What do you think of school twinning? Your opinion is requested to help the European Commission to define the main guidelines for the European School Twinning Policy.

To make your thoughts known, visit www.elearningeuropa.info and visit the School Twinning forum.

The following information has been taken from www.elearningeuropa.info and serves as a basis for online discussion in the School Twinning Forum:

But what exactly is school twinning?

According to the European Commission it is "the use of multimedia and exchange tools (email, videoconferencing, joint development of websites) to flesh out or set up ties and cooperation between schools". (Report from the Commission to the Council on Using the Internet to Develop Twinning between European Secondary Schools, available here)

The document points out that "such twinning requires an overarching framework for cooperation between schools, which must take into account all the conditions needed for school twinning, in particular the organisation of periodic meetings and exchanges, the development of joint projects and materials, plus regular contacts to enrich project conduct".

The objective of this forum is to investigate more in depth the concept of school twinning.

The following questions offer a framework for our dialog in the upcoming weeks:

1. Many european schools wish to find one or various european partners to work out a project in common. Why? What are their main interests?
a. Pedagogical improvements
b. Cross-cultural exchanges between schools, students.
c. Language learning
d. Etc.

The forum should help us to enlarge this list and keep track of the various arguments that explain this interest of schools for greater cooperation.

2. Do we limit school twinning to simple contacts between students or do we plan a real added value to the educative process? Are those interested in school twinning convinced that there can be a "european dimension in education"?

The European Commission within its Socrates programme offers with Comenius a framework for schools' cooperation. The lessons learnt from Comenius experience should make us think of the necessity and features of school twinning.

3. Is school twinning that easy? What are the practical obstacles to be solved : cost, time, work load...
a. What are the technical tools that should be available to make it successful? Will every student involved need a computer at school or at home?
b. Do the teachers have enough time to dedicate to school twinning?
c. How can the twinning process be adequately embedded in the Curricula?
d. What is the real cost of school twinning?

4. Is there a possibility for school twinning to reinforce the knowledge of all european languages as planned?
a. How can we use the language diversity to improve communications between students?
b. How can we help students to overcome their fear to communicate in a language that they don't cope with?
c. Do students need some help that could be found -for instance- in the internet?

5. How do we practically enter in a school twinning process?
a. How can we define indicators that will help to find a partner with common interests and features (age, language level, social or cultural preoccupations, pedagogical objectives.)?
b. Where do we find this partner? What are the platforms that you find most indicated to work with?
c. How do we define a project in common? What are the usual guidelines to be used to reach a common understanding of the school twinning objectives?

6. How do we practically manage a schooltwinning project?
a. How much time do we have to dedicate weekly to the project
b. How do we stimulate schools' participation?
c. How can we stimulate the interactivity of the pedagogical process avoiding the project's limitation to an internal matter only?

7. How do we evaluate the schooltwinning process?
a. What is the frequency of evaluation so that each partner is able to correct the problems that have been identified?
b. What are the key criterias of evaluation? Quantitative (number of contacts, number of students involved, project's time span) and/or qualitative (outcomes of the project, improvement of pedagogical processes, better understanding of Europe, improved knowledge of languages.).

There are certainly many more questions to be asked. This forum is essential at a moment when school twinning has converted itself in to a key priority for all european actors.