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250 European school leaders are awaited in Rome from 14 May for the thematic conference “Empowering eTwinning Schools: Leading, Learning, Sharing”
From 14 to 16 May, the thematic conference “Empowering eTwinning Schools: Leading, Learning, Sharing” will take place in Rome at the Trevi Fountain Conference Centre.
More than 250 school leaders coming from all over Europe and national and Communitarian experts will meet to identify, recognise and promote the elements identifying an eTwining school.
eTwinning school label is in fact the new award given to schools implementing competences-based curricula and project-based teaching, strongly characterised by the use of the internet and digital technologies with a special focus on safety and eSafety. The label is an award for the results achieved by the schools which undertook to implement communitarian educational policies through the community and experiment innovative teaching approaches, often becoming a model for other schools at local and national level.
The label was introduced during the school year 2017-18 and has been awarded to more than 1,200 schools. Out of this number 224 are Italian, setting a record for our country which holds about 20% of the total awards.
The conference is organised by the Indire’s eTwining Italian Unit, in collaboration with the eTwining central Unit in Brussels and the European Commission.
The programme includes the speeches of Patricia Wastiau, research consultant of European Schoolnet, Paul Downes, associated professor and director of the Educational Disadvantage Centre of Dublin City University and Angelo Paletta, professor at the Business School of the University of Bologna.
There will be a vast European representation with school leaders coming from Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, Czech and Slovak Republics, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and Ukraine.
On Tuesday 15 May, the Indire researchers are going to moderate some of the parallel sessions, involving participants in themes ranging from learning innovation, transformation of educational spaces to school leadership and school quality improvement.
- The eTwinning School Label
Donatella Nucci
The workshop introduces the logic behind the eTwinning School Label recognition and offers practical information on how to obtain the certificate. The different steps of the application procedure will be also examined.
- Redesign the school space
Giuseppina Cannella, Raffaella Carro, Stefania Chipa,
The workshop will present the Innovative Teaching Spaces Manifesto developed by Indire’s researchers, using video case studies that explore the interconnection between space and pedagogies. The video case studies will provide an opportunity to examine some issues concerning the relation between space and pedagogies and will help participants to reflect on their own situation, exploring ideas to change their school space.
- Leadership for Resilient schools and communities
Patrizia Garista,
The most important factor, which characterises resilience in the field of education, is its capacity to create new opportunities, new resources, new skills; in other words, new learning outcomes, emerging from a stressful, disadvantaged or traumatic situation. But which tools could be used to analyse deficits and strengths within a school? How could we understand if our school supports resilience? During the workshop, these questions will be addressed by using handouts for resilience improvement and reflecting on leadership strategies for managing change.
- A new tendency for school improvement: rethinking schools as learning organisations
Elettra Morini, Antonella Turchi
The workshop will focus on these main questions: What makes a school a learning organisation?How to plan, realise and monitor an effective process of continuous improvement in a school? In particular, the PDCA or Deming Cycle will be described and the practical application of this model will be explored in a fictitious case.
- Avanguardie Educative: an eco-learning system! Italian examples of innovative practices in teaching and learning
Elisabetta Mughini, Ilaria Bucciarelli, Laura Parigi
Networking schools to join forces and exchange innovative practices to transform teaching and learning. This is the pillar idea of the Avanguardie Educative Movement, an eco-learning system, created in November 2014 by Indire and a group of 22 founding schools. During the workshop, some significant experiences will be shown to participants, who will then be lead to reflect on innovative tools, functions and organisational models that could be useful and transferable in their own context. Working in small groups and with the help of experienced researchers, participants will draft their own “Adoption Plan” of one of Avanguardie Educative’s ideas, to answer to their schools’ needs of innovation.
- Enhancing the School Leadeship using the visual analysis methodology
Isabel de Maurissens
The workshop will be conducted using visual analysis, a typical method of Visual Sociology used here for educational purposes. Through “Photo Elicitation”, a semi-structured interview based on images rather than guiding questions, participants will be asked to respond to visual stimuli to describe their situation and express their impressions regarding the chosen theme, working in small groups. Participants will be asked to create or select online a number of images that represent their vision of the debated theme. By translating into images their point of view, participants will be encouraged to reflect on their practices and views, and to explain and make explicit what is usually given for granted.
- eTwinning Schools: getting ready to act
Elena Bettini; Giacomo Bianchi , Anne Gilleran; Claire Morvan; Donatella Nucci; Irene Pateraki; Giulia Felice; Ilaria Saturni; Santi Scimeca; Alexandra Tosi
The workshop will involve small groups of participants who, with the help of a moderator, will identify their schools’ assets and potentials and then draft an action plan to promote eTwinning in the local community and eventually help other institutions to become eTwinning schools.
˃˃The conference official website