General Teaching Council Northern Ireland

Derry school recognised by Lord Mayor at civic reception

St Brigid's College, Derry will be honoured this week (Monday 22 June) at the Guildhall by the Lord Mayor, Paul Fleming, for its achievements in European school linking. They were the first Northern Ireland winner in the British Council’s prestigious UK National Awards Ceremony for its work as part of the Europe-wide eTwinning project.

The co-ordinating teacher, Brid Ui Uait, and 20 pupils have been invited to the Guildhall for a civic reception with the Lord Mayor in recognition of their national achievement.
 
The school was involved in an eTwinning project which began in June 2008 called Getting Closer, twinning St Brigid’s with schools from Spain and the Czech Republic.

Through the eTwinning project the three partner schools all swapped information on life in their country using PowerPoint and presented this online. Fun quizzes were then created to test each other’s knowledge. The students worked in groups and looked for information about different aspects of their lives and cultures. This information was then exchanged and used to compare each other’s lifestyles, origins, culture and customs, paying attention to the things in common and also the differences they found. Finally each school designed a digital album about their e-partners.
 
 Commenting on the award to the school, the judges comments were….
 “Excellent model for a geography/history project!”
 “A worthy project which deserves recognition”
“An interesting and heartening example of how eTwinning can lift the range of activity and learning opportunities available in a school”
 
The eTwinning programme is managed in the UK by the British Council, which is the UK’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. eTwinning is a hugely successful programme with over 40,000 European schools registered on the eTwinning portal, which helps schools to find partners to work on joint curriculum projects. Over 4,500 of these are in the UK with 60 eTwinning school projects in Northern Ireland schools.
 
Matt Cresswell, British Council speaking ahead of the reception “This is a first for Northern Ireland and a great achievement for the school. The Getting Closer project is a great example of how students and teachers can get involved in meaningful intercultural dialogue through the eTwinning programme.”