festivals of Film, Video and Multimedia held in Avanca/Estarreja for a week in July that brings to the town some of the most outstanding film buffs in the world. In addition to the exhibition and competition of feature and short films that reach Avanca from around the world, the festival is a meeting with personalities from the film world and an international training opportunities in the field of audiovisual, unparalleled in European context.

www.avanca.com

Catarina Rodrigues, Portugal

canrodrigues — 2016-06-18 20:54:00 UTC

http://ensina.rtp.pt/artigo/egas-moniz/

http://casamuseuegasmoniz.com

www.avanca.com

Dimitra, Greece

2016-06-18 21:14:53 UTC

I work in a primary school in Greece and unfortunately the only people who could come into the classroom and do something with the pupils are those who get a permission from the Greek Ministry of Education. Of course, we could always organise a visit to a nearby bakery or the greengrocer's or any kind of shop, or maybe a visit to the museum and in this way bring pupils in touch with people from the community. We could also visit the local library and ask the librarian to carry out a small scale project with the kids or provide them with the information they will need to do the project in the classroom. The person who works in the school canteen could also be asked to have a talk with the kids and hopefully listen to their suggestions about a healthy snack that could be added in the canteen's menu.

Angelamaria Galderisi - Italy

soleemare_a — 2016-06-18 21:19:39 UTC

Involving people from the community in students' work

Italian secondary school have the chance to realize the so called alternation school-work, that consists in the construction of pathways designed, implemented, monitored and assessed by schools institution in collaboration with private companies and public bodies. This collaboration is developed in the final three years of secondary school. In the school where I work, a Technical School, students had the opportunity to livethis experience for a month. They were divided in small groups and assigned to different public bodies and companies. Some students went to an ICT company, others went to the municipality of the town where the school lies, another group went to an insurance agency nearby. All students were involved in some work after a period of training with tutors working in the businesses involved. Real-world learning is a big motivator in Project Based Learning. My students responded positively to the opportunities they had to tackle challenges or investigate issues that extend beyond the classroom walls. It wasn’t easy to involve people from the community in students' work. It required time, patience and good communication skills to foster good relationships with such individuals, but finally the combined efforts of the headmaster and of his collaborators succeeded in creating a network of local professionals , organizations and businesses, where students could experience an entirely new meaning for their work. The final product of their learning was more real than ever!

Albertina Raposo, Portugal Hello! I must think more about these chances to involve people from outside with students learning and also in students evaluation. I'm sure there are a lot of possibilities but last year, each time I tryed to take the students outside the classroom, actually... they didn't enjoy it. I mean, they were actually quite passives...

2016-06-18 21:21:02 UTC

Roberta Guardini, Italy

2016-06-18 21:22:22 UTC

In Trento there are quite a few opportunities to involve the community in our learning process. Here are some partners I have in mind for science - but there are actually many more!
MUSE - a science / natural history museum that has a long and sound experience in working with schoolteachers. They offer a wide variety of activities with schools and have dedicated staff who develop special projects with teachers.

Meteotrentino - the local met office that manages a web of weather stations on the territory and develop the local weather forecast. Last year we asked for their support to install a weather station at school and visited their headquarters in town with three classes.

APPA, Trentino's agency for environmental protection and prevention

Trento University - each year a team of university researchers acts as jury for the Trentino Young Scientist Challenge (TYSC) - a science fair that involves three different schools.

GabriellaTaulario, Italy, Campania. I think warking together with other people is possible in my small village too, Cimitile (NA), where school is a centre of sharing with not only other schools but above all with local companies and organisations: this is very important because it's a manner to create work for young people and to encourage also tourism in our area. But we can do more, we can involve other foreign schools in our projects not only with the E-twinning platform but also with project of partnership together other countries, like France, Romania, Slovenia, Great Bretain, Greece and more over.

gabriellataurina — 2016-06-18 21:32:56 UTC

Amelia Vilarinho

vilarinhamelia — 2016-06-18 21:50:26 UTC

In after-school care all the activities are outside the classroom. However it is possible to promote collaboration with school environment. During their free-time, children socialize in a playful way. Any project we grow together has to include a strong fun motivation and their participation/involvement is free willing.

This year, daycare collaborated with school/parents association in two main projects: "Christmas Market" and "Open Day".

Zsuzsanna Hamlin, Hungary

2016-06-18 22:00:06 UTC

My experience with local professionals from out of the school is close to none, however at my school we have had programs where we invited local professionals to give lectures or to participate in various activities. My difficulty in finding local collaboration partners is the fact that I need them for ESL. Nevertheless I can come up with some good ideas for partners , native speakers or people who speak good enough English and possibly would be willing to join English activities. Furthermore, I can be a little more flexible too and for the cause I could have Hungarian speaking guests and later the students could reflect in English.

Marília Bação, Portugal

mariliabacao — 2016-06-18 22:13:15 UTC

In Portugal all public schools have a “Conselho Geral” in which we have teachers, school staff, local agents from industry or facilities or politics, parents and students. That helps school to open its doors to the world and understand what stakeholders expect school to do.

This year, A colleague and I have participated in a contest of theatre in French. So, we invited the artistic director of a theatre, the director of the school “Alliance Française” to take part in the jury. I know that school has some protocols with the town hall and with sports organisations

Marina Molla, Greece

mollamarina — 2016-06-18 23:37:09 UTC

My local professional contacts involve a very inspiring archaeologists and Museum Educator. She in cooperation with the rest of the Museums Staff have oppened the Museums Doors to the schools and to the children. My sudents and I have participated in every educational programme that was offered by the Museum
I also know the staff of the centre of Environmental Education so we had a bicycle toor caled "bicycle lovers" across the sea coast. Three years ago while teaching first graders I got an idea why not introduce a new letter of the alphabet by the students parents and their work. It was great and we had so much fun!!! My students learnt about so many proffessions and had so many interesting questions. But above all I could see that the parents were having a great time.

Maria Veropalumbo

2016-06-18 23:46:47 UTC

My school has many collaboration with the local community, professionals, organisations, . Some of these contacts have become very important recently after the introduction of a new law in Italy which introduces work experience in high school

There are also many projects every year with local institutions. This year students of my school collaborate to write a book on local cooking tradition, also they collaborate to a project

promoted by local Police Service on the safe use of social network. They created some videos in which they acted short stories inspyred by real news reports.

Jelena, Lithuania

2016-06-18 23:47:34 UTC

Usually we try to organise projects together with another class, where students collaborate not only with their immediate peers but with students at another school. Also parents can join our lessons.

Songül KURT/Turkey

songulkurt_80 — 2016-06-19 01:17:15 UTC

I have been working at a school that has 1500 students. My school has many special meetings throughout the educational year. At these celebrations, many professionals from local community, many professions from Ministry Of Education, Blood Donation Campaign, come and visit our school. They always listen our projects' presentations made by my students and chat and give feedback about the activities of the projects. While informing these professionals , My students feel much more responsible and 'adult'. They feel that adults respect and give importance to their their work so as a result they feel appreciated and valued.

Sandra Macabre, France

2016-06-19 01:51:02 UTC

I use to collaborate with other classes at the school or from other untries every school year.

Esther Rodríguez

erodr9 — 2016-06-19 02:48:42 UTC

(Summary of my learning diary entry- https://tackk.com/n3q8j4 ( too long).

Reflecting on the involvement of the community in our school I think it can be one of our school strengths. We are used to link our teaching-learning practice with many opportunities to connect it with the real world. We like organizing awareness actions or inviting professionals to share with us their knowledge (a non-governmental organization (NGO) to speak about refugees situation, projects which helps to build strong relationships with institutions and experts , (a yoga teacher, after her collaboration in our “Fairy yoga” etwinning project, comes to help us regulary). We also participate in a collaborative project with an environmental association “el Fartet” a fish in extinction danger which lives in “Llobregat river”. We run a project to save and protect “fartets” in our class… We also joined “Euronet 50/50” a project promoted by the Intelligent Energy Europe that aims to achieve more sustainable schools by saving energy..The idea is that 50% of the cost savings achieved, as a result of the energy efficiency measures undertaken by the students, is returned to the school in a financial transfer.. We learn about different jobs, visit the Town hall, cultural institutions,expositions, theatre,museums… We have received a job shadowing and next year we will participate in an Erasmus plus KA1 (job shadow Finland and study in Italy)…

In my opinion, one of our school weakenesses is the role of the families.. We hope our job shadowing will help to find some fresh ideas to improve our families engagement. I believe if school, families and communities work together toward common goals our pupils will improve their values, their cultural identity and their learning outcomes.

In my next eTwinning project “It Fits! Multiple Intelligences challenges to discover” I want to include the reflection learnt in Mike Kaechele article “Going Public: The Power of Local Community Partners”. I would like to “Brainstorm Potential Partners and Connect to Standards and Partners”. To make a reflection with the partner- countries and before creating the Multiple Intelligence challenges get a real-world connection with their communities, to think before active organizations in our countries, why is our community famous for, which professionals could we contact… Let’s see what happens!

One important group to reach out to is the parent body, which is particularly close in expat communities and international schools. Parents are themselves immersed in the local business or NGO community, and can provide significant and valuable links between schools and the local community.

2016-06-19 03:17:58 UTC

Ana Cristina Carmo,Portugal

2016-06-19 09:20:29 UTC

Our school has some partnerships established with at least three local firms in different areas, as well as protocols with the local municipality and the local health centre. Through these we can visit the local historical sites and have professionals in the field give the students extra information. The different entities (public or private) can come to the school or classes can go to the work sites to do workshops and have some hands on experience concerning different areas of study (history, science, business, tourism, ...). We can still go further in this type of activity by icluding a couple more local businesses that parents own or work at and by contacting alumni that over the years have proven to have shown success in different areas. However, the partners we already work with permit our students from each class to participate in two or three workshops at the school as well as one or two in the workplace, each year. In my opinion the only thing needed now is to better organizes when these workshops / visits take place so as to assure they are significant to a specific learning stage (instead of being simply when its possible for the partner) and trying to diversify this type of initiatives to various different areas of work. (Up til now we usually use field trips outside the school area for this purpose and make little use of local knowledge and entities).

Sonia Sáez, Spain

soniasaez — 2016-06-19 09:39:21 UTC

I coordinate two etwinning projects with several countries and the students working these type of projects are students with special needs, so they feel encouraged when working the tasks for the project and don't realize they are learning at the same time and become motivated too

Ale Suizzo, Italy

2016-06-19 10:31:55 UTC

In my last learning projects we collaborate with media companies (TV and newspaper). The students, as journalists, have gone around the city to interview people or other persons (major for ex.). We have also a regular collaboration with an archeological organization and the cultural heritage regional office for a project called "cultural heritage & business" for our students in alternating training. In this case the students are engaged in direct work in archeological areas or in turist companies.

Teresa Maia, Portugal

mariateresalcobia — 2016-06-19 11:34:44 UTC

My community have some organizations and people, who collaborate with our school in regular basis: local authorities, local business, school alumni, parents, non- governmental organizations, like theater group, sports clubs, local newspaper, cultural associations and senior university.

The constant dialogue with the school board and systematic attention to the dynamics of local life, as well as the exploration of the life contexts of our students can also help us find partners for PBL

The public exposure of the final product of the project-based learning, through exhibitions, lectures, videos, news in the local press, can always be a way to raise more partners for future projects.

In our school we can inform community members about the benefits of PBL using the Website and facebook of the school, the facebook and website of the Valongo county, or local newspaper.

Sometimes we recruit community members to share their expertise to help in the development of specific project, for example action on everyday life during the dictatorship (1928-1974) - meeting with a local personality at the School of Library (old taxi driver and self-taught writer).

To establish a link to the "real-world", we can recruit community clients. In professional courses, but not only, we can establish partnerships with local business, non-governmental organizations, local authorities, in implementing PBL.
This connection can also be done by solving local problems In our city county there
is an initiative of the Municipality: Young participatory budget. Young people
are invited to create a budget to solve a problem in their school or community. The winning projects are approved and are put into practice. This is a great opportunity to implement PBL.

Paula, Portugal

rolo_paula — 2016-06-19 11:41:30 UTC

I invite some experts to amke a workshop about some concepts or technology related to the project students have to develop.

Catarina, Portugal

2016-06-19 11:59:11 UTC

Which organisations or people engage with the school on a regular basis? The companies that supply the school with food, the nurse who attends school once a week and we have established partnerships with IT companies, catering companies and logistic companies.
Are there any businesses working with the school such as caterers, IT companies, or sports organisations? Yes.
Who are your school's neighbours? Catering company, sanitary ceramics company, logistics companies, a pharmacy.
Could they be approached? Yes.
And who could you or your students ask for support in identifying the right people? Students' parents who work in these companies, school staff who interacts with these companies more closely.

Krystyna Pasek-Corsar

2016-06-19 12:02:03 UTC

I am changing school at the moment so I have 4 more weeks left in the school I was for two years and from September I am going to start in my new school. The new school is very open to all sort of cooperation with other schools and communities from outside the school. In my current school I managed to invite a local MP for my Y10 students when they were preparing for their controlled assessment (project). I contacted all sort of organisation, colleges and business to ask them to cooperate with my students and so far I heard “no” only once . I also took three different year groups on trips where they had to interact with local people they never met before to collect data they needed for their projects. It was totally outside their comfort zone but helped to open their eyes on the surrounding world and helped them to understand that people are friendly as long you are friendly towards them.

In the new school I already plan to invite a school from Poland to join our Coast project. Another project that grows in my head is to start some sort of cooperation with care homes to close the gap between young and old people and help them to understand each other’s differences and needs. Another project that will be good for my future students is “Cultural Diversity” as the region of England I live in is very diverse and there is lots of unnecessary hostility and lack of understanding.

I am sure that there is plenty of people and organisation that will be more than happy to cooperate with us as long we will contact them explaining the aims of the project we want to do and the benefits they will have from it. We also need to respect if someone says “no” and keep looking for another possible partner for our project. “Not to give up” is the most important thing. I think that the outside organisation are not afraid of cooperating with school as long they do not need to organise anything, they more than happy to take part if everything is organised from my side.

Mariella Brunazzi - Italy

mariella_brunaz — 2016-06-19 12:36:29 UTC

For an Erasmus+ project and the related eTwinning project the school has been collaborating since the beginning of it with the local Town Council, Europe Direct, Sports Organizations, Panathlon, the Prefecture, the press and we will continue this cooperation for future projects.

Μarianthi Arvanitidou-Greece

1canislupus22 — 2016-06-19 12:47:16 UTC

I work as a primary school teacher for 15 years I would like me and my students to have the opportunity to meet other students and teacher to compare and learn different thing.

i am a technology teacher

zbesbes — 2016-06-19 12:56:50 UTC

i work in secondary school and my students are 14-19 years
i would like to share our experience with other students and teacher
i need your help ....
here is a project maked by students

Almida Cercizaj

cerciziida — 2016-06-19 12:58:09 UTC

To involve organization in Education is hard but in school we can enroll children's parents related to their profession . When we celebrated the Etwinning Birthday I invited parents with IT profession, designers, teachers , c cookers from all Elementary classes and they participated in our work team and helped our children on the decorations and the celebrations.

Sara - Italy

saraonga — 2016-06-19 13:39:40 UTC

In my school we have close contacts with the town Council: we share with them ideas and projects to improve our school (library, ecc.) or our territory (ecology projects). We collaborate with local experts who come to school and help students to learn about the hystory and traditions of the place where they live. We also collaborate with children's parents or ralatives who ralate about their job or the place they come from (many of our students come from different countries).
It's an interesting activity, but it certainly takes a lot of time to organise and more teachers should be involved in it.

