The British Council will present the 10th Annual eTwinning UK conference at the National College for Teaching and Leadership in Nottingham from 5-7 June.
The programme provides a safe online platform enabling teachers, schools and colleges to develop partnerships with those elsewhere in Europe, as well as some countries within the European neighbourhood (known as eTwinning Plus countries). Over 130 eTwinning ambassadors and leading educators from across the UK and beyond will attend the conference, which provides opportunities to strengthen the network and discuss what they and their pupils have achieved through eTwinning. In addition, delegates well attend a Teachmeet and a series of Professional Development Workshops which include international collaboration using tools such as Minecraft, Google, robotics, Erasmus+ funding and instilling UK values within the classroom.
For the 10th anniversary year, the conference theme is ‘Learning from each other’, fittingly, Ewan McIntosh will deliver the first keynote speech and workshop on Designing deep, broad, student-led projects. Ewan is an ex-languages teacher who has recognised the pedagogical value of eTwinning projects from its inception. Ewan was delivering eTwinning workshops on podcasting, animation and social networking back in 2007 when social networks were only finding their feet. As Scotland’s first National Advisor on Learning and Technology Futures, Ewan is the founder and CEO of NoTosh Limited and is now one of Europe's foremost experts in digital media for education. His company works with creative businesses to develop products and services and then takes the methods, approaches and research gained back into classrooms across the world for the purpose of engaging children.
In line with eTwinning’s community and online network, Professor Sugata Mitra will deliver the second keynote speech via video link. Sugata Mitra is at the forefront of a new approach to education which challenges how we teach today's children in a technological age. His pioneering “Hole in the Wall” experiments inspired the book 'Slumdog Millionaire' that went on to become the Oscar winning film of 2009. Sugata Mitra won the TED talk prize in 2013 for ‘Build a School in the Cloud’. He a leading proponent of Self Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs), where educators (many of whom are retired teachers) embrace a practice of sparking curiosity in kids by asking them to use the internet and work together in small groups to answer ‘big questions’. He is Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, UK and previously a Visiting Professor at MIT in the US.
The main event of the conference will be the 2015 UK eTwinning Award ceremony, which will take place on the Saturday evening. The award ceremony recognises outstanding eTwinning projects and the teachers involved are celebrated and given recognition for their work.
Follow the event hashtag: #eTuk15
Find out more about eTwinning and get UK support via www.britishcouncil.org/eTwinningRegister on the pan European portal via www.etwinning.net