Beyond the community!  We are a family ! Bring back home  this atmosphere of enthusiasm and collaboration.”

These were the words Santi Scimeca used to introduce the last plenary session   in which we as teachers were given a lot of great hints for reflection  on and about our job from the panelists moderated by Brian Holmes from the Executive Agency for Education , Audiovisual and Culture .

Our  intervention has a very significative role in preparing  students for future lives said Patrick Griffin from the University of Melbourne …..and since Education has changed from Dickens’s times where everything was based on Facts we are supposed to teach students  how to use the competences developing their collaborative communicative, creative, coding, problem solving skills.

In short he suggested us having  them solve problems collaboratively  asking questions like “what about……?, lets’ try, what if……?, it depends…

Riina Vuorikari from the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies made us  reflect on what it really means to be digitally competent and how   it is important to have  a confident and critical use of ICT  required for employment, learning, self development and participation in society.

She showed us  three levels of proficiency in digital competences and how  to move between levels showing at the same time as joining an etwinning project  have the students  develop the  digital competences all in one!.

Ewinning as acquisition of skills and the best place to implement competences  even before  policy makers  suggested in the Recommendations on key competences in 2006   was what Donatella Nucci from the Italian National Supprt Service  told us  . Etwinning can give support on training  to all teachers who are experts in subjects but not in methodology since “ the teacher’s role has changed from knowledge expert to mentor, facilitator and orchestrator of learning ( Brecko et al.,  2013)

So eTwinning is the place to be now and at the same time  the challenge for  future   because   “ teachers  are not going to be  solo but they have to participate in a collaborative environment so that problem solving skills can be developed” Griffin  said .

But the last point of reflection came from the past from Cicero whose sentence in latin was shared by a warm final great applause.

eTwining as a never ending friendship!