Barbara Falzini

b_falzini — 2016-06-19 13:40:41 UTC

The link to REAL-WORLD is the core of PBL : it is important not only as a public audience for the students to face at the end of the Project but also as a starting point to set the driving question and during the process, as a support in the role of experts.
I'm not teaching at the moment so I cannot think about contacts to networks of local professionals or organisations in the school's neighbourhood, and as English is not so widely spoken in Italy, I would probably refer to international contexts. But I think sometimes the area has no resources to offer to the school and in those cases, it is the school that should become a resource for the area.
I would like to involve the families first, because it often happens that the relationship and the "educational contract" between the school and the families becomes weaker when students grow up into Secondary school (14-18 years old). It is hard with my subject (English as a Foreign Language) because many parents do not feel comfortable if they are not competent. In those cases it would be a good idea to reverse and widen the process to promote the creation of a local educational community: parents should learn, along with their children, the importance and effectiveness of collaboration and students may become innovators and educators in 21st century skills. School should become an educational agency for adult education, too. The recent reform of the school system in Italy seems to go in this direction, integrating adult education and informal learning in the setting of the schools, in extra-curricular activities.

Daniela Corradi-Italy

invernizzifam — 2016-06-19 13:52:53 UTC

I don't see many difficulties in involving people from outside the school in our projects...Every time I asked for it, I always had it! In my environment, pupils' parents, professionals and associations seems really eager to help!

Next year I'm going to involve someone in my project about healthy eating: doctors, nurses, cooks, photographers...it will depend on pupils' choices during the path

Maria Giovanna, Italy

mariagiovannamorleo — 2016-06-19 14:23:16 UTC

My school is very connected to the local community with many project. In these years we collaborated with the traffic officers to a project on road safety and bike driving; with the band for musical education; with volleyball, fencing and chess players. The students are really engaged on these projects, because they live a realistic experience, in classroom with experts and outside, in a real context.

Lisa Lund

lundtech — 2016-06-19 14:30:15 UTC

Our library has contacted me to have my Instructional Support students create an app for her. I have some of the Google 20% students who are singing at nursing homes and she found out that she is not just helping the nursing home, but she has found a great satisfaction within herself after starting this project. One of my students worked to increase school spirit at our school with his project this year.

Eleni Lianou, Gr

lab4tee — 2016-06-19 14:36:28 UTC

We arrange visits to organizations, universities, technological institutions or local businesses or we invite professionals to inform or educate the trainees all the time and it is very helpful in so many ways.

Gabriela Sandru, Romania

gabrielasandru — 2016-06-19 14:46:17 UTC

We begin each school year at our school with a Health Parade - a parade whose aim is to involve the community in our life and to draw attention to the importance of healthy eating. Children dress up as fruit and vegetables and give out fruit and leaflets to passer-bys.

Arianna , Italy

arix — 2016-06-19 15:14:53 UTC

this year we have developed an eTwinning project about the Happy prince!!!!

Letizia, Italy

letizia_cherri1 — 2016-06-19 15:19:57 UTC

In my school it is not hard to involve professionals and organizations from our community starting from the sts’ parents for example. The question is that we involve the community only for some big projects ( Erasmus+ ones) and not for the many smaller projects we do in our everyday teaching. It should become “The main course, not dessert”. :

Cristiana Ziraldo, Italy

2016-06-19 15:27:24 UTC

I am lucky that in the area I live because there are different literary events my students can benefit from: Dedica, Pordenonelegge, art exhibitions at Galleria Bertoia, etc.

Cinzia Masia, Italy

attasonitabas — 2016-06-19 15:55:32 UTC

I'm an ETwinning ambassador so I'm part of a very large family where it is easy to find partners to cooperate and collaborate activily involving students too. In my school we are carrying out an Erasmus KA2 and we have involved a large number of colleagues,families and other schools too. The main problem, as I wrote in a post in FB group is that the main problem is to involve our colleagues specially if it is not a project such as Erasmus as Letizia from Italy wrote.

Francesca, Italy

francescagiala8 — 2016-06-19 16:18:36 UTC

I teach in a secondary school and we have contacts with the University. We often have invited teachers and researchers for help teach or laboratory activities, in particular the topics are about physics and science. I know the power of these interactions , of the discussions with professionals about the types of activities they engage. The students prefer to study for their own experience and in this way they are stimulated and interested to reading of science journals, books and web sites devoted.

Andrea Ceccarelli, Italy

2016-06-19 16:26:02 UTC

I live and work in a small town in the south-western area of Rome called Castelli Romani. In order to make students understand deeply the land where they come from, I think that school should organize programs concerning all the wine production phases, from harvesting to sales.

Angela Metallinou/Greece

2016-06-19 16:40:26 UTC

I am a German teacher at the secondary level. Every year, about March, we invite from among our parents various professionals to talk to our graduates about their profession, so to be prepared for the future and the decisions they have to take about their future studies. Except that I try always once or twice per schoolyear to bring an expert to guide my students in the particular project we are working on, because... "I don't know all the answers!"

Maria Rosaria Grasso-ITALY

mrgrasso — 2016-06-19 16:45:20 UTC

In my school we have a tight collaboration with the town Council: since long time we work together to reduce school dropout through specific projects that include educators and psychologists. In the last years, thanks to some European projects, Comenius first and now Erasmus+, we started collaborating with the UNESCO Office of Mantua and Sabbioneta World Eritage site. Their experts came to my classes to explain the values of UNESCO and why our two splendid towns became Word Eritage site. During the Comenius and Erasmus+ meetings in Italy their guides helped us to show our international partners the wonderful beauties of Mantua and Sabbioneta. They invited my school to the International forum of UNESCO, held in Mantua in May 2014, where me and my students talked about our collaboration with them and about our international experiences.

sonia_galderisi — 2016-06-19 16:45:59 UTC

2.4 Finding collaboration partners outside the classroom

One of the most important aspects of PBL

is establishing a link to the "real-world". We can involve audiences or partners from outside of the classroom. The school where I teach sometimes collaborates with the Primary School sharing the same projects about a topic that regards either Primary students (generally the 3rd class) or Secondary School students. Moreover, students partecipate to some Historical Amniversary events as the end of the 2nd world war with the District of our city,searching for autjentic material or people's witness that can tellus their esperiences during the war. For this type of collaboration Primary School teachers and Secondary School ones meet and plan togethet their projects even if there are some differences due to the their students'age. Another type of collaboration in my school is having an email pen of another country. My students like this exchange of email because they realize that all students in the world could have the same interests and problems. So they share their opinions and at the same time learn a lot of new things about another country. Then, there is an effective and collaborative way of doing projects that is the eTwinning network, an online network of more 400,000 teachers in Europe and beyond, so you can easily find project partners and organize joint projects. As the hook of eTwinning pedagogy is the PBL approach I would like finding a like-minded colleagues who I could run a project with. I think that for the next year I will do this new esperience that, surely, could help to improve my teaching and enlarge my cultural horizons.

Sonia Galderisi, Italy

Vittoria Italy

user_1412801285 — 2016-06-19 17:14:04 UTC

It is almost normal for our school to involve the community, we're in a very small village and school's neighbour is the Council. We also work in collaboration with some sport associations and Parents' association. This allows us to improve our learning condition year by year and build a support net around our kids. This close collaboration started some years ago with a comenius project, that taught all tocommunicate and cooperate to reach our ambitious goals. After that, we didn't stop!

Marta Antunes, Portugal

2016-06-19 17:41:23 UTC

Which people from your community you or your students could engage with?

My school's community usually collaborates with school. Besides my personal contacts which I often use, there are several people in our community that come to school upon invitation to step up our pupil's learning: local librarians, museologists, town hall technicians, local enterprises, radio and newspaper agents, parents and other relatives, older students, parents associations,... . I think this is a quite common practice and several experiences are shared or taught. As a school librarian I regularly invite experts to reinforce my practice: if it's ICT month then I put forward workshops on image, information,..., performed with the help of the local librarian; moreover we often invite national institutions to present their works and talk to students about so many different topics such as religion, economics, health, education, psycololy, it all depends on the subjects we're teaching or celebrating at the moment. This events are well prepared in advance as soon as the school year begins.

Daniela Cundrò,

daniela_cundro — 2016-06-19 17:47:50 UTC

Italy

I live in Siena and, for sure, my international students who come or live in Siena they need to talk with the local people so what I usually do is making them able to talk with people which are part of the local community. Such as, the recent experience of some American students who have interviewed local people from Siena in order to know something about the famous horse race Palio. This is a combination of cultural, social, communicative and language topics which of course involve more the students in their learning process.

@GmedranoTIC

gmedranotic — 2016-06-19 17:52:45 UTC

I asked the students to bring a member of their family. This could be a common task but it makes:

Involve the student in the learning processes.
Get the students attention for the person that is coming.
They learnt from the different experiences of the family that came.
After the seminar, the family person, watch the class and the results and gave them feedback.

The hardest thing is the many reminders that I have done for achieving it, but it worth it!

Lea, Slovenia Unfortunately we don’t have engagement on a regular basis. We collaborate with one kindergarten, some cosmetic saloons and a few (2 – 3) schools together but not on a regular basis. Where do I see our possibilities for an more organized collaboration: We could start a businesses working with sports organizations (we have some students which are professional athlete), wellness center or cosmetic saloons (our students are future cosmeticians). We could start a collaboration on a regular basis with our city gallery, museum and “Zavod Mars” (our students have to pass some courses/workshops, not strictly tided to the curriculum, and this is an ideal opportunity). But I don’t see a lot possibilities to realize the school alumni, because our students often stay at our school just for 1 ore 2 years … and then they finished their programme so they are not so tied to the school.

lea_stiberc — 2016-06-19 18:07:47 UTC

Sabrina De Santis Italy

2016-06-19 18:12:48 UTC

My school every year has some professionals helping us in specific projects : a sportive association, a researcher in children literature from local university, a popular dances specialist. Sometimes we can pay something for their work but more often we have to ask them to work gratis .

Jenny Bolander, Sweden

jenbol0208 — 2016-06-19 18:25:53 UTC

I never really thought of engaging the surrounding area in my schoolwork until recently. Just before I started this course my interactions with the students world around them was very limited to maybe a field trip to a greater city close by to go on a city tour or maybe to a local museum. But the visit was very isolated from the rest of their education (mostly because of the lack of time planning it into their on going courses).

This semester I started to look up above the borders of my school and into the society, trying to find more of real life receivers to the project my students are working with. We started in a small manner connecting with a class of students in the US collaborating around making easy games for the students to play and assess. When I saw what impact this thing had on my students I realized that THIS IS what I need to continue doing!

For next semester I'm going to collaborate with another class in my municipality, connected to a project I'm participating in concerning coding. But I've also assigned my class in being a part of a national project working with scientists, helping them take water samples all over our country to measure the health of our lakes or close streams. This will later on be published on the University of Uppsala.

There is also a project in collaboration with the Nobel comity, also gathering data, but this time from making sounds and mixing sounds. The project includes a poster competition where one class can win the prize of going to the actual Nobel party in Stockholm.
Where as to find people in my area interested in a collaboration with our school I believe that it would be a problem, this is a comparatively small municipality and should one ask around in the class you would probably find parents working in corporations willing to collaborate with our students.

Marisa Badini. Piacenza, Italy

marisa_badini — 2016-06-19 18:32:11 UTC

COLLABORATION WITH LOCAL COMMUNITY
I teach English as a second language in Primary school. I run CLIL projects, planning the steps with the different teacher teams ,to involve pupils in meanful actions and processes. We often collaborate with public or private organisations, as -Municipality ; -Museums (we exposed the classes robots at "Museo di Sciene naturali" with pupils explaining); -Public Agencies (IREN, ARPA),; - shop keepers and shop chains, like "Le Roy Merlin" or "OBI";--sport clubs or associations; - ONLUS like UNICEF or "Caritas" for solidarity projects; -local Artists; -Gardiners; - a retired people association called "Gli Stagionati" (volunteers interacting with our school in a real effective way), - -local media (Piacenzasera /Libertà). Of course it depends on the projects... For Robotics project we collaborated with "The First Lego League" in Genoa. At the end we exposed our works there, with pupils' direct presentation.
However for a real, meanful communication in English I involve pupils in eTwinning projects, where they can deal with a topic or a path that requires common goals,communication, shared decisions, and often engages them in games, polls or interviews useful for the project process. Meeting other cultures helps kids, opening their minds and developing critical thinking . That's why it's my favourite resource, and pupils love them, as well!
Pupils had the chance to communicate in English in a real context during the job shadowing of Bulgarian teachers in our school. Presenting our CLIL projects was a great opportunity to have a special audience and make pupils prouds of their work.

Caterina Musmeci, Italy

kmusmeci — 2016-06-19 18:40:48 UTC

In my school's experiences I have always tried to seek collaboration of outside professionals. My teaching subject is Music. I taught (and teach) often in Catania's Old Town schools: see and examine the ancient theatre (IV sec. a C), Odeon (II sec.d.C.), the Opera House (Teatro Massimo "V. Bellini, XIX sec.) it was a frequent activity. Professional's music performers came to schools to meet the pupils moreover. However, in my opinion, it isn't sufficient in a PBL's point of view: would be required becomes more operational and continue.

Vicenta Revert, Spain

VicentaRevert — 2016-06-19 18:47:31 UTC

Nearby the school we have professionals who can come to the school and let us know how they are doing in the real world. Students can ask them while they interviu professionals , learn from them, even students and professionals can interact and even outside the classroom collaborating in the same project.
People who engage with the school are mostly the students because they are adults. But we can find also councilors that are working at the town hall, businessmen and women who have links to the school, shopkeepers, educators.
There are people that help us when we ask for it. Because our school is so little and the town too, all the people know each other and they are usually very sensible with the topics we work at the school.
We are located at the Church place, so, our closest neighbour is the church, exactly in front of us. Other neighbours are people who are always taking part or helping the school.
School alumni are working in the town other learning at the university. All of them are very kind and have good memories because at the school they got the Secondary grade, which is very important for someone that couldn't get it at the school.
In this case, looking for a solution about the driving question, the student association is who can help us to change the classroom. They have the right contacts with the supporters and with the shopmakers.

Rasa, Lithuania

rasasad — 2016-06-19 18:50:34 UTC

I am an English teacher as a foreign language in gymnasium, so we have lot of possibilities to communicate and collaborate with our community. We have contacts with some universities, other schools, IT companies, our municipality. Every February we have 'parents' jobs day'. During this day all school community collaborate and communicate wit each other. I had only one successful collaboration with IT company.

Jose Teixeira, Portugal

joatx74 — 2016-06-19 19:12:39 UTC

My students have already had a lot collaboration work with people from other schools in a couple of eTwinning project. Next school year I'd like to participate in a new one. I'll try to set up the project this summer to start it in September.

Regarding to involve people from the community, it is a bit more difficult. Since I teach a foreign language and my school is just in the border with Spain, may be to invite someone from the university to work with my students could be a good idea.

Isabella Savella - Italy

torrenteimpetuoso — 2016-06-19 19:14:06 UTC

I teach in a secondary school in Salerno. During last year my students have been involved in a project in partnership with LEGA AMBIENTE for the redevelopment of the coastal area. It has been very interesting and the students were very involved in it.

leone_daniela — 2016-06-19 19:43:17 UTC

Eve, France In my school, we have to work with the community because our students will be working in health and social fields. So they always do projects with children, the elderly, adults and children with special needs ... For example, kids from the nursery school next door come and have cooking classes with health and social care BTEC students or home economics students work with the local social grocery or are involved in many projects with Caritas. I can't see how they could become good professionals without being involved in the community.Besides my colleague helps some students find a work placement in Britain where not only can they improve their English but they can also discover different structures and health system.

2016-06-19 19:51:54 UTC

Nickie Liaropoulou-Greece

liaropoulou — 2016-06-19 19:52:20 UTC

I can't say that my school (or any school I have worked at) have established real collaboration with partners within the community. I suppose an easy way to start would be contacting the Parents Association and finding professionals willing to help among the pupils' families. Museums and non-profit organizations would be the next on the list, followed by the municipality. What I find really difficult is having professionals working with us-but this is the last on the list. Perhaps, if we make it with the first steps, doing that may not be so difficult after all!

innovator68 — 2016-06-19 19:59:51 UTC

Nadya Stankova
I have a good experience with eTwining Platform . I use this platform to motivate students learn foreign languages and work in groups. It is a great opportunity for all students and teachers.
Here is the link:
https://www.etwinning.net/bg/pub/index.htm

Emanuela Provenzani, Italy

2016-06-19 20:09:58 UTC

I have just started eTwinning experience. I think that this is a great community of professional exchange for teachers. It gives good motivation in students. Etwinning is a real example of collaboration between students and teachers.

