lunes, 13 de febrero de 2017

Our eTwinning project: SOMOS ERASMUS+


During this school year, we have been developing different activities related to  our Erasmus + project “ El español: pasaporte entre culturas”.

As one of our Etwinning projects we have been using to work these activities with our students, is coming to an end, we would like to report on what have been done during these months:
-       Our e- magazine “ Somos Erasmus+”
-       Our “ A Christmas Carol” performance
-      “Telling in short”, our work about digital narration, using the digital tool Storybird.

Would you like to know how this has been organized from Spain, Greece and Finland?



-  Twinspace and groups (We are Erasmus + project)

The cooperation among school students was held through the twinspace platform. In the beginning of the project, the Greek Erasmus students who were selected in the Erasmus+ project  “El español, pasaporte entre culturas”, gained passwords and user names for the platform, with the assistance of I. Kassotaki.  Afterwards they created their profiles and powerpoint presentations introducing themselves, in English and Spanish, with the assistance of the English (M. Pitsaki) and Spanish (H. Dimitrakopoulos) teachers.

Spanish students were registered in early October 2016 and  have been working on  different pages in Twinspace where their work has been explained. Every Tuesday, during these two school years, they have been meeting to develop all the steps to write and publish their articles coordinated by the Spanish Language and Literature teacher Mercedes Guzmán.

Firstly, they were organized into different groups with students from all three countries, having to work cooperatively to decide the topic for their articles. All students could be in contact through Twinspace, their e-mails, and once they met, through  mobile (whatsapp, viber…).


M.Pitsaki (English teacher), was the teacher-instructor for the contribution of Greek team –for both school years, 2015/2016, 2016/2017-for the common electronic magazine issued by all three partner schools.

During the first year of eTwinning project SOMOS ERASMUS+, the teacher started by explaining to the 20 students that they had to work in groups of four and then cooperate with students from the Spanish and the Finnish school. Once the interschool groups were formed and they were announced via Twinspace platform, the students brainstormed on the topics of the magazine they wanted to research on and propose through Twinspace to the students of the other European schools. Some of the suggested topics were the following: Refugee crisis, Multilingualism in Europe, Unemployment in Europe , Social Media , Philosophy, Scientific revolution, Cinema & literature, European Personalities,  Customs and traditions, Educational System, Climate change, Ecology & environment, Tourist attractions & unique landscapes, Studies and future, Fashion & Traditional costumes, Terrorist attacks in NY and Paris (11th September 2001 versus 13th November 2015. The students also used other internet means, such as their email or Facebook accounts to facilitate communication among the members of the teams.



At first, Spanish, Greek and Finnish students had to write their articles in English and then translate them into their different languages. In fact, you can read the articles in English, Spanish, Greek and Finnish in both editions of our magazine. The work of Maria Pitsaki has been really important because she has edited and supervised the articles written in English. Irini Kassotaki, Mercedes Guzmán and Hilkka Roose Nurmi edited and supervised the articles in their different vernacular languages.


In the second year, some of the articles were written during the week of the 2nd Transnational Training, Teaching and Learning activities (students’ exchange) that took place in Helsinki from 8th to 13th November 2016. There, students from the three different schools had the chance to exchange their sources and ideas and write their common article together. However, the rest of the articles were written by the members of the teams using emails and Twinspace.  Here are the topics of this year’s e-magazine: “Adaptation of animals to their environment”, “Spanish, Finnish and Greeks travel…” “Hagia Sophia”, “Typical celebrations in Murcia (Spain) and Greece”,  “Greek and Finnish Dances”, “Differences in cuisine”, “The sport of basketball in Greece and Spain”, “Football: the most beautiful sport in the world”, “The ancient Olympic Games”,  “Wild animals of Finland and Greece”, “The book thief”, “The 39 steps”, “How music affects psychology”, “Traditions of our places relevant to water”, “Music in our countries”, “Passport between our countries and their music”, “Christmas customs in Finland, Spain and Greece”, “European Space Agency”, “High Schools in Finland, Greece and Spain”, “Popular sports in Finland, Spain and Greece”.

