The plenary session on the last conference day was highlighted by some proven experts as practitioners and researchers on the podium: Márta Hunya, Bettina Zeidler, Conor Galvin and Pieter Hogenbirk. After a short introduction of themselves, the panel members commented the following voting session, in which the audience could vote for certain statements.
The first question related to citizenship and eTwinning, as social competence is regarded to be part of the 21st century skills: “To what extent does eTwinning help to include citizenship into my teaching?”
According to 39.3% of the audience, eTwinning helps to include citizenship into the curriculum for their whole school, and for 32% eTwinning is at least helpful to include citizenship for their own teaching. Thus nearly three quarters of the teachers appreciate eTwinning as a valuable support to educate future European citizens (see voting result 1).
The next main topic of the conference – whole school approach – was investigated in the following voting questions. For example, 48.4% of the participants agreed that in their school the school management drives and supports eTwinning. And – a very positive and amazing result – 45% of the participants stated that eTwinning activities are integrated in most of the official curriculum subjects (see voting result 2 below).
eTwinning indeed seems to be well integrated into school life. Almost two thirds (63.5%) of the audience voted that eTwinning activities are done during school time.
It is important to qualify the results of the voting. Conor Galvin did a very succinct analysis of the results and some of this was collected in the Twitterfeed. In the event of 40% doing X, it implied that 60% could not do it – e.g. there was a challenge of some sort. In addition the make up of the audience needs to be considered. Almost 48.4% said they had approval from Senior Management but then almost 48.4% of the audience were Senior Management.
Not sure that 48% of the audience were senior management…
Anne
Hi Marie,thanks for your comment. I think all of us on the panel had things to say about the voting. In general, it seemed to provide a really good way of opening out the conversation about eTwinning and where the future might take us. As did the twittter stream. I would personally have liked to have more participation with those in the room but at a large event like this one, that can be challenging.