Angela Salvato

2016-06-19 20:26:01 UTC

The school where I teach is a technical institute for agriculture and a lot of experts in agriculture are called to give lessons. It's a great opportunity for students to do laboratory activities with them because they can improve their technical knowledges but also learn to relate constructively to different kinds of people. This last school year my students had another great experience when a Jewish lady, who was a child during the second world war, came to our school and told us the story of her family who escaped the jewish persecutions. Most of them were really impressed by her tales. Some other useful collaborations from the community that can be cited are those with the health experts such as dietists, doctors, or researchers who deal with the problems of drug and alcohol abuses among teenagers.

António Faria, Portugal

2016-06-19 20:35:15 UTC

On my school collaboration occurs mainly on economics classes. On my sciences classes I have been inviting professionals that where my students in the past to come to my classe and share their investigation or field of study. This has been quite interesting to my actual students helping them developing interest in one or more areas in the future. The second video, from Oregan is ver interesting and gave some ideias to put in practice next year.

Sabrina, Italy

2016-06-19 20:39:23 UTC

My school is a business school located in the North-east of Italy. Exchange with professionals working in the area is part of the school yearly program, especially for students aged 16 or above. Experts come to school to give lectures on specific topics (soft skills, legal issues,…) to train students to write their CVs or to prepare them for job interviews. Recently students have also been trained by doctors and certified trainers in Basic Life Support and Defibrillation on a voluntary basis. Among our partners there are private companies and local institutions which host students for a minimum of 4 weeks for work-based training every year.

Rania. Greece

raniabek — 2016-06-19 20:50:08 UTC

The only person who has participated in my eTwinning projects has been the school canteen lady who helped pupils cook local recipes. Her expertise was much appreciated! A parent once showed pupils how honey was made and that was for the same project (about food). So I think that the easiest and first idea for such collaboration is the school's parents who can help with enthusiasm providing their knowledge to the pupils.

Athina, GreeceW e collaborate with a local hiking club and we organize trekking and hiking activities in a project about local geography. Pupils love these activities. Parents participate also. We also take part in a e-twinning project about local geography, maps and reconnection with nature.

aginoudi — 2016-06-19 21:36:46 UTC

Teresa Rowett - Portugal

teresarowett — 2016-06-19 23:02:24 UTC

What I have done on a regular basis is inviting students' parents to come to the classroom and talk/teach the class something related to their profession. It's a way of getting the parents involved in the school life and also of giving them the opportunity to experience what it is like to be in the teacher shoes.

Doina Andrei, Romania

2016-06-19 23:09:46 UTC

Being a textile engineer, I am in charge of developing partnerships between our school and textile enterprises, creating optional vocational curricula in cooperation with local employers. Building strong relationships with employers allows our school to place the students in job opportunities that can help them gain independence.

As my county has a high percentage of youth unemployment, I am looking for new ways to increase students’ employability skills and improve cooperation between my vocational technical school and textile employers in the county. I’m also interested in the best ways of adapting optional vocational curricula to respond to the changing needs of the labour market, so that my students gain skills and build knowledge for jobs in the textile and clothing industry, which can help them to integrate into the workplace.

I think that involving local employers in students' work is a very good idea. I am aware now that PBL connects students and schools with communities and the real world. Through these projects students learn how to solve real problems, how to interact with adults and organizations, are exposed to workplaces and adult jobs, can develop career interests and acquire success skills not only for career but also for life.

Parents and others community members can be involved in these projects, too.

Floripes, Portugal

floripes_almeida — 2016-06-19 23:50:50 UTC

In my school, we have some activities where the parents or other family members are invited to participate. One of the activities is related to Reading. During a whole week, students have activities related to reading, stories, books... They can present their favourite book, read a story, talk about their favourite film... We usually invite the students' parents or other family members to come to school during that week and to tell a story to the class. They can also read a book or do whatever they like, provided it is related to reading.
The students are always excited when someone comes to the class and they usually show much interest.

Alix Lechallier / Guadeloupe (French West Indies) - France

lechalliera — 2016-06-20 00:59:08 UTC

In my school, teachers usually engage with pupils parents : for school parties (Christmas, carnival, ...).
FOR EXAMPLE, in my nursery school, I could engage with market professionals as we work on fruits or/and vegetables. In foreign languages, I could engage with pupils parents so that they learn foreign songs to my pupils. Then my pupils will be with another person and will develop social skills too. They will also see that other people speak the foreign language, and not only the teacher.

Michela

2016-06-20 05:50:48 UTC

In Italian Secondary High School, expecially vocational high school , contacts with external partners ad professioials are common. Besides a training period is compulsory for all students

Students find training experiemnces very interesting

Aleksandar

2016-06-20 06:41:34 UTC

In my Serbian school,teachers usually engage with pupils parents: for school parties(Christmas,New Year,Sveti Sava school glory,

I have a good experience with eTwining Platform . I use this platform to motivate students learn foreign languages and work in groups. It is a great opportunity for all students and teachers.

Dylan, Amsterdam

dylanhyman — 2016-06-20 06:44:57 UTC

I've been quite lucky in connecting to organisations outside of the school to help bolster the enrichment program I work for. It started with a visit from an retired politician, who helped with debating skills. Since then we've had a children's writer who let us do marketing research, a vist to the blood lab at the local hospital and a parent who is also a philosopher. For the new school we have contacts with a few high schools in the area, a high tech company that will sponsor an after school program and the local architecture museum (we hope!). I would like to branch out into contact with the local businesses, retirement homes/nurseries and local community gardens. There is a design collective in the neighbourhood that is quite good at connecting people who want to do projects with artists and builders. I look forward to asking the students to suggest new partners!

Michela Pinna, Italy

changeling — 2016-06-20 08:28:27 UTC

In my small town there' s a that produce and bottle Wine. I can be interesting to get in touch with the admin office in order to plan talks with experts and school visits to the firm.

Gabriela Tache, Romania I am experienced in collaborating with partners outside the classroom/school. During the past few years, I have successfully used eTwinning (European Quality Label in 2009), ePals and Edmodo platforms for collaborative projects with schools from different countries. Also I coordinated the Comenius multilateral project “Cross Perspectives on Exile” (2009-2011), involving students and teachers from five countries. However, I have to admit that our school’s collaboration with local businesses and organizations was not equally successful. There are several reasons for this. One of these reasons is the economic decline of our community over the last decade. When people are struggling to keep businesses afloat, they are less interested in collaborating with schools. How do I request businesses facing insolvency to sponsor a school project and/or event for students? In March 2016, we have applied for an Erasmus + strategic partnership involving a local organization. If approved by the NA, our school will collaborate with a local NGO on a project aiming to develop our students’ entrepreneurial skills. At some time in the future, they will be the successful entrepreneurs who will invest in community projects and provide financial support to local schools.

2016-06-20 08:56:04 UTC

Sara Carli

2016-06-20 09:08:05 UTC

In Italy we have a big opportunity to engage external professional and to create occasion of learning by doing for our students Which is called combined school-work. Student can go in a company or workplace and have a traineeship. Also we can think about changing the way we present future job and university occasion: instead of having simple lessons we could think of having real PBL with this external professionals which came into school. Starting from here we could improve our net between schools and between school and community.

Luigi Grifone, Italy

2016-06-20 09:38:35 UTC

This question opens a door to collaboration with local community and the need of a link with real world and professionals from outside the school. In my experience this is really important for students, they want to be in the world, they feel the need of understanding that what they learn is useful, practical and it's not so far away from their real life.

So, usually I saw great results in collaboration with local libraries, nonprofit associations working in social fields, experts and professionals coming to schools to meet students and explain what they do. Actually I couldn't see much more than this: somebody coming to explain something and then that's it. I'd like to work more on this collaboration and this idea of experts coming to assess student work sounds great, such as the opportunity for students to have this kind of audience while they're working on something and they have to present it.

Lina (Italy)

2016-06-20 09:44:51 UTC

Usually we try to organise projects together with another class, where students collaborate not only with their immediate peers but with students at another school. Also parents can join our lessons.

Angelina Alberico, Italy

angelina_alberico — 2016-06-20 11:19:05 UTC

My school has excellent working relationships with local soles through a partnership of which he is the leader. We teachers involve the students' families in various activities: theater shows, sports events, ... Also collaboraspessocon the town, both for activities that affect them both to make use of structures and spaces for various event

Maria Petrescu, Romania

mepetrescu — 2016-06-20 11:47:47 UTC

I do every year projects about entrepreneurship and financial education, with the support of an organization which send us volunteers who make activities with my class. The volunteers are professionals from the "real-world" (specialist from banks, human resources specialists, managers, etc.) In this way students have the opportunity to learn directly from the specialists.

Angela Piccolo, Italy

angelina_alberico — 2016-06-20 12:00:53 UTC

Our school often collaborates with both parents and external agencies such as the Municipality, cultural and sports associations and the Church to create learning opportunities outside the school itself. For example you ask the help of parents to organize events or shows and the Municipality to have on hand the stadium, the theater or cinema. Also there ono classes which this year took part in projects organized by Etwinning as the CLIL project.

Sara Personeni ( Italy)

personeni_sara — 2016-06-20 12:36:13 UTC

My project could require collaboration with outside partners ( my driving question is about immirants), but it could be managed without them too. Infact some of y students could be immigrants' children and we could involve theri families. Otherwise we can collaborate with no-governmenral organizations or voluntary organization that works s a school neighbour.

Sara Dias, Portugal

saramonicac — 2016-06-20 12:37:34 UTC

Involving the local community is our daily routine. We constantly involve local professionals such as nurses or doctors, explaining how can we deal with sick students, or specific deseases; psychologists, as students may have the need to talk about many issues. Students are also invited to engage with the local community, to attend training sessions related to differennt topics like volunteering, recycling, etc.

Achilleas, Cyprus

axilleask — 2016-06-20 13:08:29 UTC

My project evolves around the quality of tap water so it concerns the whole community not just students.

Anna Drakotou, Greece

anna_drakotu — 2016-06-20 13:36:09 UTC

I have already collaborated with people from the Chamber of Commerce, via Europe Directservice to talk about European rights, local entrepreneurs and local artist and parents for an interview and to talk to my 16-year-old students about entrepreneurship and career planning in the framework of two etwinning project in the previous year. One was "The Entrepreneurial Project" and the other "The Career Project" It has been quite beneficial for both parts.

mbacita — 2016-06-20 14:00:35 UTC

I know several companies which organize this type of activity. The one that I like best and presents how a company works is the 'Hard Rock Cafe' which explains it both in English and Italian.Another collaboration project in it was done with some Australian students from the Monash University. Both these projects were part of some sort of CLIL activities.

Cecilia D.

2016-06-20 14:09:52 UTC

In my school, professionals are often invited to talk to students about some topics; in my opinion, the most engaging activity is about waste management, because a technician involves students in role playings and cooperative activities strictly connected with their real life; another involving activity is the Young People's Town Council project, made in collaboration with other schools and under the supervision of the Town Council.

Ausenda Silva

conceicao1964 — 2016-06-20 14:15:01 UTC

Portugal
I have colaborate with primary school and all the teachers and classes, in colletion of food to the abandoned animals in my town, Leiria. This envolved all the teaching comunity. It helped raise awarness and hope to the next generations.

Christina Drakopoulou Greece

xdrakop — 2016-06-20 14:15:07 UTC

In the last two years I collaborated with a teacher from Spain through the etwinning platform. This collaboration gave students the opportunity to practice real English and create projects together with their Spanish peers. In addition, as part of the celebration of the European Day of Languages we invited an interpreter from the European Union to talk about job prospects offered to students who learn languages other than their mother tongue.

Angela Gallo, Italy

2016-06-20 14:17:23 UTC

This school year I have taken part to a project with a teacher from Spain through the etwinning platform. The project gave my students the opportunity to practice real English with their Spanish peers. They felt really engaged and me too. So I want to carry on working on etwinning platform.
Collaboration outside our school is real important.
The project I am defining through this course could require collaboration with outside professionals and local cultural associations. I have never experimented this kind of collaboration . This is a new challenge for me. I'd like to try out the collaboration with experts because their specialist competence can improve my work and my students' work. The idea of experts coming to assess student work sounds great .

Evangelia Karagiannidou (Greece)

ekaragia — 2016-06-20 14:31:39 UTC

When it comes to collaborating, I have joined the UNESCO ASPnet (National Committee, Greece/ Ministry of Education) and we work on various projects along with other member-schools. We also seek e Twinning partners and take part in competitions n a local/ national or European level. Additionally, school alumni are frequently called in for joint presentations/ celebrations, etc. as part of our school culture in Anavryta Model Lyceum! Events like the European Day for Languages and 'Back to School' are only a few of our projects which we take pride in and love to share with the whole school / local community (usually towards the end of the school year)! Sharing values and ideals through collaboration makes us feel more confident about our work and gives us the motive to continue, despite any given difficulties! United we stand! This is the motto we live by!

Sophia Kouzouli, Gree

sophiakouz — 2016-06-20 14:34:24 UTC

I have collaborated with a lot of European schools the last 5 years. Every year all my classes are involved in eTwinning projects. For the last 3 years I have also worked with my students Teachers4Europe projects and in the past we also did a Virtual Class project. I want to involve my pupils, their parents, as many colleagues as I can and members of the local community in the projects

Artemis Archontogeorgi, Greece

arty31072 — 2016-06-20 14:34:25 UTC

In our educational system in Greece it is not very easy to invite a proffessional at school because this not up to the principal or the teachers to decide, but it has to authorized by the ministery of education. Nobody can get in a school without a certain permission, which is not always granded.
Despite this difficulty, the school cooperates with the local library, the city's museums, the university and academic society and public organisations that support everyday learning.At the same time students can go out and visit the above organisations. It is very unusual to inviteat school (or visit) a proffesional / business man since the invitation could be consider as some kind of promotion.
Students of different schools often work together in a project and most students participate in networks (enviromental, cultural etc.)

Mário Relvas, Portugal

mariorelvas — 2016-06-20 14:52:17 UTC

As I explained in previous posts (task 2.2), I believe the best course for me to experiment with PBL would be Didactics of Music, a 9-hours module part of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) for Primary School Teachers.

The learning goals of the module include (1) master the principles guiding teaching music in Primary School; (2) conceive and assess lesson plans for Music; (3) understand the musical development of pupils; and (4) integrate Music with other subjects from Primary School curriculum. Students work in groups most lessons and each group will have to come up with a scheme of work of a Unit of 6 lessons that abide to the learning goals.

This assignment has been reviewed and graded according to the learning goals and the theoretical framework with no application outside the classroom. So, the obvious link to the real-world would be to involve practitioners, that is, primary school teachers. In fact the ITT programme of study includes school experience (Supervised Teaching Practice) during ⅓ of the semester. So the contacts have already been established and protocols have been signed between my School of Education and many Primary Schools. From my own experience as a teaching practice supervisor I know many primary school teachers are eager to get some help to write a scheme of work for Music. I would say that will be really easy to engage some primary school teachers in the PBL project, so they become clients: “Recruit community members as project clients. Build relationships with who can benefit from your students’ 21st century expertise.” (Boss, 2013).

Michaël / France

mickmasson — 2016-06-20 14:53:57 UTC

Until next September, our headmaster will be a dinosaur who believes that the truth is inside the books and in the teacher's speech. Read, Write and Listen. I try to open my colleagues minds but it remains very difficult until...

Sofia Aroso, Portugal

sofia_aroso — 2016-06-20 15:15:16 UTC

My school stays in a small village near to Porto – a big city. It´s a rural village by the sea, so we have a lot of farmers and fishermen. As we live near a big city we also have industry, museums and services.

There are already some partnerships with local people: Health Centre, Garden, Sports Organisations… But those partnerships have nothing to do with PBL.

To find the right persons to support us, first we need to know what kind of support do we need! I´m sure that together we are going to choose the right ones.

