eTwinning is an online community for schools in Europe. It is funded by the EU and supported in the UK by the British Council and is free for schools in EU countries to use.
The eTwinning team runs regular training events around the UK, and helps individual teachers to set up projects, find partner schools for languages or other projects. To get an idea of what the Twinspace offers to teachers, you can look through the Step by step support which introduces each collaborative tool.
www.britishcouncil.org/etwinning
Once you have registered on eTwinning you can find partner schools then use the Twinspace to organise collaborative projects between pupils across Europe, including forums, shared documents and even live chat – all accessible by the students in your linked schools. Twinspaces are free to use and there is lots of support available. After your work is complete you can make your Twinspace public and use it as a showcase for your project outcomes. eTwinning is also the official platform for finding and sustaining Comenius partnerships.
ePals is an emailing and forum community for schools. It offers a secure emailing service for use with partner schools that is easy to set up and use. The emails go through the teacher's account before they can be sent or read. Teachers and students of all ages use ePals email and the giant student forums for free. Schools also use ePals to extend learning because the pupils can securely access their email accounts from home.
www.epals.com
With over 5 million students and teachers from over 191 countries, ePals is huge, so it can take a while to find a link, but the teachers who use the site are friendly and the nature of the site is fairly informal.
In the forums, students can meet other students of all ages from USA, Canada, India, Colombia, almost anywhere, safely. The forum discussions are lively, use good English, and are fully moderated. It's easiest to ask pupils to form small groups and post messages in a forum of their choice, or one that suits the lesson topic (they cover many topics). Come back next week to see what comments and answers you have got! ePals is ideal for Spanish as you can link with schools in southern USA (often Hispanic) or Latin America and then exchange emails in target language.
ePals has just launched a better equipped collaborative space for schools, called Learning Space. This is a premium product and is costed from around £4 per pupil.
SuperClubsPLUS gives children age 6-14 a voice in a fully secure and moderated global community for young people. There is an opportunity to make a real contribution on issues from describing the weather outside your window to discussions on world events.
There are thousands of member schools in Australia and in the UK as well as many other countries repesented. Through the group link-up, schools are able to connect with other schools across the world and work together on research projects or generate class discussions in the forums.
SuperClubs Plus is ideal for teachers who would like to see their class using social media tools safely, but do not have the time or skills to set all this up. That is all taken care of by the online moderators and the ‘gems’ - awards that the children win for exhibiting safe behaviours online and gaining ICT skills. The site will even give you reports so you can monitor and evaluate technical activities and safety skills as they develop for each individual member of your class.
Costs:
Free in New Zealand
Free in Australia (Years 3 and 4 only)
Everywhere else: around £3 ($5) per child per year.
Rafi.ki is a not-for-profit online community for schools all over the globe. The idea is that your class can log in and will be able to chat online to children in other schools around the world, or contribute to projects.
www.rafi.ki (for secondary, 11-17)
www.rafi.ki/kidogo (for primary, 5-11)
Rafiki’s globally themed projects cover topics such as Slavery, Climate Change, Slavery, Conflict Prevention, Recycling, Modern Foreign Languages, Fair Trade etc. Each project comes with lesson plans and additional resources such as videos, pictures and sound clips.
Features include:
Instant messaging – this is a tool for synchronous (real-time) communication which users can use to find and communicate with other users online.
Web conferencing - using webcam and microphone.
Email – internal, secure email system for asynchronous communication between users. All content sent between pupils can be viewed by teachers and facilitators.
Editing – a drag and drop design tool which pupils can use to create their own web-pages or blogs.
Costs:
In the UK, the cost is from around £600 for a whole school to sign up; small schools can contact for special rates.
Due to its charitable remit, Rafi.ki is FREE to schools outside the UK.
Radiowaves is a safe social media network for schools, with a focus on multimedia, where schools can broadcast their own podcasts, videos and blogs.
Each school has their own space to host multimedia privately and securely (in their 'media station'), or they can publish it on the Radiowaves site, where parents or the wider community can see it. Registered members of the site (other Radiowaves schools) can log in and post comments on each other's work.
It's easy for your partner school to find all your work because they can search by school name.
Radiowaves is free to join - and the 'basic' package gives you full access to everything you need. (You can later upgrade to a pay-for option which gives you more storage space if you need it).
The best way to find out how it works is to view the How Radiowaves Works video. It should be visible below.
Although there is nothing startling about the Radiowaves technology, the advantage is the access to technical support from the team to help you to produce audio and video in school; plus a friendly support network of other teachers.
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