OeAD-Calice: eTwinning and EPALE are bringing Europe into our classrooms, seminar rooms and offices in a digital way and ensure exchange
Both eTwinning and EPALE are coordinated in Austria by the OeAD as the National Agency for Erasmus+ Education. The OeAD’s Managing Director Jakob Calice points out the enormous importance of these portals for the education sector in Europe: "Of course digital networking platforms cannot replace personal encounters and the experience of local life. Portals such as eTwinning and EPALE, however, showed, especially during the corona crisis, how essential it is for European education projects to combine analogue and digital collaboration.”
With eTwinning, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, schools that are currently unable to travel to their European project partners have been working together since March, currently on a purely virtual basis, on joint projects on a wide range of topics, including the annual theme "Climate change and environmental challenges". EPALE has been supporting European cooperation in adult education for five years and is now being expanded into a powerful tool at the service of adult education. Calice: "If we cannot travel around Europe, as in the era of this pandemic, these tools bring Europe into our classrooms, seminar rooms and offices. Used sensibly, virtual spaces are a useful addition to physical mobility".
With eTwinning: European exchange in the classroom
800,000 registered people and 205,000 schools from 44 countries form the biggest teaching and learning community in Europe on eTwinning.net. As part of the Erasmus+ programme eTwinning offers all educators at schools and kindergartens a wide range of possibilities for virtual exchanges, networking, project development and cooperation with schools and kindergartens across Europe and beyond. Furthermore, it offers teaching materials and free further training. The eTwinning portal is available in 28 languages.
EPALE creates networks in adult education
The electronic platform for the promotion of quality in adult education in Europe, EPALE, has also experienced a rush as a result of the corona crisis. EPALE now has almost 70,000 members across Europe and more than a million page views in the first quarter of 2020. EPALE, which is also used to search for project partners across Europe, is currently being expanded by new features and an extended online course offering. In the coming years the platform is to help adult educators to better meet the economic challenges. Good practice examples and practical tools, for example, are available for this purpose. EPALE wants to contribute to overcoming the "digital gap" and the "social gap" and enable contact between the policy level and the practice level.
Upcoming events:
In adult education
The EPALE conference with participants from all over Europe will take place online on June 17th and 18th, 2020. The focus will be on environmental awareness and sustainability.
In school education
In early October the online awarding of the eTwinning Quality Labels and prizes to the best eTwinning school projects will take place as part of the celebrations for the 15th anniversary of eTwinning. www.etwinning.at
Erasmus+ Education in Austria
Responsible for the implementation of "Erasmus+ Education" in Austria is the OeAD as national agency on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) and the European Commission.