Vasso

vassiliki_servo — 2016-06-20 15:28:36 UTC

According to the legislation, the underlying conditions and the subject of the project we are going to develop we could present the students' final work to the parents and to the students and teachers from other schools and to the people that work at local authorities. Discussions and reflections could rise and at that time. The students when we start the peoject know that their work is going to presented to people outside the school and that is going to be uploaded at the school's web page so that makes them engaged and devoted.

Kristina, Latvia

2016-06-20 15:36:00 UTC

Our school is active in different kind of projects from local to international. Parents and local community always welcome in our classes.

Romina, Italy

rominatanzi — 2016-06-20 15:38:52 UTC

I tried in the last year to do an etwinning project with a Finnish school. My pupils were really engaged but the other school didn't involve their students. It's difficult to find good partners

Rossana Maglia

Rossana55 — 2016-06-20 16:15:14 UTC

As far as involving the community is concerned, I can say that it's easier to engage my students with communities from eTwinning projects which have become partners also in thereal world than with local communities. However, these projects has ofter helped me and my school to engage our Municipality, our local organizations and Universities.

Diana, Italy

diana90 — 2016-06-20 16:22:21 UTC

In my experience, my school has collaborated with library, an association of Museums of Florence "Amici dei Musei", with "Coop" who realized projects on water and food, with a sportive association.

Rosário Félix

mrlfaria — 2016-06-20 16:25:54 UTC

2.4 Finding collaboration partners outside the classroom

In the few years I have collaborated with the City Council in the development of projects in the environmental field , with local companies, the health center and parents. I also encouraged to participate in some national competitions.

Alice Cabrelle /Italia

alice_cabrelle — 2016-06-20 16:34:43 UTC

This video is very inspiring and made me think about my teaching practice.

Since it has been not so long time I started teaching, I had not chance to call external professionist to collaborate with me but I think that def I'm going to plan and realize this. I raises the students motivation and engagement, it empowers their efforts and results.

This year, in the Middle School where I worked, there was a three meetings with outside professionals:

Deadline project, to prevent alchool and drug abuse and improve driving good practices, with the partecipation of a doctor who is in the emergency unit
Meet the artisan project, to rise students interest about vocational jobs
No alchool, with a doctor and a chemist

Students' interest was very high, they partecipated to the discussion and give us good feedback about the activity. They were big meeting, with 3 classes involved. I think that it would be better if the meeting were in smaller group.

There are many stakeholders that can be approached and involved in school activities such as businessman (In Veneto there are many factories), animal right volunteers, naturalistic associations, sport associations...

The main problem is that they should collaborate for free, because schools haven't enough money for toliet papers... thinking about paying extras for professionals: impossible.

Maria Anagnostidou

2016-06-20 16:43:33 UTC

One of my favourite teaching practices is to invite professionals-parents of my students- to present aspects of their jobs that are relevant to our curriculum e.g. in the last year we had in class a photographer, two musicians, a chemist, an artist, an entrepreuner, a tax officer, a health visitor, a teacher. One example is here http://blogs.sch.gr/brightpencils/page/9/ Our school has also cooperation with volunteers from Unesco.

Maria Rosaria, Italy

mr_sorrentino — 2016-06-20 16:59:49 UTC

As a teacher of a small school with a number of students who belong to different ethnic minorities, I must eliminate those barriers that do not permit integration in the classroom. This can be possible only through the understanding of the hidden culture that stands behind these students who arrive from different countries. The people to engage from the community are the families. Students have to produce a Living History dealing with themes, culture and history, that are part of their background.

Stefania Alessio, Italy

stefaniaalessio89 — 2016-06-20 17:00:11 UTC

Students need and deserve quality creative and cultural education since it occupies a relevant role in developing the skills that are fundamental for the world of work. These connections between schools and the real world ( museums, theatres, galleries and music companies) improve and enrich the experiences of students and support teaching increasing the learning standards. Learning by doing is an efficient way to engage students in their learning process.
Let's take into account all the possible opportunities that surround us destroying the gap beteen shcool and the real world

Isolina, Spain

2016-06-20 17:06:48 UTC

As I started this year learning about this approach and I´m not working directly with kids because I am currently working in a teacher center, I haven´ t had the opportunity to analyse or study the community my school belongs to. But I entirely agree that it´s essential to take into account all these aspects, because if there aren´t connections with the outside world, the project will not work. A very easy way to start with, it could be to find out our school parents or families jobs.

Carmelina Italia

carmelina_enrico — 2016-06-20 17:14:55 UTC

My school (Primary school) is open to the territory and tries to implement the cooperation with the outside world. Parents, first of all, who are directly involved; the realities of the territory (such as theater, cinema, library, two museums) and the local authorities, even though we can certainly do a lot more. Little or nothing , however, we do with manufacturing companies (either because children are small, and because there are few in the area)
Finally my institution participates in a 4 Erasmus Plus projects with different partners European countries: two for kindergarten children and two for Primary school.

Mariangela Larini, Italy

2016-06-20 17:21:38 UTC

This school year I have taken part into a project with Pisa and Florence University to introduce educational robotics in the classroom; I have attended a course and next year I’ll experiment the work with my class. In the past I found a good actor in Science Museum of Florence and my students were involved in a project that reproduced some Galileo Galilei’s experiments, using the same instruments the great scientist had.

I think collaboration outside our school is real important but it’s not simple to find a project that fits our school curriculum involving outside professionals.

Mariella - Rome - Italy

fasanelli_mariella — 2016-06-20 17:26:41 UTC

Other possible interconnections with outiside experts: other schools, the University, the municipality, ONG organizations, cultural associations, alumni

Ispir Iuliana-Florentina

ispiriuliana — 2016-06-20 17:28:12 UTC

ETwinning project work within "Harmony of nature" three years. I took two awards for one. One I was refused for lack of communication, and the third I finish this year. The topics are very interesting every year. Communication - permanently.

Suzanne Madde

2016-06-20 17:28:59 UTC

I work in a Special School in Durham in the North East of England. We are currently in the middle of an Erasmus+ project with fellow special schools in Estonia, Latvia, Portugal and Estonia . We also have a great link with a school in Rwanda.
These projects mean we have real projects and real communities to collaborate with. We also have very good links with the local council and international office. We are trying to develop further links with the local businesses around our school to provide a platform for future Project Based Learning.

Theano/Greece

tsouvalou — 2016-06-20 17:31:29 UTC

I work in a primary school.This year my class has participated in an etwinning project.An expert, nutritionist and dentist has come in school to inform pupils about healthy diet. My class has dealt with environmental projects concerning water, and some experts came in school , we aiso visited environmental centers.In addition, this year we have visited archaological museaum. A writer has presented her book, and we sent our fairy tail to unisef last year

Emanuele Gardini

2016-06-20 17:40:52 UTC

I work in a junior secondary school and this year my class has made a short film for a school contest. Two experts of movies, member of an association of videomaker, has done two theorical lessons on the language of cinema. So we bring our students in a movie theater. After that the students were divided in groups of three or four and they buildt a screenplay with a little story and the framing that they have in mind for their short movie. Then the experts choose the better screenplay and all the class was divided in roles, as a mini troupe, and they shoot the little movie. Finally there was a contest where the students voted and my class won two prices: best screenplay, and best movie!

Giancarlo Ganapini Italy

2016-06-20 17:46:03 UTC

This video again inspired me and made me think about introducing PBL more progressively in my future teaching practice. I have always been concerned with finding solutions to increase students motivation and engagement. Relevancy from external professionals is unequivocal both for the students and all the teachers alike.

That is why I have lately decided to take part to the great community of members of eTwinning who works incessantly on these bases and creates these background themselves.

In the experiences I already had in the past the outcomes from the students were extremely relevant. Opening the doors to members of the community at the end of the project, at their final exhibition and celebration resulted also really relevant for the students who felt more responsible (and subsequently rewarded) for the choices they had made in the various steps for developing their works.

Similarly students could offer their “know how”, or ability in solving problems, in future PBL activities, sharing the outcomes as a sort of mutual benefits.

Josefina Martín /Spain

2016-06-20 17:49:22 UTC

As an active eTwinner I've sometimes tried to involve people from our comunity such as the city council for my etwinning project SCOOPeration, NGO such as Cruz Roja and last year we searched collaboration for our eTwinnng project in a local charity calle CUDECA (Intensive Cancer Carers)

Federica (ITALY)

2016-06-20 17:55:22 UTC

Since I teach in a middle school located in Maranello (the town of Ferrari sports cars), and many of my students' parents work for Ferrari's, we could involve some engineers or workers in a techology or science project!

Cristina Morelli/Italy

2016-06-20 18:02:01 UTC

I am just glad that without realising I was already using PBL approach doing etwinning projects. I ahve beeing doing them for 3 years at least and every year I do understand the importance of getting my pupils involved. It is true that whatever you do in a classroom acquires a surplus value if shared with another class of another country. Students get more engaed and motivated .

Maria Louvari/ Greece

marialouvari — 2016-06-20 18:06:37 UTC

As a school we have participated in 2 Comenius projects in English so far and I have personally done an e-twinning project myself, which was very short by the way. During the Comenius projects all the students in all the grades did their part of work, got really engaged and were very excited because their work was sent to other schools in Europe and they saw, read, commented on what the other students did. It was really exciting when the students from Italy visited our school. During the projects the students visited local factories and saw how oil, wine, milk is produced, they visited local environmental parks, museums. Local professionals came to our school to talk to students about topics such as
'bees', healthy diet, our body. I will certainly do such projects again.

ines_mussi5 — 2016-06-20 18:14:07 UTC

My school is located in a protected green area. We work with associations for the environment and we direct scientific research with pupils

cimy

2016-06-20 18:23:06 UTC

I'm definitely going to use PBL to do something relevant & meaningful for the students within the project "Scuola Ospedale" - School meets the Hospital - and the young students who are undergoing chemo treatments at the local cancer clinic.

Thalia V

thaleiavlachou — 2016-06-20 18:38:04 UTC

I believe it is extremely important to involve professionals from outside the school in a PBL approach, because, by doing this education, comes closer to society and school learning is related to everyday life. Since my project is about the development of plants the professionals who I could invite to collaborate with my class are: gardeners, botanologists, biologists, people who work at large parks and gardens in London (e.g. Kew Gardens, Holland park) and are in charge of the maintenance of the plants, or even people who work at the Natural History Museum and can provide lots of information about plants in the past and how they develop and grow. Of course I would also plan some visits with my class to the museum and the Gardens.

Saskia Michielsen, Belgium

saskiamichielsen — 2016-06-20 18:40:39 UTC

My kids are in primary school and when they ask their teacher how books are made, they came to my school in the department of printing. My students took the toddlers through the printing process with drawings the toddlers made themselves.

Saskia Michielsen, Belgium

saskiamichielsen — 2016-06-20 18:42:20 UTC

The boarding school students wanted to make a playing kitchen for a primary school - they can achieve something for small kids which is very motivating. They asked the teachers of wood construction to support them.

Saskia Michielsen, Belgium

saskiamichielsen — 2016-06-20 18:44:05 UTC

My students were preparing a research project. They invited a professional researcher to teach them what to keep in mind, which steps they need to take.

Velina

stojkovicvelina — 2016-06-20 19:18:10 UTC

I teach in a vocational school so we collaborate with a lot of restaurants and shops. Students go to their companies as a part of their work experience and one of local partners is a third member of the final exam committee. We have not asked any of them to give presentations, but there were a few of school alumni who have given presentations. I think that Etwinning is an excellent idea for collaboration.

Brigitta Koncz

2016-06-20 19:21:35 UTC

2.4 Finding collaboration partners outside the classroom

Brigitta Koncz

2016-06-20 19:27:32 UTC

Involving external partners seems to be quite easy in our school. Parents and alumni are always willing to give a helping hand and this is a great. My first PBL project was mostly successful due to the involvement of external partners this school year.

A group of 8th formers (13-14 years old) had to work on a project on environmental issues in our town. Before I could count to 3 they found partners at the company which supplies the water, interviewed the spokesperson at the dump and approached the biggest air pollution provider, the heating company. Everybody was happy to give information, thrilled that students want to know things like this and they did an amazing work. While presenting the final product they were speaking like proficient environmentalists and they were very proud of it. The last round table discussion was what they mentioned as being the best thing in learning English this year. :) It is worth it!

IvanaNenadic

nenadic_ivana007 — 2016-06-20 19:29:23 UTC

Our school had some collaboration with the local football academy and some sport clubs. We also had collaborated wit our town University. School does get support from all sorts of companies but not in form of teaching. They usually support our project and organisation by giving donations. However, we do have very nice experience with various associations and our School cooperative. They came and thought both students and teacher how to grow vegetables or make handicrafts.

Every time I make study visits to production plants of our region. Also, the school is working with environmental entities and students involved in similar activities.

ioannispad — 2016-06-20 19:34:21 UTC

ELENA BALESTRIERI (ITALY)

elena_balestrieri — 2016-06-20 19:49:25 UTC

My school is a secondary school for vocational studies, and it has quite a lot of contacts with local professionals and a quite big network of collaborations with educational and work organizations. We are also involved in the project of ALTERNANZA SCUOLA /LAVORO aiming at promoting
work placement and internship experiences. On the other hand, parents are hardly ever willing to take part in the learning process of their children. They don't even feel bothered to get their school report at the end of the term. Unemployment and cultural stagnation are crucial social issues in the town where I live.

Brad, Denmark

2016-06-20 19:55:59 UTC

Think about if you have contacts to or knowledge of networks of local professionals?

I have some contacts to a variety of different people in different professions - musicians, bankers, craftsmen, cooks, nurses etc.

Which organisations or people engage with the school on a regular basis?

Noone, really.

Are there any businesses working with the school such as caterers, IT companies, or sports organisations?

Not right now. but I would like next year to get help from the senior citizens.

Who are your school's neighbours?

Church, library, supermarkets, pizzaria, barber, hair stylist, Novo Nordisk

Could they be approached?

Maybe some of them

What about school alumni?

There may be some there who could come in and work with us. I should ask around.

And who could you or your students ask for support in identifying the right people?

I think we're kind of on our own, here...

I see this as a potential gold mine - it just needs to be harnessed properly!

Dilek Erdağ Bek

erdag1 — 2016-06-20 19:58:53 UTC

My school is a bit far from the city centre. We are in collaboration with the university, governorship, municipality in our city. The alumni of our school don't have a union, yet they are engaged with our students somehow. Our school is near the customs bureau on the border of Greece. And we have a sister school in Bulgaria. Parents are mostly interested in the academic part of the education. Exam results are much more important than anything. Mostly Provincial Directorate of National Education take the responsibility.

Tiziana , Sicily. I work in a secondary school in Italy. Our students take part to many projects and many of them are linked with the area kmowledge. We have created some "networks" with special with such local offices as the museum, the library, the townhall, the police and the carabinieri forces, in order to have our students to benefit crom advantages. For example, they get free entrance at the museum and have free law classes from the police, or they get special permissions to loan books from the library.

2016-06-20 20:18:55 UTC

MARISTELLA TUZZATO (Italy) When it comes about the community involvement in school activities, here you will find some examples of accomplished activities: a magistrate’s intervention who lives in our city: he talked about the constitution, about politician powers, about Public Administration students interviewed the Mayor and all the council members working on a project about the European community A Psychology Institute worked on our students within a project about assertive communication: it involved activities against bullies and good behavior at school We involved external experts in our project called “Open school” in which students do afternoon labs (cinema, theatre, informatics, life skills,…)

maristella_tuzz — 2016-06-20 20:19:06 UTC

Angelina, ROMANIA

angi1601 — 2016-06-20 20:30:04 UTC

I am lucky to work in a school who has the support of many institutions, Voluntary NGOs, sports organisations, Police, Local Museum, Local Library, the local Council, the Church and so many others. We have written partnerships with some of these institutions and we often collaborate . We also have partnerships with National Ecological Organisations in some big ecological projects. I recently had the opportunity to sign an agreement between our institution and a national organisation who promotes the cinematographic education among teenagers and young students. In this European project, CINED, we received a movie critic who prepared an interesting activity in our school.