Both years, M. Pitsaki helped them to learn how to do research using research tools such as questionnaires, interviews and literature review. The next step involved interpreting their data and writing their articles for our common magazine. The teacher helped them by doing the editing of the articles for those who had written in English while Irini Kassotaki (Greek teacher), corrected the Greek articles.

You can see in our links how our Twinspace has been organized:




- Work of the students: in distance and on-site (Helsinki) for writing the articles.

Working in Vaskivuoren Lukio (Helsinki)
During the 2nd student’s exchange in Helsinki (8th -13th November 2016), it was scheduled that the interschool groups (Spanish, Finnish and Greek) would work together about the magazine's articles. So, one whole day, they met all together and started working on the topics they had decided through their previous distance communication (twinspace platform, mail, facebook, Viber, Whatsapp etc). Each group’s member was responsible for one specific sub-topic and using the research tools that their instructors explained to them in previous weeks, the students used laptops and Smartphones for searching and writing at the same time. One member of each group was responsible for having a cohesive text of group's work and afterwards he/she sent it to the responsible teacher in charge, in order for the text be uploaded to Twinspace magazine’s files.




Once  all articles were uploaded to different folders in our Twinspace:
-       Articles in English
-       Articles in Greek
-       Articles in Spanish,
The Spanish coordinator was  responsible for the layout of the magazine. We have used a program called “PUBLISHER”. For this work, we have had the help and collaboration of the Technology teacher D. Luis Gómez.
 When we had  it finished, we shared it in a pdf file with the Finnish and Greek teachers in case some changes had to be made. Once teachers and students had reviewed the magazine and  agreed, we published it through the platform ISSUU, that provided us with the appearance of a digital magazine.
The last step - one of the most important - has been the diffusion of our work through different ways: facebook, twitter, Etwinning, EDUCARM, and of course, this blog.

- The Christmas theater

The first year’s Christmas fairytale that the students were working on was “The Nutcracker” (El Cascanueces). Using the script in English, the whole team (20 Greek Erasmus students) collaborated to make a video of the Christmas fairytale "El Cascanueces" in Spanish, with the assistance of the Spanish teacher (H. Dimitrakopoulos). As it was difficult for the very beginners in Spanish language students to act their roles, the teacher and the students decided together to present it as a video of handmade images, covered by the students' voices.

As far as the second year’s Christmas fairytale is concerned, the Greek students participated in the production of the video "A Christmas Carol/Un cuento de Navidad". All the students played a role by voice in the famous Dickens' fairytale and some of them helped in a technical way such as the recording and the montage of the selected pictures, in order to be visualized. The recording was in Spanish, as it formed part of our Spanish lessons, and it was accompanied with English subtitles.

Both Christmas theaters were an activity part of the Beginner’s Spanish course offered as a weekly hourly lesson, after the school’s core curriculum timetable (Instructor: H. Dimitrakopoulos).




In Spain, our Erasmus+ Christmas workshop has been developed in English and in Spanish:

-       “El Cascanueces y el Príncipe de los Ladrones” ; The Nucktracker and the Prince of Mice” , for Christmas 2016




-       “Cuento de Navidad” or “Christmas Carol” for Christmas 2017

This activity has been coordinated by Bárbara Vicente from the English Department and Inmaculada Lacal, María Belén Martínez and Mercedes Guzmán from Spanish and Literature Department.

During the first term of our school year (from October to December) we organized two theatrical performances: one in English and one in Spanish. Obviously, our students had more difficulty in playing it in English but they made a great effort.

Students that have participated in this activity belong to different levels: from first course (twelve years old) to third course, so they had different levels in English competence as well.  We consider this activity one of the most enriching because this had helped to improve students’ different competences:
-       Linguistic competence in Spanish and English
-       Artistic competence
-       Social competence

We represented these Christmas plays in December and we invited all the families, taking advantage of the fact that our high school has a large auditorium.
We designed a program for the families with the names of the students and the character they played. Something so simple  was really motivating for our students and their families, very satisfied with this activity.


