eTwinning and international projects as part of a school development plan

The school management at Karlbergs skola decided to make eTwinning part of the school development plan when we started our process of digitisation in 2016. Our goal was to familiarise students with digital tools by opening up the classroom to all of Europe. Our strategy was to link our school development plan to the changes that school staff were undergoing in their way of teaching.

Karlbergs skola has had eTwinning in the school development plan for several years, with the same desired outcome but different key performance targets, such as the number of projects. The next level was aspiring to a certain number of projects with a quality label. Our applications for an eTwinning Quality Label and an eTwinning School Label have been used to evaluate our key performance targets and our students’ learning. They also help us to reflect on the next level in our school development plan. This year, a project of ours involving teachers and after-school staff received the National Quality Label.

Of course, teachers need to be provided with the conditions to achieve these goals. To that end, every fourth week we include eTwinning as a topic in our conference schedule. On these occasions, we share good practices and plan further activities in ongoing projects, or we discuss ideas for new projects.

The school’s digitisation and internationalisation have been successful since eTwinning became part of the school development plan.

Nataša Kolarević is assistant principal and special educator at Karlberg skola, and an eTwinning ambassador in Sweden.