Agnese, Italy

agnese_pianigia — 2016-06-20 20:37:25 UTC

In my school every year we organize a week in which some members of the community come to the school to work with the students. I think this experience should not be limited to one week each year but should recur throughout the school year.

Gabriella, Italy

2016-06-20 21:00:05 UTC

My school collaborates with the local municipality, organizing evening conferences that are open to the whole community. The conferences are lead by the students and deal with themes that have been studied during the school year. Also, my students collaborate with FAI (a national organization that is interested in art and environment), and organize guided tours of monuments and works of art.

Mercè, Spain. We're involved in an Erasmus plus project with other 5 schools in Europe. We're working this year on recycling, green energies and sustainability in general.

marvejols12 — 2016-06-20 21:04:15 UTC

Costas Stathopoulos, Greece

cvstathopoulos — 2016-06-20 21:04:40 UTC

Depending on the project it is always possible to get professionals from the local community to provide their expertise for our project. Unfortunately, there are no well-established collaborations with such professionals. However our schools' community can arrange study visits to museums, companies or cultural centres where we can arrange for meetings with the appropriate professionals For my PBL, I am planning for meetings with musical instrument makers and players. Especially greek traditional musical instrument makers and performers can provide valuable information with respect to our project.

Mina, Bg

2016-06-20 21:06:21 UTC

I have a good experience with eTwinning Platform. I use it because it is a great opportunity for both students and teachers - to motivate students learn foreign languages and work in groups, to inspire teachers. eTwinning is a real example of collaboration between students and teachers.
I am changing school at the moment. I am going to start in my new school in September. The new school is very open to all sort of cooperation with other schools and communities from outside the school.

Mª José Spain

2016-06-20 21:47:50 UTC

We are not involved in any European project yet. I wolud like to start learning how they work and how we can participate on them. I´ve heard about them and I think they are really usefull

Teresa Mazzamurro ITALIA

teresamazzamurro — 2016-06-20 22:01:18 UTC

I actively an eTwinning project with France , Greece and Romania . Wonderful experience! Enthusiastic pupils .

2.4 Finding collaboration partners outside the classroom In my project about ''Learning about my body'', for making my students understanding the world and actually what it is requested in our project, I think that it could be helpful for them to engaged with their community and more specifically to invite a local doctor , or a nurse to explain them how the human's system works. That could be good experience for them if we could make professionals to get involve with our PBL.

papnikole — 2016-06-20 22:26:51 UTC

Xana Sá Pinto - Portugal

xanasapinto — 2016-06-20 22:50:08 UTC

The project I am trying to develop is about sustainable fish consumption and fisheries.

I am thinking on several collaborators that can work with the classroom in this project:

1- a marine biologist to be present at some sessions and/or to evaluate students products and give them feedback;

2- a nutritionist and a cooker to evaluate students products and give them feedback;

3- a fisherman that could make students a field trip to a place where fishing boats arrive with fish and to provide them information about fishing arts, and problems faced by fisherman.

4- At the european level, would be great if students could collaborate with norwegian students as most codfish ate in Portugal comes from there. But I am not sure yet how to do this.

Helena Fonseca

helenaaafonseca — 2016-06-20 23:02:14 UTC

I have used eTwinning for school projects and I recommend it to teachers. Many public organizations are willing to collaborate with schools and students often enjoy their participation. I have invited firefighters to work with my sciences class, helping to teach some themes like earthquakes. Normally in Portugal, schools don´t have the tradition to make partnerships with businesses, but I think that if schools try to do this approach to nearby companies or organizations, that would improve school impact on students learning processes.

Anna Chiarenza - Italy

annachiarenza — 2016-06-20 23:08:12 UTC

My school is a vocational one and therefore my students are often engaged in activities outside the school and in a real working contest. At the moment my 3rd and 4th year students are in summer resorts in Italy working as cooking helper/chef, waiter/waitress, barman/bar-lady, receptionist or tourist resort entertainer. Often students are engaged in preparing and serving official dinners at Schools, Meetings, Public event. They even have the opportunity to be tour guides. There is a strict connection between my school and other companies, neighbours or caterers. We often team with them and the students really experience what it means to work in the area they chose.

What is missing in my school is the opportunity to speak English with mother-tongue people and therefore we asked the representative of a local American military base to have their marines to volunteer and come to our school to make conversation hours with our students. This really motivate the students to learn English! Unfortunately, we had the opportunity to meet them only twice this year because of the many commitments they had. Even when we go on school trip we try to create opportunities for the students to see how people work in the field they have chosen.

Orla Ireland

shmurla_orla — 2016-06-21 00:44:38 UTC

The school I grew u in would have had many locals involved in the schooling life. This was particularly evident in 4th year as we had different modules that outside specialists from the community came in to conduct. We had modules in Line Dancing, Cake Art and Self Defence to name a few. These local people would have been engaged with the school on a regular basis.

I'm thrilled by idea that we can contact proffesionals who studied in our school when they were kids! They may create strong bond with pupils and may have great education impact on young minds from same space and different time.

2016-06-21 05:49:40 UTC

Srdjan Zrnic - Serbia

Solveiga

solveiga — 2016-06-21 06:38:14 UTC

Have have parents day at school. Then we invite a parents to tell about professions, to show students how looks like their job place. Sometimes we go to firehouse, to police office, to bakery ....

Natália Neves, Portugal

natamaro_alneves — 2016-06-21 07:19:54 UTC

I'm thinking about starting a PBL with my next year students about binge drinking among teenagers. One of the topics is addictions and kids start drinking earlier and earlier. (It's sometimes shocking to find out that young people seem they don't know how to have fun without drinking... too much.) At my school there is a health project and a group of nurses usually come to school once or twice each term to give advice about eating habits or STDs for instance. I guess I could ask for their collaboration.
There is also another help I can use and that is of the technicians of CRI (Centro de Resposta Integrada) do Porto Oriental. They are always ready to go to schools and talk about health problemas and addictions.

Daniela Leone IC9 Bologna

leone_daniela — 2016-06-21 07:45:27 UTC

IC9 school is often collaborating with Bologna university for teachers training and internship. Here is an example of math undergraduates and IC9 students working together, creating digital educational resources, like Scratch interactive math exercises.
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/81815692/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/90149797/

Armando Pisani (Italy)

2016-06-21 07:58:19 UTC

I teach is an high school where some of my colleagues have already realized some e-twinning projects in collaboration with Austria relatively to foreign language curriculum. Personally I see this as the newest, since in my experience there is nothing similar in terms of teaching. My opinion the first approach to this activity should be easier if directed to an Italian school so that the students would not have problems due to language (but I do not want to be pessimistic). The area of interest and the subject could involve math or physics or natural sciences. We should try and see.

Maria

kolovoum — 2016-06-21 08:26:40 UTC

Τhe microbiologist of Santorini and two pharmacists are always willing to help. It's important for the lesson.
There are also organisations that help people who are also willing to share their experiences.
The Mayor is another person that might be able to attend or propose other people.
Media of Santorini.
People in charge of recycling.
SAF (An organisation that arranges festivals and other courses in Santorini)

Carmen Guidetti

2016-06-21 09:25:52 UTC

Ok, so many questions with similar answers, at least for me. In different Etwinning projects I/my school/our team was able to involve other stakeholders in our activities: firstly, parents and grandparents. They are an enormous added value to our projects because if they believe in our work, students do so. Then we managed to involve: associations of our territory, some local traders to support some activities, other public bodies, such as the Municipality and some professionist, specialized in some specific topics that we were working about. so, in the videos below you can have two examples about the integration of external partners in a collaborative eTwinning project

link to the second video I can't mange to put here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BH6wj-1XJk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Izaskun Salazar

izaskunsalazar — 2016-06-21 09:40:19 UTC

We have several times invited sportmen and women to be interviwed in our radio station or to enjoy the final games of Basque Handball. Children love that. They become crizy but they really try to work hard following their idoles way. But we should do the same with other proffesionals.
I really like the example of the video, having proffesionals to assest or help students.

We should work harder to involve the community in our school. We are a cooperative school regarding parents, and we sometimes involve proffesionals, but we should plan it and do it more often.

Students help a lot involvin proffesionals, because if they have a friend, a relative or a neighbour, they ask their help.

https://padlet.com/izaskunsalazar/pdz2016

Jana Fugová

Jana — 2016-06-21 10:03:51 UTC

Cooperation with the Mayor. To protect the environment of our city. And other schools in the city.

Daniela, Italy

2016-06-21 10:34:32 UTC

In Italy there’s a long tradition of lecture lessons, so that it is very difficult to schedule lessons where to involve PBL in. It could be possibly effective for secondary students to get involved in such ‘real world’ tasks, but think that we’re promoting the abolition of real world’s participation in schools project in Italy… So sad!

Leonor Vale (Portugal)

2016-06-21 11:25:31 UTC

Our school as a partnership with the local sport club and we could explore it for the developpment of our students. We also have some local industries (eg. cork, and ware factories) and we could make a nice change in our community by working in collaboration with them.

Anna, Italy

pepe_anna — 2016-06-21 11:28:31 UTC

We can involve lots of "outside" stakeholders, starting with representative of local government, neighbouring educational institutions at all levels, partnership and networking among schools, etc. With the new law for education, moreover, each school has to get in contact with entrepreneurial world, for SS to have real-world working experience since the latest years at secondary school. Videos shown here are extraordinary in making us actually see that, no matter whether vocational or not, any school at any level/grade can organize actitivities aimed at "real world" experiences. This is education; learning to learn and learning by doing!

Simonetta Nofrini, Italy

2016-06-21 12:15:15 UTC

As my school is very closely related to the local community , it is a common experience for my students to get involved in real-life projects. Students in 3rd, 4th, and 5th year have the chance to work as tourist guides or conference hostess when an event is taking place in our town . We could also try to involve the local government for our next year project about the improvement of visitors in our region

Jurate, Lithuania

jurateorloviene — 2016-06-21 12:23:04 UTC

here are some outside organizations and professionals which quite actively communicated with ours schools community. For example, personally had a consultant – the banker, which regular visited my economic lessons and keep in touch with students. We also are established the ties with the local museums which communicated with us with pleasant. Usually the teachers are initiators of the communication however sometimes students, particularly these ones which take a part in informal organizations, asked outsiders to support them.

Miroslava Takeva, Bulgaria

newfoundland30 — 2016-06-21 12:40:09 UTC

There are some IT companies who supports students through different campaigns but unfortunately they are not local. Our school keeps in touch with some of its alumni, too, but they mostly donate money and equipment. We haven't engaged them in any other activities so far. Students' parents are the ones who are more interested in assisting the school projects as their children are a part of the school community.

Annalisa. Ital

sabella2008 — 2016-06-21 13:10:16 UTC

Starting from this year , in Italian law requires introduce in every kind of secondary scholl school-work projects . It's planned collaboration with companies operating in various fields . This is a great possibility to involve people from comunity.

Stefania Nonino, Italy

user_noninost — 2016-06-21 13:40:00 UTC

In our school - a vocational high school for catering, hospitality, trade and tourism - students experience collaboration with partners from outside school on a regular basis. Every year many of our students are involved in several local, national and international projects (see our website - in Italian - www.stringher.it) and from the third to the fifth form they spend 3 weeks every year doing their work experience in a restaurant, hotel, company in Italy and abroad.

Filomeni, Greece

2016-06-21 13:54:56 UTC

For the kind of school where I work - junior high school for students aged 12-15 - collaborating with members of community is no common practice. However, we sometimes organise visits to museums, workshops, or other places, as part of an 'educational visits programme'. It would also be interesting and intriguing to have some guests at school : have doctors, dieticians or shop owners invited over and being interviewed by students. That could create a bond between students and local community. In my project the students will be working together to make a guide for English speaking people of the most famous museums or other places to visit in our town. So, we could visit the museums, have a curator at school or even ask parents for ideas...

Luciana, Port

lucianaalvesrios — 2016-06-21 14:10:10 UTC

At the site where is my school we do not have many services. We have a small green space that serves to learn we put more in the areas of science.
Intressante would also invite some professionals from the sciences to witness its journey and some amounts competencies to develop.

Angela, Italy

2016-06-21 14:10:22 UTC

In my school we could collaborate with local museums and libraries; recently we have found a "Fab Lab" near school with some young people ready to help us to build a technical laboratory where students can design objects, that they will assemble in the near "Fab Lab".
I think we could ask parents to help us to create a link between students and real world.

mcorreia9 — 2016-06-21 14:21:05 UTC

Serenella Silenzi Italy

s_silenzi — 2016-06-21 14:30:46 UTC

I teach English in an upper secondary school focusing on agriculture and scientific subjects in Macerata, central Italy. Our students have regular contacts with external partners/stakeholders from our area (Municipal or Provincial or Regional Authorities/firms/farms/professionals/ other schools/ universities for students' trainingship, projects, fairs and events), from Italy (other schools, learning agencies, Italian National Institutions for Erasmus+ projects, congresses and fairs), and abroad (UNESCO, Erasmus+ projects, eTwinning included). In particular I would like to highlight the project 'A Garden for a Museum'. Our students have designed and realized a green area for a local museum. It has been a great experience for all the students and staff involved (http://museando-agraria-macerata.weebly.com/ in the perspective of the Article 9 of the Italian Constitution.

IOANNIS PADIOTIS GREECE

ioannispad — 2016-06-21 14:36:26 UTC

With students are taking educational visits to production plants of our region. Also the school in collaboration with environmental agencies do awareness actions for the environment.

2016-06-21 14:39:35 UTC

stefania, Italy
having experienced it myself I can say thet...best guests at school are...grandparents!

Marinela Onitiu, Sibiu (Romania)

2016-06-21 14:39:39 UTC

Students should see school as a pre-work/ pre-adult-life period or stage. That's why we, the teachers and education-providers, should make sure we provide them with opportunities to see how what they learn can be applied to and used in real life. If they talk to representatives of different domains or companies, this could make them realise that what they're learning is useful. Doctors, lawyers, business people, etc. could be invited from time to time, on different occasions, to talk to and interact with students.

Boštjan Papež - Slovenija

2016-06-21 14:40:07 UTC

In our school we have a good practice of involving local professionals. We had a photographer who had a workshop and judged a photo contest, a graffiti artist, folk dance instructors of various ethnic groups, archer, policemen...

I especially enjoyed a poet that helped us in organising workshops for the school project "The night of poetry". You cannot believe the quality of poems written by children you could never imagine were capable of writing poetry. He had a special way of connecting to them and bringing up a whole different side in them...

For next year our school entered a team in a challenge of building a rubberband powered vehicles and ve are talking to a local carpenter to help us with the project.

So in our school involving real world professionals is a natural thing and at the top of the list when considering a new project.

2016-06-21 15:00:02 UTC

Hi I'm Piera From Italy and as my school is a Liceo , we could ask the local 3D hightech Archaeological Museum to come and collaborate or assess or watch our students presentations. I chose this pic because everybody can have a good idea to share and make it become a collaborative project.

Lúcia Tavares, Portugal

luciatavares6 — 2016-06-21 15:09:34 UTC

Our school has some sciences projects with the collaboration of Faculdade de Ciências do Porto, Cork industries, museums and zoo park. We work with a football team called Lusitânia Futebol Clube de Lourosa, with a coffee shop called Broinhas.

Evangelia Evmorfopoulou

2016-06-21 15:27:56 UTC

In my school we can collaborate with museums of Athens and the local library. Environment agencies are engaging with our school on a regular basis in order to protect the sea. We could also ask parents to help us to create a link with other local professionals.

Additionally, educational visits occur in museums or in places where exhibitions about maths and art, environment protection, recycling and local history happen.

This year a team of dentists came to our school to work and discuss with pupils in 5th and 6th grade (10-12 years old). That was really helpful for children to learn more about this profession.

We could also invite authors, actors or other artist to collaborate with pupils for
lessons goals to be achieved.

Lucia Letizia, Italy

2lucia_letizia — 2016-06-21 15:54:49 UTC

I think it is important that the school first of all establish a real collaboration with families and opens to the Territory.

