eTwinning winner: Talking Through Time - Cauldeen Primary School, UK and Dun Salv Portelli Primary School, Malta

What was your motivation to join eTwinning?

I was keen to see a real European dimension taken into the heart of our curriculum. Although we do study other European countries, the idea was that eTwinning partnerships would enrich and enliven our pupils’ studies and create a real audience and knowledgeable information source. Although we do trips to the continent every second year, eTwinning would enable all our pupils to learn about Europe first-hand through the use of ICT. eTwinning also provided an opportunity to contextualise our ICT skills progression into the broad primary curriculum.

What was the most enjoyable aspect and the most difficult one during the project?

The fantastic interaction between the senior members of our community and our pupils and making new friends in Europe was very rewarding for the children; these were the most rewarding aspects of our project.

Initially, matching up the needs of our partners to the project objectives we had was quite difficult. The loss of some partners did diminish the overall project but by persevering and supporting each other we achieved an excellent result for those schools involved.

How do you think that the eTwinning project added extra value to the “routine” school work?


eTwinning significantly enriched and enhanced our cross-curricular project. It provided motivation and an external audience for our pupils’ work. eTwinning uniquely gave information and resources unavailable in any other form and allowed children to experience first-hand the voices of those who participated in this period of history. The children had the opportunity to compare and contrast the experiences, thoughts and feelings from the home (UK) view and from a European (Malta) perspective. The eTwinning project provided a very strong element of motivation to our pupils.

What kind of impact has your participation had on other classes and/or schools and how they can benefit from your experience?

More classes and teachers in our school are now involved this season and a broad spread of curricular areas is involved. We also held a training event for eTwinning in our school for our staff and those in surrounding schools. A number have subsequently developed partnerships themselves.

After this project, what are your plans for the future (more similar kinds of projects, new approaches in teaching, etc.)?

Our prize-winning project is now complete. We have continued this season with our eTwinning partnership in Malta on a new local study project. New partnerships have been formed with three other schools in Poland and Malta. We are now looking closely at Podcasting, instant communication technology using multi-media mobile phones and digital video exchanges.George Glass - Cauldeen Primary School, UK