The number of eTwinning teachers is increasing in the initiative

This school year, 2014-2015, a special project has been underway in Hafnarfjörður to give more primary school teachers in the town the opportunity to take an active part in the European Union's eTwinning project. Before the project began, 10.9% teachers in Hafnarfjörður were registered with eTwinning, but by the end of the school year, this figure had risen to 18.9%. The number of projects involving teachers from Hafnarfjörður was 8, and is now 26. Before the project began, 2.9% of teachers in Hafnarfjörður's primary schools were working on eTwinning projects, but this figure is now 5.1%. Therefore, their numbers have almost doubled this school year compared to the nine years the eTwinning project has been running. The aim was/is for 10% primary school teachers in Hafnarfjörður to become active in eTwinning, and it is expected that the number of teachers from Hafnarfjörður participating in eTwinning will continue to increase in the coming years.

This winter's eTwinning project involved all the town's primary school teachers and headteachers receiving a special course last autumn, with a brief introduction to its possibilities for teachers. Interested teachers were then invited to a winter-long course with detailed support to enable them to become active participants in the project. Just over 20 teachers attended that course.

Furthermore, part of the initiative in Hafnarfjörður this winter was to offer teachers from the town an eTwinning professional development workshop, where teachers from across Europe meet, network and discuss teaching ideas. Four teachers from Hafnarfjörður were therefore offered the opportunity to take part in one such workshop, and they are travelling at the end of this week to a three-day workshop on creativity in all subjects, which is being held in Belgium. The participants were selected from a pool of very active eTwinning teachers this winter. They are Úlfhildur H. Guðbjartsdóttir (Hvaleyrarskóli), Hjördís Ýr Skúladóttir (Hraunvallaskóli), Svandís B. Harðardóttir (Víðistaðaskóli) and Marc Portal from Stóru-Vogaskóli in Vogar (as this school is served by the Hafnarfjörður School Office, it is therefore eligible for the trip).

„eTwinning is an accessible online school community where you can connect with European teachers and school staff, take part in simple collaborative projects and receive professional development through workshops and courses, to name but a few, all with the help of ICT.“ (eTwinning Iceland homepage.) eTwinning is a key European Union initiative in information technology for pre-school, primary and secondary education.

The picture shows the workshop participants together with representatives from eTwinning in Iceland, from the left: Kolbrún Svala Hjaltadóttir, eTwinning ambassador; Guðmundur Ingi Markússon, project manager for eTwinning in Iceland; and Úlfhildur, Svandís and Hjördís. Marc is missing from the picture.