In our school we “used” some parents with specific skills to implement a project on coding, another on the legality…

We have some local professionals, "friends" of our school, who provide the students their knowledge. An architect, for example, led the children in search of Roman monuments in our city.

Our students have participated in several workshops at the local museum and the castle.

We also visited some local small businesses.

It would be nice to practice the PBL directly in the workshops of local artisans and with their help. I think it is also important that the kids get out of school to learn in the real world. The skills you acquire doing, acting in the real world.

Antonietta Amore, Italy

aamore — 2016-06-21 16:00:16 UTC

As I teach physics, I was thinking about inviting the Fire Fighters to develope with students subjects about THERMODYNAMICS, COMBUSTION, ANTIFIRE PROCEDURES ; I think this would definitively improve school impact on students learning processes.
Moreover many public organizations are willing to collaborate with schools and students often enjoy their participation.

Dubravka Crnic, Croatia

dubravka_crnic — 2016-06-21 16:03:26 UTC

I like doing eTwinning projects with schools from all around Europe and world. I was also school's coordinator of Comenius schools' partnership with 6 countries which lasted for 2 years. You can see project's website here: www.my-hope.eu.
It was a great experience because my students could cooperate with their European peers and learn with them. Besides, some of them travelled to other European countries.

Rosa Macieira

2016-06-21 16:24:43 UTC

I saw the videos and it reminded some of the things that we already do in our school. We often invite people from other areas to speak to our students about some f the themes that we teach. However, it is made in a very formal way: the speaker (person or persons invited) and listeners (students). I belive that we need, according to what we saw, to make these sessions more dynamic and involving, so that students' interest may grow. We have a lot of partners that work with our school in a regular basis: ESEPF (specialized in education), MAPADI (works with disabled persons), a cineclub, the Museum, the City Hall, the city library, the local media and others. So I believe that we have a wonderful background to beggin and succed in a PBL. I also tried, this current year, but in a very embrionary way, a eTwinning project with some colleagues , but the amount of work made it hard and difficult to complete. Nevertheless, we're on moving.

Astrid Hulsebosch

AstridVE — 2016-06-21 16:32:55 UTC

Although our school is situated in a very little city we have a lot a good and important industries who good share great learning experiences with us., the Grafica Veneto where allthe Harry Potter books around the world were stamped. Unfortunately till know we didn't know how to make a good use of it. I'm sure it realy needs to become one of our future goals. I noticed that many teachers are afraid to introduce parents into the school. You are to be prepared and be able to share good learning plans. A few years ago promoted one project with parents who became a part of our digital team, because of their social e leading competences they also gave some support in how to introduce a new way of collaborative learning with tecnologies. The project is still going on and the parents who are helping are becoming more every year. This project could become a trampoline for other future projects.

Maria Teresa Asprella Libonati

mariateresa_as1 — 2016-06-21 17:14:21 UTC

In my school we have many partenrs in the local community.
I'm following a group of students is working with the city's museums to develop apps and other digital services to make most interesting museums for young people.
Other partners of the local community who regularly work with my school:
Lawyers' order,
voluntary associations.

Monica Morana, Italy

moimorana — 2016-06-21 17:18:58 UTC

My school has many partners, local admininstration, educative associations, musical, theatral and sport experts who usually work with teachers in projects on events. We collaborate in some projects with the schools in our neighbours.

Irene Tiago, Portugal

2016-06-21 17:21:33 UTC

In our school there's a tradition to involve local institutions, companies, educational institutions, different professionals and even parents according to the projects. We have also some partnerships within the local community associations.

Donata, Italy

dmschiliro — 2016-06-21 17:40:26 UTC

In school work, to involve people outside it is definitely motivating for students.
Contacts with companies, local cinemas, museums have always been carried out in schools. For example in my school was invited the Canine Unit of the Guardia di Finanza to promote and improve schools in the knowledge of the various aspects that characterize the relationship between humans and pets. And also the children were able to see in action the dogs specialized in drug research.
For years various projects with the most important theaters in my town were realized. But I think there is a substantial difference between the contacts that were usually organized in my school and those who are part of the PBL. In the first case the contacts are organized by the teachers; in a PBL project are the same students during the planning stages to organize your contacts.

Isabel, Portugal

isamsousa — 2016-06-21 17:54:52 UTC

In my school there is a diversity of activities that involve the community: for example, the Art Department often participates in creating posters to local initiatives as Youth Week, for example, or commercial companies. The school organises a Student’s Forum, inviting several universities and professionals to come to school to publicise their courses or professions or just to talk about their personal school experience and how it influenced their current professional life.

In my city there are two Universities, libraries, museums and we are nearby Lisbon, with all the cultural and scientific offer of a country’s capital, so there are plenty of opportunities for this kind of involvement with the community.

Mária Bdžochová, Slovakia

maria_bdzochova — 2016-06-21 17:57:30 UTC

I am interested in doing new projects. I experienced eTwinning projects when my students cooperated with their Polish peers. The topic was about tourism. During five lessons students shared their ideas with their peers abroad and they focused on mutual introduction, the school environment, their city/town and the tourist highlights. Students were working in groups and group leaders communicated with the teacher to help them and give advice. They created a poster about eTwinning project and finally presented their partnerships in front of the whole class. There was interaction with other school subjects too (IT, History, Geography, Art etc.) It was a great motivation to learning English in real life situations.

Emanuela FILIPPO, Ita

2016-06-21 17:58:59 UTC

I have looked at the video for two examples of successful engagement of outside professionals in the PBL work of students. I undoubtely can say that this kind of collaboration between school and professionals is present in the Italian school, above all after the law which induce a collaboration between the second grade secondary school and the work world. In the first grade secondary school and primary school this kind of collaboration is, however, strictly linked to "good will" of the teacher or of the School Principal. In fact, it often happens that only two of three times a year students can mette local professionals. Alumni are never engaged in such a "research" work of local professionals.

Keratso Georgiadou

keratsog — 2016-06-21 19:38:22 UTC

GREECE
In the school I used to work as a principal for 4 years every month we used to invite professionals from the local community and speak to the children such as dentists, doctors, nutricians, people working with computers on the safe use of the Internet, professionals from the local universities, etc. Additionally the school had joined the UNESCO ASPnet (National Committee, Greece/ Ministry of Education) and worked on various projects along with a school in India. We also had e Twinning partners and took part in competitions n a local/ national or European level. We visited and played theater to 2 Greek schools in Istanbul, and we materialized 48 programms in a period of 4 years. The groups of Astronomy took part at the experiment of Eratosthenes, three groups visited EAS in rome, Cern on Geneva and the British Museum. Events like the "Day of the Professions" were established for every year and professions off all kinds were presented at school by professionals (parents, public workers from the locall community or universities, the army, the banks)

Alina Kalopana

alkalopana — 2016-06-21 20:26:59 UTC

GREECE
My school, the 1st Primary School of Gerakas, many years now is connectes with the Musical Gynmasium-Liceum of Pallini, attending concerts and open lessons as well. http://www.pmglp.org/index.php/el/
Furthermore we have collaborate with National Opera of Greece in the programme "The opera interactively to the Primary Schools" (2.2014), when opera's people visited our school for one hole day, to present much of their work. Furthermore, my students had to opportunity to participate to the final performance as the choir and also as part of the orchestra playing the sounds of a storm
http://www.nationalopera.gr/gr/opera-sta-sholeia/ta-sholeia/attiki-/1o-dimotiko-sholeio-geraka/

Rosa Gaspar

luisasgaspar67 — 2016-06-21 20:30:42 UTC

I like doing eTwinning projects with schools from all around Europe and world. I was also school's coordinator of Comenius schools' partnership with 6 countries which lasted for 2 years. You can see project's website .
It was a great experience because my students could cooperate with their European peers and learn with them. Besides, some of them travelled to other European countries.

Manuel Garcia, Italy

2016-06-21 20:45:40 UTC

Teaching a writing and Language arts class, I feel that it could be useful to present students with real world situations of the importance of writing and how it could be used as a profession. In order to do this, it would be interesting to ask a specialist from a local newspaper or blogger to describe why correct sentence structure and wording are essential when trying to get your point across. This lesson could then be tied into communicating between writing for storytelling, events of major importance, tragic events, and compare them to works of literature and poetry. If available, a volunteer author or poet could be brought in to complement the journalist as a way of demonstrating to the students that though there are different styles and approaches to writing and language, they are both important in their own respects and could lead to many different kinds of career options and lifestyle lessons.

Elisavet Katsanou, Greece

lazypandofla — 2016-06-21 20:50:00 UTC

I don't have a class right now, but i if i did i would like to use e-Twinning, so that my class could collaborate with kids from another country, and also, especially if it was a small school, i would like my classroom to collaborate with a different grade classroom. As for the local community, i think that, according to the subject my class would be working we could invite many kinds of professionals, like nurses, firemen, doctors, lawyers, police officers, cleaners, vets, bakers. I think we could also invite members of the students' families to talk to us about something, for example a culture different than ours and how was their adjustment. We could also invite the studen'ts grandparents to talk about life 50 years before.

Maja Sokač

majadujmovic — 2016-06-21 20:57:21 UTC

I tried already to engage people from our community in the learning process of students but it was not so often in the context of PBL. As a pedagogue I have to give a chence for all students to go to visit or get in touch with the local professional and in my case that's mean to organize an event for cca 90 students. We had parents as teachers already and they are the first profesionals engaged in my school, as doctors, as an exterior architects, writers etc. Usually we take students to visit local institution. We have good communication with local police station and projects and also with a local school doctor. In a one project I engaged local Club AA where students met locals who had alcohol problems and discussed with them all disadvantages of being adicted of it (picture). Students learned much more then in any other workshop I had before. We engaged a senior advisor for lifelonglearning from Agency for VET and adult education to have a workshop with students for raising the awerness of the students that learning is a life long process, specially through media. In a project called " Give me five for health" in coorporation with nutricionist from Croatian Medical chamber students made a recipes of a healthy breakfast, and the winner was serevd one morning in a school cantine. I remember lots of projects and engagment of local proffesionals in our school but the main problem I see is to engage them in a project based learning enviroment because of the number of students and time professionals could have for us. Because of the number of students theese engagments ussually end up in a frontal presentation and discussion. It is something I have to think about and be creative for changing it...I could also engage local Bussines hotel and a famous Zagreb's Solar house in a future projects since they're in our neighborhood.

Remedios, Spain

2016-06-21 21:13:01 UTC

I consider that maybe we could start a project with the professionals of our little town (shops assistants, banks, bars, hotels, etc) to ask them about their level of languages, what they feel they need to know when dealing with the public, etc.

We also can work with two primary schools which are near our high school. In addition to this, we could ask for collaboration with a nonprofit organisation, called "Lions club".

Cinthia Degli Alberti, Italy

2016-06-21 21:41:42 UTC

Involving the community

Two different ways we involved professionals in my school life this year are the following:
- my science colleague organized a practical workshop to make bread: she explained the pupils the physical and chemical phenomena involved in the process of making bread and a professional baker came to help them prepare it reflecting with him about what they had learned theorethically.
- we hosted a judge and university teacher to talk about conflicts and conciliative justice from his experience with problematic students in difficult areas.

Clementina/Portugal

clemagui — 2016-06-22 01:15:33 UTC

As I mentioned before, I have a desire to study all professions and show where there is math in each of these professions, on the contrary, students will have to find out. Of course I or the students would have to invite a professional from each of the professions to inform students about what they do and respond to various questions of the students.
Health Center can invite the doctor and the nurse. The nurse comes sometimes to school to make greater vigilance in the vaccination of students. Other health professionals have come to school to a dental diagnosis, diet, hearing and vision.
We can not forget the small football club where is important the coach and the president. In the parish council there to see all professions from the roadman the President of the Board. And you can think of Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Agronomy, Pharmacy and many other professions that exist in the small village.

Anna, Italy

2016-06-22 04:08:28 UTC

I teach in a vocational school for social services and thanks to alternating training activities, mandatory in Italy, we have strengthened the cooperation with external partners. I have never seen my students to be so industrious and full of initiative, such as when the relationship with the world of work

Naděžda Nováková, Ostrava

2016-06-22 06:07:34 UTC

Often we have people form various fields having lectures or running workshops at our school . Once a year we hold the Science Week and the Week of Languages - full of workshops , projects and other Activities Which are partly run by other proffesionals or people from our community.

Carmen dell'Oglio, Italy

cdellog — 2016-06-22 07:45:02 UTC

I teach in secondary school that has strengthened cooperation with external partners especially in scientific field. This year my students experienced a week in a laboratory of the hospital in the nearby that is involved in experimental researches on human genes. The kind of collaboration expected of the students was successful because I've never seen them so active on the the task required.

Eurydice, Greece

eurydicegkori — 2016-06-22 07:48:20 UTC

I'm an EFL teacher in a Junior High School. In typical classs projects I never thought of inviting anyone as we need English as a medium of communication. However eTwinning projects give us the opportunity to use the target language naturally. During an eTwinning project we thought of interviewing the Museum curator of Vergina about the Golden Larnax (an artifact supposedly "stolen" for the needs of our project). It didn't go as planned but I am definetely going to be reaching out more from now on.

Zied besbes , Monastir - Tunisie

2016-06-22 07:52:43 UTC

I'am a technology teacher , our students made the fountain project, it's an amazing and interesting project which make the students share different knowledge and experience to realize something together..
their school mates were very excited and wanted to produce similar things

TeacherAngela Tarulli

dott_angela_tarulli — 2016-06-22 08:05:39 UTC

I teach in a secondary school in a prison house and tried with thematic projects on discipline and a poetry workshop to create a partnership between pupils of different schools present inside the prison house. The type of collaboration between students has been successful not only in the acquisition profile of skills and skills 'but because' one of the many realized projects reported 3 times the first national award

TeacherAngela Tarulli

dott_angela_tarulli — 2016-06-22 08:15:26 UTC

Share idea is winning

Luce 1962 Italy

luciasacco — 2016-06-22 08:47:31 UTC

This year we have developed an eTwinning project about the Healthy eating.

Rosanna. Italy

rosanna_galbiat — 2016-06-22 09:01:30 UTC

The primary school where I teach is open to the territory.

We have good collaboration with local authorities and professionals:

with the local police authorities we organized projects related to road safety education and bicycle driving;
with local health authorities, in particular with a nutritionist, we made the "laboratorio del gusto” (taste laboratory): the children could experiment different aliments and tastes, then brainstormed about healthy and non-healthy foods and about what they like/dislike;
with IT professionals we run a short course on PC languages and coding principles using Scratch;
with a baker, we organized a workshop named "mani in pasta” (hands in the dough) to teach children how to make bread.

Additionally, we have many partners that help us with different projects throughout the year: educational associations, musical, theatrical and sports experts who collaborate with teachers on many topics, using a few hours every week. Children take part actively in these experiences, both in the class with the experts and outside, on the territory.

Finally, in the Italian high school there is the “alternanza scuola lavoro” (school-work alternation), a collaboration between school and the work world were the high school students, during they third and fourth year, should spend 3 weeks doing a “real” job: when the school is an educational lyceum, their work period could include a project run in primary school.

Gordana Popovic, Serbia

teachergordanap67 — 2016-06-22 09:35:39 UTC

The school where I teach is a vocational secondary school. Our students specialise in agriculture, veterinary medicine, food processing (bakers/butchers), environmental protection, and industrial pharmaceutical technology. So, we cooperate with a number of local businesses where students get some professional experience. Outside experts sometimes attend their final practical exams.

As a teacher of English, I have not cooperated with anyone from the local community so far. Since the project I have planned for the next school year deals with raising environmental awareness, I plan to get in touch with the corresponding department in the municipality. The target audience for the project is school staff and students, but I am sure we can expand it with the help from local officials.

Up to now the projects I have initiated have been aimed at other students from school or other schools (eTwinning).

José Ricardo Pinto, Portugal

clarissepinao — 2016-06-22 09:40:31 UTC

In our school, we have many projects that involves the community. In some of these projects, the students talk with specialists about the subject of the project. The students also use Skype in the classroom to talk with students from other schools and can share their work.

