This school year, the Agrupamento de Escolas de Arrifana developed an eTwinning project, in the scope of the English class, with the students from the 11th year of the Vocational Course in Youth Technician.
In general, the involvement in eTwinning projects aims to promote a more appealing and stimulating teaching. By participating in these projects, students develop communication, linguistic, social (meet new people, communicating in writing, speaking in online meetings), digital (ability to handle technologies) skills, develop their knowledge about their own culture as well as other cultures, and their self-knowledge. The main goal is to develop a spirit of cooperation, interpersonal relationships, responsibility, critical thinking, creativity, among others.
The project J.O.C.A (Just One Click Away) was developed by 7 countries, Portugal, Turkey, Poland, Spain, Romania, Czech Republic and Croatia, and involved 18 teachers and 165 students. The main objective of this project was to broaden students’ knowledge, mainly of those who live in more rural areas, about the world around them – cultural and historical places, museums, monasteries, among others -, not only in their own country but also around the world, using different digital tools and virtual trips. Thus, with just one click, students were able to visit places that otherwise would not be possible. Students learned facts about the places they have studied/visited and prepared presentations for the online meetings among the various partners. It is worth mentioning that this project has as identification logo, created by a student of our team. The class participated enthusiastically in the project, which started in October 2020 and ended in May 2021.