- Storybird (our tales or "telling in short")

In the Greek literature classes (teacher: Irini Kassotaki) students used story-telling as a way of literature presentations in school years 2015-2016 & 2016-2017. In the first year of etwinning & Erasmus+ project, the students were taught about “Gender in the literature” and they had worked for 4 months. They searched the role of the woman through centuries and how this is presented in Greek and foreign literature. The students worked in groups of 4-5 with a specific role and responsibilities for each member of the group. Each of the groups had a different topic with subtopics for all members. The main and common search questions for all groups were about the role and the position for the woman and the role of dowry through the ages. The literature works that groups studied were: Vincenzo Kornaros, "Erotokritos" (poem, 1626-1646), Andreas Lascaratos, "The mysteries of Cephalonia" (article, 1855), Alexandros Papadiamantis, "The murderess" (novel, 1903), Konstantinos Theotokis, "The virtue and the money" (novel, 1914), Andreas Fragias, "People and Houses" (story/narrative, 1955)

During the one hour lesson, the students were informed about Storybird tool and how it works. The teacher created an account for them, for one student of each group and she was watching the progress of each group's work through storybird’s class.

There were two stages of presentations. In the first one, in September's lessons, the topic was about the book/work that was selected by each group and it was presented to the rest of the class. The students used the interactive whiteboard and through Storybird tool, each group presented the literature work they studied, information about the writer, the main heroes of the book/story. In the second presentation, (November-December), students showed to the rest class, using powerpoint or videos, their study about the specific questions/topics referred above.

In the second year of eTwinning project, students were taught about common themes in traditional and modern literature, Greek and foreign. A topic that was really interesting for them and finally they worked on, was Helen’s myth diachronically. Using Storybird tool, the students searched how Helen was presented by creators such as Homer, Stesichorus, Euripides, Goethe, Seferis, Ritsos, Sappho.

The student’s work with storybird tool is corrected and uploaded in the Twinspace “SOMOS ERASMUS+” platform by the teacher of the classes and their English texts were corrected by M.Pitsaki (English teacher).

Storybird is one of the most creative digital tools used by different teachers of Spanish Language and Literature in their classes in order to work the narrative as a kind of text and  literary genre.
This tool has a very positive aspect for teachers who can create their own classes in their dashboard with a student code. This way, you can always see, read and correct what your students have written.
In Spanish classes this tool was used to do different activities:
-       Horror tales in Halloween, for example.
-       Tales with different points of view in an story: internal and external narrator.
-       “Writing challenge”: the teacher gives the students “a number of conditions” ( first and last picture, number of characters…)
It is a really motivating tool for students. In Erasmus+ program (and Etwinning  project) an activity called “Telling in short” has been used during the two years of the project. Different students from different levels have participated in this activity and teachers have uploaded the results to Twinspace.
Firstly, students have to watch a short film. In our project we have selected three films for the two years that you can find on YouTube:
-       Los libros voladores del Sr. Morris or Fantastic Flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
-       Alma ( Soul)
- A shadow of blue

Once they have seen the short film ( there is no dialogue in them), students must write the story in their notebook with some conditions:

-       you are the main character or secondary character.
-       tell  the story in the third person…,
and finally, they had to create their storybird as a long form book, one of the possibilities of this tool. Some of the results are really surprising and nice.




You can read and see much more in our Twinspace page.

  All the activities that we have described in this entry , in which students from the three countries have participated,  have been coordinated through an Etwinning project that was called: We are Erasmus+, as our digital magazine. We have created different pages  for these activities in Twinspace, forums for the topics, folders to organize the materials...

 This eTwinning Project  has been an example of the collaborative work, for both, teachers and students, one of the most positive aspects offered by Erasmus+ and Etwinning.
 María Pitsaki, Irini Kassotaki, Haris Dimitrakopoulos
Lyceum Superior Experimental of Heraklion
Hilkka Roose Nurmi
Vaskivuoren Lukio
Bárbara Vicente, Mercedes Guzmán
IES Francisco Salzillo