Maria Grazia, Italy

2016-06-22 09:46:22 UTC

I teach in a centre for adult education, that is trying to strengthen cooperation with external partners. Students are from different countries, mainly Africa and Asia. This year the centre engaged with different cultural institutions, to organize a special event on migration with film presentations, art exhibitions, musical, dance and theatrical performances. The event was a success and saw the participation of many people. It brought into focus on the one hand the refugee crisis, on the other hand the long way towards inclusion. For the next year, we hope to approach networks of local professionals to work with, in order to offer students real opportunities to (re)enter the job market.

Osman KESKİN, Turkey

lovelyosman — 2016-06-22 09:49:09 UTC

My school is girl vocational high school in a central city. We have gastronomy, ICT, Graphic design. İ would like to cooperapte for a project on educating on global entrepreneurs and innovators.

Charalambos Aristidou, Cyprus

2016-06-22 09:52:18 UTC

People from the community that we could engage with:

I believe that the most efficient way to engage the community with the school is to use student's parents. Parents, professionals in their areas that they could find the time to come to the school or invite the students to their work environment to share their expertise.

In the past year, we already engage in my school we already with one expert which is one of our student's parents from the field of renewable energy where he came in the school and did a presentation about renewable energy. Also the students visit the lav of its company and spoke with a lot of scientists there.

More people from the community that we could engage are professors and scientists from universities in Nicosia.

Daniela Millini, Italy

sep31to75oct — 2016-06-22 09:54:51 UTC

Our school is situated in a territory which is very rich in natural, historical and artistic ‘treasures’. Quarto d’Altino itself stands in the middle of the Natural Park of Silis River, has a very important archaeological museum and a wide archaeological area still mostly unexplored. Moreover, the town is at a short distance from Venice, Treviso, Padua, the Dolomites, the sea and other significant natural & artistic realities. Tourism is (could be?) an outstanding resource of our territory and its nearby territories, it represents a real possible chance for a future job for our students; yet most of them are completely unaware of where they live and what is around them – both as a resource and a heritage to protect and take care of. I think the school could and should engage more in this field, creating more effective contacts with specific professionals, with nearby communities and schools (especially those technical vocational high schools focusing on tourism), with other EU and extra-EU schools, in order to design more effective projects which might be grounded on a network of shared resources and collaborations. Our school took part in three Comenius Projects, in a number of E-Twinning Projects and has just applied for an Erasmus+. Some of us deeply believe in the positive value of collaborating with different school reality and work together to create new opportunities for our students.

Our school already has contacts with a number of networks; most of them are ‘institutional’, with other schools, in order to improve more effectively some common objectives such as drop out, students’ EU KC improvement, bridging the students’ passage from different school levels, inclusion of SEN and foreign students. We’ve also positive interaction with sports and cultural organizations and associations operating on our territory (and in Venice province as whole) which have always been willing to collaborate with the school and have definitely contributed to improve the school learning offer – together with the added value of bringing forth different points of view on what the idea of Education can be and be carried on. Which might be very useful, when (and if) teachers were able to listen to these different points of view.

In our school alumni are involved only to present the high school they are attending to our final classes students; the gist of their ‘lecture’ might be summarised in the idea that high schools Require studying, while before it could be, “I’ll go on, no matter what I don’t do or don’t know” J

“Identifying the right people”? The “right people” might be easily identified, and even approached. The Real problem is having the Right people within the managing school staff – which is only very rarely the case. �O

ELENA TYCHOLA

2016-06-22 10:26:02 UTC

GREECE
I work at a small primary school in northern Greece with students coming from different socio-economical ranks. With reference to the school curriculum, a lot of experiential activities take place throughout the school year. Certainly, the SS themselves are rather young to be able to contact any professionals, except being their own relatives or family friends. Anyway, usually teachers come in contact with people of the community and invite them at school or visit them with their Ss at their own place. The so called "KPE" all around Greece, (Environmental education Centres) organize educational programmes for Ss of all ages with the aim to make them learn, study, appreciate and love nature, the earth and its resources. Professionals or talks on mouth hygiene or nutrition also take place at school for Ss aged 7-9, as well as visits of psycologists to focus on challenging issues of school/life for older Ss. (sex, bullying,etc)

Eleftheria Andreou, Cyprus

eleftheria_and — 2016-06-22 10:33:07 UTC

I find engaging outside professionals in the Project Based Learning work of the students really interesting and exciting.

It would be great, for example, to contact people that have to do with the Spanish culture and language. For instance, the students could contact on Skype people from Spain and Latin America and ask them to contribute in their way to their projects. These people could be their teacher's friends and thus, they could be easily contacted.

Moreover, chefs working in Spanish or Mexican restaurants here in Cyprus could be invited. In addition, as their teacher I am trying to be up-to-date regarding any cultural events taking place. We could contact artists, writers, dancers or singers that come to the island to present their work and they could make their contribution to the students PBL work.

Furthermore, the Embassador of Spanish speaking countries could be invited to take part in PBL events in our school and they could see the students' work and they could give their feedback.

Finally, we could participate in eTwinning programmes and organise joint projects with other schools in other countries. As the basic language of my students is English they could exchange ideas and speak with students whose native language is Spanish and they could do a PBL project together. It would be great!

Elisabetta Margaria, Italy Reflecting on "which people from our community my or my students could engage with", I've immediately thought about a cultural association ("trame", weaves) in our small city that works with migrants and refugees. Illegal immigration is nowadays a critical issue and a political, social and humanitarian problem. Both the professionals working in the association and the refugees hosted by the association could be invited to our school first of all to talk about their experiences and then to share with students their ideas, projects and needs.

elisabettamargaria — 2016-06-22 11:27:27 UTC

Daniela Usmiani/Croatia

ddanci — 2016-06-22 11:51:07 UTC

During my last project in which we tried to find good role models for young people I asked our ss who finished school to come and have a talk with ur ss (medical sister - member of Red Cross). We take our ss to some building companies or presenters from others come to school and discuss with ss and show them what are they doing.

Silvio Giaffredo, Ital

silvioilvecchio — 2016-06-22 12:29:41 UTC

1) Our school subscribed an agreement with 2 IT local businesses, a couple of year ago. The agreement states that pupils of our school will develop software program, ordered by the industrial partner. It is not that easy to combine the project development and the school-year curriculum, but working for a real result required from out of the school s very stimulating for pupils
2) Last school-year some pupils have been engaged as young teachers in a set of lab lessons for old people, in a project partially supported by Poste Italiane.

Gülşen Korucu,Turkey

gulsenkorucu — 2016-06-22 13:33:01 UTC

with other comMy school is engaged with eTwinning projects this year.I and my colleague begin being active in etwinning platfrom and we change our mission of school ,student and parents.Now they want to be involved in international activities and support digital citizenship.And they believe we can achieve the real success with the help of connection ,university,.Also some peoplewith other communities and peers.Online Interaction with world , exchanging ideas ,collaboration,partnership and entreprenerurship are guideline of impressive and permanent learning and being versatile person.Besides, some teachers make a short trip to present the students real world atmosphere such as museum ,university.Also some people like writer, academician visit us to tell about their occupation.We go on discovering,sharing and creating original project ideas with the power of collaboration

Elaine Mac Ginty, Ireland

2016-06-22 13:35:13 UTC

Collaborating with the community will take a lot of forward planning and skill to build up good relationships but will be a valuable learning experience for students.

Marianthi Arvanitidou -Greece

1canislupus22 — 2016-06-22 13:35:26 UTC

Parents are invited at school meetings for the e- twinning projects presentation. Teachers invite professionals to talk about teeth, healthy food, safe internet, smoking, love e.t.c. We try to involve community to school facts but sometimes this over pass the limits and the results are not so good as we want.

Monica Chifor, Romania

2016-06-22 14:05:08 UTC

I have experience with etwinning projectsas I have already developed two of them with partner schools from Europe. As a feedback to those activities I can honrstly say that the students were realy involved in them and were more motivated in doing the necessary wok th they would be on a regular school project

Sophie, France

sophie_denizou — 2016-06-22 14:43:12 UTC

In my school we have had language assistants for the past four years and I found it very interesting for the students to meet those young people who are not teachers and who have a different experience : some were English, another one was American and we are going to have a Canadian assistant next year. They all did activities and games together. It was different from what I could do as a teacher.

Clarisse Pinão, Portugal

clarissepinao — 2016-06-22 14:58:10 UTC

In my school we use Skype in the classroom to visit museums to get inspirations for the adresses, for example.

Consuelo Mas, Spain

2016-06-22 15:03:25 UTC

During this course we have had lots of activities in contact with different members of our community. Some of them have been:
- Talk about gender violence.

- Recycling games with some volunteers.

- Theaters in the school.

- Visit the animal shelter.

- Visit a natural park with guides.

Parents who come to school for explaining different works.

Dora Romano, Italy

romanodora — 2016-06-22 15:08:05 UTC

In my school (a second grade Secondary School) we have had a project called "Made in Italy" where our students studying Ceramic art, of the fifth course (so near to the Maturity Exam) met in Spain local artist and local politicians to study a common strategy in order to cooperate and create opportunities of training and working.

Angela Bertolini-Italy

angela_bertolini — 2016-06-22 15:13:13 UTC

I've been thinking about this for a while. In my opinion the involvement of a professonist from the community the students live in has to deal with something rather appealing to their eyes. So, I've taken my time to survey the options my community can offer. This is the result of it: I think we might involve our students in the creation of a multimedia presentation of our local basketball team. They're quite popular right now and they've already collaborated with the team, taking students to watch the trainig sessions and interviewing the players. in this way I was thinking about having the students interiew the players and dubbing some of their most spectacular tricks during the various matches. To support them and evaluate them we might invite a couple of sport journalists from local TV channels, who usually collaborate with schools. It would be interesting to have them give advice to the students about the most effective questions to ask, or the best way to comment a meaningful moment of a very important match.

Tânia Pires, Portugal

taniac_mpires — 2016-06-22 15:26:36 UTC

I am a teacher in science area. In our school, we have established partnerships with universities of the region with whom we have developed different experimental science projects. We also make Skype calls for students interview and contact with scientists and other specialists in order to motivate students and show them how to do science in the real world. We also use Skype to make study visits to different places like the zoo or museums where students interact with the people who work at the places.
In our school there is a communication department and the students contact with the people who work there. The elements of the department dynamize journalism, audiovisual and multimedia clubs allowing students to acquire other skills.
The school also has partnerships with local football club and a bakery / pastry shop called Broinhas.

anniroulia1967 — 2016-06-22 15:30:35 UTC

In our kindergarten class we very often invite professionals to discuss about their job it depends on the project we have, p.e a dentist, a baker, an astrophysicist etc. we also collaborate with the university and have students teach in the classroom

Marko Brajković

2016-06-22 15:36:12 UTC

As a village school or should I say a country school it is very hard to find professionals which are willing to engage to our projects in school. But there are some good examples - often I organize Guest lectures so my students can learn from professionals, for example a policeman, a doctor, a entrepreneur, etc.

Sevastiani Roulia

anniroulia1967 — 2016-06-22 15:37:14 UTC

In our kindergarten class we very often invite professionals to discuss about their jobs, it depends on the project we have, like a dentist, a baker, an astrophysicist etc. we also collaborate with the university and have students teach in the classroom. And of course we collaborate with

Aoife McDonnell - Ireland

2016-06-22 16:01:26 UTC

Oftentimes it is difficult for professionals and visitors to take a trip to a rural Irish school. A fantastic resource to overcome this problem is Skype in the Classroom or Mystery Skype to connect with professionals or schools all over the world. This resource gives further access to children beyond their own locality to globally.

Marianthi Athanasiadou, Greece

amarianthi — 2016-06-22 16:01:33 UTC

I usually invite professionals to present their job.
This year for the first time I with my students visited the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki and especially the group of university students who organize the Tedx University of Macedonia. It was a great experience for my students and me too. So creative minds and full of energy.
For the next year I would like to invite profesionals who get involved with creating digital games. It is quite difficult because I work in a small village, but I am going to try.

Anna Bormida, Genova , Italy

annabormida — 2016-06-22 16:18:35 UTC

At primary school weusually invite parents and grandparents to present their job or the history of our town.
Then we usually have contacts with the University, some students come to our classroom and organize activities.
After that we go to some museums and to experiment some activities .
Our communities are very interested to involve children in activities such as agricoltural activities as the cultivation of basil in order to prepare the "pesto" a green sauce for pasta or fisherman activities as anchovies conserved with salt.

José Guerrero Ruiz (Spain)

2016-06-22 17:30:24 UTC

It is not always easy to contact with local community. We often look for help in our own friends. For example I have involved two friends of mine who own a tourist company to evaluate the project I would like to implement in my class of English as a second language. They are English native speakers . They are very keen on the idea because our school has sometimes offered them the building when they have groups of students visiting the city.

We also have the support of a local theatre. As some of our students have been extras in some big plays which were performed there, and the students of the school go to the theatre as spectators on regular basis. They always offer the theatre facilities and staff for plays we perform.

It is difficult to find the support of the local community, but it is true that when you offer these organizations, companies… something on exchange, they are willing to participate. You don’t need to offer too many things but just something they might need. ��

Silvia Gualdi - Italy

silvia_gualdi — 2016-06-22 17:55:41 UTC

I teach in a evening school and my students are adults that return to school to improve their skills in order to find a job or to get a better job. I usually don’t involve partners in

my educational activities.

I’m thinking I might involve professionals or people who work in human resources in order to explain to my students how to write a curriculum vitae and how to sustain a job interview .

Agata, Italy

agata_riggio — 2016-06-22 17:56:48 UTC

Recently, school in Italy has been increansingly interested in establishing connections with the local area. What's more, older students are expected to do a work training period. For eample, my students at Human Science Liceo are attending a nursery school. In my casa, as an English teacher an opportunity to collaborate with partners outside the classroom could be meeting an immigrant or a foreigner writer.

Teresa Fernández de la Vega, Spain

tfernandezdevega — 2016-06-22 17:59:43 UTC

In my school, there are teachers who have asked parents to join their PBL lessons. I expect to do so in short. Our community is quite small, as our schools is placed in a young and new quarter. We also have some schools nearby, and we might collaborate in the future.

Frédérique MAIRE, Ankara French School, Turkey

2016-06-22 18:18:43 UTC

Working as an English teacher in a French school in the Turkish capital, the school being in a suburb of Ankara which used to be almost desert still a couple of years ago, I must admit that we do not have so many neighbors who could be able to come and work with us in French !! Sometimes we have the police (their station is 200m away from the school) come and talk to the kids about risky behaviors... Very recently, actually yesterday, we had a 'Refugee day » at the school. The students from Year 11 organized a donation campain in the school for clothes, shoes, toys, color pencils... for three days. I was amazed how well it worked. They also invited French ; Turkish or English speaking people from UNICEF, PAM, and a few other NGO's involved in the crisis relief for conferences or workshops. A few weeks ago, we had an Environment Day, the students also managed to get someone from Greenpeace Turkey come and talk, and a Year 12 student did a great presentation. The kids also organized a few workshops : collecting the trash in the school and separating it, but also actually making recycled paper from discarded paper collected from the photocopy room... These two days involved both other people from inside and from outside the school, and it seems to me that they did a good job. I am stil thinking how I could get people in my classroom to help engage the students !

Maria, Italy

mrasorrentino — 2016-06-22 18:24:06 UTC

I teach Math and Science. My students are 11- 14 years old. I like PBL lessons.

Sabrina Petrillo ITALY

spwillothewisp9 — 2016-06-22 18:30:11 UTC

Due the recent School reform in Italy stage in firms has become recently a sine qua non to qualify from the third year in Secondary Schools, whereas external companies are not ready to assume responsibility for such an commitment. However, a lot of enthusiasm is being shown by the School External Committee where professors, local professionals and internal teachers meet periodically to plan initiatives aiming at promoting entrepreneurship. I'm posting some material about that.

Luce 1962

luciasacco — 2016-06-22 18:51:01 UTC

Last year at school my students took part in several projects engaging local organisations. For example the students worked on a history project about the refugees during the first world war.

The town police officers were invited to have seminars about road safety, while digital experts had some lessons about cyberbullying and legality. So, thinking about the PBL activity I'd like to carry on with my students I think I might ask for support to several people.

Stefania Costanzino In my school (6-10 years old) we invite some grandparents to know better our traditions, old stories or to learn about old job. We also invite parents who came from other countries to know each other and the other cultures. We also have some "expert" who teach us something. In the future I would like work at some project with another school.

steffco77 — 2016-06-22 19:25:00 UTC

Marie-Leet Bens

2016-06-22 19:30:53 UTC

Students of the Fashion Section of my school organize a real Fashion Show. Students of Vocational Section organize a Street Festival. Students of Business Section organize selling projects for charity .

Ivana, Italy

Ivana91 — 2016-06-22 19:36:28 UTC

Eleni Argyriou, Greece

elenargy — 2016-06-22 19:51:06 UTC

In the primary school I work in we have connections with the parents of the children and the people working in the municipality. A thing to bear in mind is that the buildings of the public schools in Greece belong to the municipalities where the schools are and they are responsible for the good condition of the buildings. We therefore engage children in activities "beautifying" the building and invite members of the municipality to participate

Leonor Negrão (Portugal)

leonornegrao2 — 2016-06-22 20:16:43 UTC

As far as my school is concerned it is usual to find collaboration outside the classroom. We work with other schools, but we also work with the local health centre, with writers, members of the university, with cultural organizations theatre groups, for example, and also local shops and industries. we also have a real connection with the parents' council and local authorities. I think it very useful and it is a way of connecting school with real world. For my own project I think to work cooperatively with the health centre and the nutritionist of that centre.

Emilia, Romania

Emilia_T22 — 2016-06-22 20:19:26 UTC

My school has collaborated with ex-students ,publishing houses, the theatre company, with
parents , representatives of different companies who came in the classroom and gave presentations on different topics from real life.I've noticed that students became interested and more motivated.
It would be a good idea to have people from NGO or volunteers to work in projects as PBL together with our students.I would like to find more motivated people from the community who would be able and eager to involve themselves in educational projects to support the educational system to blend the classroom activity with the outside classroom activity.We are also involved in Etwinning projects.

Letizia, Perugia (Italy)

ledea73 — 2016-06-22 20:22:24 UTC

I teach in a small town, near Perugia. It's very difficult to involve the community in educational projects. There are some activities about theatre, sport, but there isn't a real engagment.

Elisabetta, Italy

2016-06-22 20:22:58 UTC

In my school Teachers invite volounteers of our community (student's parents and friends) to speack about social problems, health, ICT

Laura, Romania

lauragorgani — 2016-06-22 20:28:52 UTC

We have some NGOs which my school collaborates with and students do seem more involved when it comes to doing extracurricular things. I hope in the future we could actually have more time in our schedule (students', as well) to do such activities.

Maria Lucia -We could involve the local environmental groups (like Greenpeace and WWF) and pupils' parents in our environmental activities (for instance, cleaning beaches).

2016-06-22 20:36:58 UTC

Iwona Puscian (Poland)

2016-06-22 20:44:11 UTC

I teach at a small university. We sometimes invite people who are members of local community, but it's not on regular basis. I found many interesting ideas here, which I'm going to use next year.

Sara Terrassan

verbavolant_etwinning — 2016-06-22 21:11:56 UTC

I work with students aged eleven, twelve and thirteen and during my eTwinning project I tried to engage local organisation, such as the city. For example I tried to create with my students a tourist guide of their city and asked the tourist office to help us.

Katerina Toubeki

toubaik — 2016-06-22 21:15:22 UTC

Greece
I work in a primary school. In my opinion what schools mostly need is good communication with parents. Parents can offer a wide range of cooperation opportunities and can be of great help. At the same time teachers create a good platform of communication which can help their educating role.

Moreover, a school can create links with university representatives. A cooperation with young people can have a very important effect on children development.
As far as English language teaching is concerned, it's good to bring students in contact with international organisations and involve them in actions with a worldwide effect.

Elisabetta Cuccus, Italy

2016-06-22 21:19:34 UTC

Here is an experience of involvement of the local community which can be turned in a successfull PBL

Darina Kovaličová,Slovakia

kovalicova_d — 2016-06-22 21:32:00 UTC

Students working on eTwinning projects on a healthy diet, mathematics, tourism and help people in need. At the end of the project they drew up a joint leaflet, videos, and e- magazine .

Marijana Smolcec, CROATIA

silipa302 — 2016-06-22 21:33:50 UTC

Our school has good contact with local community. As a vocational and not only grammar school our schools tries to have good contcats to local and regional NGOs, companies, local shops etc. where our students to their training and practice. This is good for both the school and the town. In my LD I have planned a collaboration and involment in the local or regional NGO member who would talk to the students about the topic of voluntary work etc. I think having good relationship with the local community is of utmost importance for all.

Marco Pianotti, Italy

pianotti_marco — 2016-06-22 21:56:34 UTC

I would involve in my activity with the students the local associations that work with different sporting activities

Alma, Lithuania

almabalni — 2016-06-22 22:57:54 UTC

As I work in primary school the most efficient collaboration partners are students' parents. They often collaborate designing lessons about professions, their hobbies. Sometimes they come to our classroom to teach Art or Geography if they travel a lot. Once my students had a lesson when a parent, who is an architect, taught them how to create their own house plan.

Emilio Amella, Spain

2016-06-22 23:28:09 UTC

I know artist and designers and they could come to school to speak with students but I'm really interested for the next school yearto participate in a project with another class through the eTwinning community. I didn't know this community and I think is great and it can be engaged

Skaistė, Lithuania

2016-06-23 15:46:52 UTC

I work in a professional training center, our students learn builder, cook, seller and other specialties. We have the ability to organize activities in stores, construction, catering, hotels and others.

Rita, Italia

blu_rita — 2016-06-23 17:47:43 UTC

In my school often the teachers involve the parents during the

Skaistė, Lithuania

2016-06-23 21:21:59 UTC

Teamwork network:

http://www.twiddla.com - team work on the Internet. Interactive board.
http://titanpad.com - Invite students to co-edited the document, follow the creative process.
http://liveminutes.com - team work online, create co-editable documents, maps, Shema.
http://www.awwapp.com - board to your work on the Internet.
http://en.linoit.com - stickers. It can be used for organizing brainstorming, creating interactive sorting / grouping task and so on.
Mind map:
http://mind42.com - mind map browser. The ability to insert the link above.
https://coggle.it - mind map has generated by Google.
http://www.text2mindmap.com/ - the text in the mind map.
http://drichard.org/mindmaps/ - mind map, which use the same lessons. Unnecessary registration, and saves the PNG file as editable.

Víctor Fernández

Victor84 — 2016-06-24 19:01:38 UTC

In our school , the parent association participate in lots of activities.

Anna Paou

paouanna2 — 2016-06-25 08:03:02 UTC

In our school we work with environmental foundations due to the fact we are visitng places with great interesting in such kind of subjects!

Sílvia Zurita, Barcelona

szurita — 2016-06-25 09:01:00 UTC

We collaborate with the local theater, gardening shops, robotics organization and astronomical association.
But we have never tried to ask for students help. It may be a great idea.

Jolanta Stefańska, Poland

jolanta_stefanska — 2016-06-25 09:51:35 UTC

I teach in a vocational secondary school so the students get in touch with local bussinesmen on regular basis - work placements. Teachers ask proffesionals from our local comunity to give lectures or presentations on different topics, especially on entrepreneurship. A few teachers cooperate with ngos in running bigger projects, eg. healthy style of living or how local authority works.
I joined one of our local ngo and we are going to run 2-3 projects in the next school year.

Laura Gentili

laura2 — 2016-06-25 11:40:21 UTC

I have been collaborating with eTwinning partners since January 2014 and every year my students can find new partners to share projects and ideas. In this photo I show a very happy day for students: this year's meeting on 21st April between Italian and French students

Manana Jakeli, Georgia

mmmjakeli — 2016-06-25 11:49:10 UTC

We collaborate with Georgian Association of History Educators. This association is member of Euroclio. It's very useful for me and my students...
GAHE

Cristina Parente, Portugal

2016-06-25 15:18:25 UTC

My school has carried out different international projects within the Lifelong Programme framework, namely Comenius Multilateral Projects, and in other international projects, such as projects under the Youth in Action Programme and under Erasmus +.
My school has been developing a considerable number of national partnerships, protocols and projects, namely with the City Hall of Lamego and the Parish Councils, Europe Direct from Lamego, the Commission for Protection of Children and young people of Lamego, Parents and Friends of the Mentally Handicapped of Vila Real - Sabrosa (CRI Douro), the Health Centre, the Teacher Training Centre from Lamego, Armamar, Resende e Tarouca ( CEFOP-LART), the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD ), the School of Technology and Management of Lamego, the Theatre of Ribeiro da Conceição, in addition to a wide range of business local entities within the training of the pupils from professional courses.
I would say we have our school doors open to community but we can always do much better, involving community in a different way. I've never invited community members to PBL events. We could start visiting some local volunteer organizations and discuss with the people who are charge of them, activity suggested by one of our peers, Maria Georgiadou in her assessment to my learning design. (My driving question is "How can we convince students to become volunteers?"). They could help us organize the Food and Clothing Drive and be involved in our PBL.

Eufemia Rosso, Spain

2016-06-25 17:08:41 UTC

We always try to involve people outside the classroom. We think it's the best way to bring the real work to the class.

We look for all kind of professionals and if we don't get one, we look for someone among the families.

I always begin projects asking them what problems they have and if they want us to give them ideas or prototypes to solve them. During the process, we work using PBL and once we have some developed ideas, "the expert" comes again and helps us with the "knowledge" they have and in this way we can check if we are working well or if we have to make changes.

The final product is given to the professional that has been collaborating with us.

In this picture you can see my pupils given the final product to a bookshop owner we were working with.

Violeta Corbu, Romania

corbu_violeta — 2016-06-25 20:27:12 UTC

We collaborate sometimes with volunteers or consulting from Junior Achievement Program.

Carme Masdevall (Spain)

2016-06-26 21:19:58 UTC

I guess that most of our students are not able to see the real benefits of what they are learning so, whenever you engage them with their community, they start to think their work and learning has a meaning. They have got a real audience so what they do is not only a piece of paper or outcome that will disappear after it has been graded but it will remain on them because they will have learned more. I also agree with what it was said on the video, that is that when they know there is a real audience, their level of detail in their work is higher; they try harder.

In my case, an ESL teacher of teenage learners, I could engage the following people:

- somebody from a job recruitment office to come and explain our students why speaking English is so important in today’s world.

- a chef from a restaurant could come and evaluate the recipes that the students have prepared (recorded in a video) and explained in English

- a fashion designer who comes and sees the catwalk the students have prepared.

Obviously, the audience would be so real that my students would definitely work in much more detail and attitude.

Recep Batur, BURSA

recepbatur — 2016-06-27 11:33:09 UTC

I call my friend to deliver out a speaking lesson once a week.He is a native speaker of English.It is very useful for my students to get the accent.

Monika Nemeth/Hungary

2016-06-28 12:54:51 UTC

https://live.etwinning.net/projects/project/97988
My Projekt idea:
Baroque Castles across Europe
The central topic of the project is the Baroque period with its habits and behavioral norms.Pupils will also have an insight into the everyday life of a Baroque castle.
Level : Intermediate
Age group : 15 - 18
Duration : 1 school year
Languages: German

Maria Tsiamtsiouri, Karpenissi-Greece

matsi14 — 2016-06-29 07:02:17 UTC

Our school is a living organism, open to society and based on the principles of collaboration and mutual offer.

We always try to involve our students in actions that give them the opportunity to feel members of the local community and make them more social. For example we collaborate with the Municipality of Karpenissi in order to plant trees in our school yard -you can see our work in the following video-or in other environmental projects-(cleaning local parks, getting to know about recycling in our town etc).

We also bring professionals in our school or visit them in their workplace, getting useful information about their jobs (e.g. the bakery next to our school) or being informed about safety issues in our lives (e.g. discussing with a fireman, a policeman or a doctor).Also book presentations and theatrical plays take part in our school, often in collaboration with the Parent Association.

Paola Arduini, Italy

2016-06-29 16:46:02 UTC

eTwinning is the way we have a Europe inside our classrooms. Classrooms without walls.. For the project I'm working on, that is based on Urban environment and imagining a better cities to live in, involving local authorities, the larger school community and families is a need

Giuseppina Serini,Italy

prof_g_serini — 2016-07-02 17:06:10 UTC

The local community involvement has already been started long ago, I personally I deal with the 3-4-5 start to the stage of my high school classes.

There are many offices and associations who offer to work with my school, such as libraries, associations and other ONLUS offices.

I think that this involvement is increasingly implementing and some of the alumni have found jobs thanks to these moments of exchange.

Sara, Italy

saraderogatis — 2016-07-03 14:50:58 UTC

I teach Maths in a primary school. According to me, a collaboration between the school and the Professional Chess Association could be efficient for the learning process. Chess game is an exercise of infinite possibilities for the mind: it develops mental abilitities such as concentration, critical thinking, abstract reasoning, problem solving. Chess also improves children’s cognition and logic, because it fosters thinking directly about the problem at hand and using the simplest solution to solve a complex problem.

Cristina Casanova Italy

cristina_casanova — 2016-07-04 20:00:06 UTC

I agree with Marco Pianotti, we'd have to involve more local economic and social community in our projects, in order to share knowledge

Vaidute Mazeikiene, Lithuania

vaidu2te — 2016-07-05 13:39:59 UTC

It is very important that our students successfully learning related audience or partners outside of the classroom , or even better than school .
In our school days we have parents (parents show their profession , to make a variety crafts together and ect.)

Lucia Elena, Italy In our school we work on a project to "fight" bullism, the title is "S.o.S.Evacuazione Bullo" in secondary school starting from the Primary school. The creator of the project is trying to create a group of children that work, enjoy and learn together in order to respect eachother

2016-07-05 19:19:24 UTC

here's the link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qqhtlepjmA

Giuseppe V., Italy

2016-07-05 19:19:28 UTC

In my school we have had a project named "Piday" where our students explain alternative and creative ways to find math basic skills to study a common strategy in order to cooperate and create opportunities of learning and gaming.

Maria- ITALY

francescaferraro22 — 2016-07-06 21:38:22 UTC

I believe that it is very importatn for our students to effectively communicate and learn from other people.
Unfortunately it is not always possible to create these types of relationships with professionals. It is indeed quite rare for my students to meet people from outside who come to our school to transfer their knowledge.

Luisella Mori - Italy

luisella_mori — 2016-07-07 20:21:05 UTC

In our school we involve a lot of stakeholders in our projects. We are part of the eTwinning network and we always take part in the "Impresa in Azione" JA program where the students have a real "problem": they have to set up a company and think about a product or service they want to launch onto the market.

Costanza, Italy

costanzaboresi — 2016-07-10 14:19:49 UTC

My project is thought to be an eTwinnng project in collaboration with other European school. I think we could contact a psychologist to deal with stress, anxiety and depression and an expert in relaxation techniques. We will also refer to the relevant websites on the topic, depending on the students' investigation. Our audience will be our school community, families and other neighbour schools.

I work in lab of navigation. Cooperative learning is the method used by me.

2016-07-14 13:39:17 UTC

I think that key competences are very important for all students, especially for those with some difficulties.

2016-09-20 12:35:37 UTC

TERESA-NAPOLI

The key competencies are becoming increasingly important in today’s world of business andeducation. The most significant is the meaning of the concept the key competencies, because here itspersonal factor that can be highlighted.

mariagrazia_caltanissetta — 2017-01-22 17:42:50 UTC

Key cometences are very important for all students .

Maria Grazia Giammorcaro

Betty-Greece

2017-10-25 13:40:20 UTC

I am not a teacher and i do not have class.But i believe that project learning is very useful and interesting for students .t

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2018-01-13 18:05:23 UTC

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