Registration in eTwinning

Registration in the eTwinning directory involves:

Becoming a member of a group of European teachers who are interested

in getting in touch to start collaborative work.

Being able to access a virtual platform called eTwinning desktop, using

tools that will allow us to create and manage eTwinning projects.

Being able to take part in the online training modules.

Starting or taking part in eTwinning groups and teacher communities as a

place to exchange ideas, information and experiences and discuss

common topics.

Registration - consists of three steps: pre-registration, pre-registration

confirmation and registration.

You will see the pre-registration screen, where we are asked to fill in some

compulsory basic personal details: name, surname, e-mail address, user name

and password.

Should the user name have already been taken, a message would pop up,

asking us to choose another one. It is important to remember the user name

and password, as you will be using them frequently.

Pre-registration confirmation

Once we have clicked 'Send', the pre-registration data will be saved and we will

receive an e-mail at the address we provided.

Within this e-mail, there is a link to confirm pre-registration.

MPORTANT: Your e-mail server may classify the confirmation message as 'spam'. If, after a

few minutes, you still have not received it.

Registration

When clicking on the link we received by e-mail, we can see another window

where we must fill in several forms:

Step 1: Information about your school. In this section we will be asked to provide data about our school. Our school can already be registered in eTwinning, if another colleague has previously done it. The first information we are asked to give are data about our country, county and city:

We can now see a list of all the schools registered in the eTwinning programme in that town. Should our school be one of them, we can then click on 'This is my school' and that will take us to step 2.

If not, we can click on a button at the bottom of the list, 'Click here to register a new school', and we will see a form where we are asked about our school.

The data to be provided are: institutional name, address, city, postcode (not

compulsory), school code (not compulsory), telephone number (not

compulsory), e-mail, website (not compulsory) and the full name and e-mail of

the Headmaster or Head of Studies of our school.

Some of these data are compulsory but we may not know them. After

registration it is possible to modify anything, so in this case we could use false

data in the registration and then change them to the real data when we find out

what they are.

Step 2: Information about you. In this step we can see a form asking us

about our position at the school, the subjects we teach and whether we

wish the eTwinning news newsletter to be sent to our e-mails.

Step 3: Twinning preferences. In this form, we are asked questions about the topics we are interested in and to make a brief description about our preferences.

The fields in this form are:

eTwinning project kit. We must remember that these kits have projects

prepared to be practiced with straight away, which would help with the

creation of the project.

Ideas for an eTwinning project. It is advisable to express these ideas in all

the languages you can speak in to your partner, as they will be reading

them. Should this take up too much space, write them in your favourite

language and add a short summary in the other languages.

Fields of knowledge for the project. Some subjects should be chosen so

that our preferences are concisely specified.

Languages to be used in the project.

Age range of the students taking part in the project.

Step 4: Preview and confirmation. In this step we have all the information we

added in the previous steps, also allowing us to modify any incorrect data.

If the data are correct, click 'Send'. If any data were wrong, we could click

'Modify' in the corresponding step.

Once the data are confirmed in Step 4, we will have completed our registration

in eTwinning and a message will come up to confirm it.

From now on, we can access the 'eTwinning Desktop' virtual space by using the

user name and password used in the registration process.

The eTwinning desktop

he eTwinning desktop is a virtual platform that allows us to manage our

participation in eTwinning.

The main functions of the eTwinning desktop are:

Manage our profile. We can edit information used for our registration in

eTwinning, both for ourselves and for our school.

Partner search. The idea is to find one or more European teachers who

have the profile we are looking for to start an eTwinning project.

Manage the existing projects. Once we are working on one or more

projects, we will be able to see news about them, access their work

environment, etc.

Access to the eTwinning desktop.

Once we have confirmed our registration in eTwinning, we will get a username

and a password to access the eTwinning Desktop.

Sections in the Desktop.

At the top of the eTwinning Desktop we can see several tabs that allow us to

access each of the sections .

Homepage

The Homepage appears when we access the Desktop. It provides some direct

links to the most important sections in the Desktop.

1. Selection tabs. They allow us to change from one section to another.

2. Personal profile. This area is reserved to add a photo that can be seen by other

eTwinning users.

3. Welcome message.

4. Editing the teachers' profile. You can change personal and school information,

preferences and/or add our photos or photos of our school.

5. Close session. To exit the Desktop.

6. Inbox. Direct link to the inbox, showing us if we have any new messages.

7. Important announcement from the Central Support Service.

8. News from NSS. You will see a list of news published by your NSS to inform all

users of the most relevant news taking place in the eTwinning actions.

9. Notifications. A list of notifications received. This box shows the messages from

eTwinners.

10. Groups. The eTwinning groups are communities of teachers focusing on a common

topic of interest.

11. Learning events. They are training activities for teachers, - between one and two

weeks long - dealing with different subjects at different levels.

12. Teachers' rooms. These spaces are created by users to informally discuss certain

topics of interest.

News. Located on the top right corner of all tabs. Various messages are

displayed:

Contacts. It tells us whether anyone has asked us to be their contact (we

can accept or decline the offer), or whether anyone has accepted being our

contact (we will have previously sent them a request).

Projects. It tells us about news in the projects we are working on (new

users, cancellations, etc.).

At the top of the window you will see Subscribe and Manage notifications.

By clicking on Manage notifications, users can subscribe to their Contact

Diary and the Teachers’ Rooms. They will be informed each time a contact

writes a message in their Diary and also when a member writes a new message

in each Teachers’ Room they are registered in.

Whenever we click on “Subscribe”, users will receive a daily email with a

summary of all the notifications, including the answers to their own Diary.

Profile

This section in the eTwinning Desktop offers information about the user (school,

languages, contacts, their eTwinning career…) and it allows them to modify the

data they used when they registered in the eTwinning desktop, both regarding

personal and school data, preferences and a photo gallery of the partner and the

school.

1. Selection tabs. They allow us to change from one section to another. In

this case, we would be in the 'Profile' section.

2. Photo to identify the registered teacher.

3. About me. Some information about the user (school, city, country,

languages...).

4. My life in eTwinning. This section shows the eTwinning events we are

involved in. For instance, someone who includes us in their contacts, registration

in a project, etc.

I am available for an eTwinning project No Yes

I am available for a Comenius project No Yes

You must choose YES in the first one so that teachers from other countries can

find and contact you to start a project; if you don't tick it, you will not appear in

the Partner search engine and therefore will not be found by other European

partners who may have the same project ideas as you. You will be missing out on a lot of opportunities.

5. eTwinning and I. My diary. In this section we can include interesting

messages or news that can be read by other eTwinning users visiting our profile.

We can also leave notes on other users' notice boards and they can leave us

messages too.

6. My contacts. It shows a list of my contacts - teachers you have chosen

through the search engine and who have accepted becoming your contacts - and

who have recently been active. At the bottom you can see the link to add new

contacts and also see the other user's contacts.

7. My Projects. A list of active projects led by the teacher. The bottom

links allow us to create a new project and see all the projects the teacher has

taken part in. Both links take us to the Projects tab.

Editing the user profile

This section in the eTwinning Desktop allows us to modify the data used to

register in the eTwinning directory, both personal data and data about our

school, preferences and the gallery with our photos and photos of our school.

1. Selection tabs. They allow us to change from one section to another. In this

case, we would be in the 'Profile' section.

2. Profile options: Personal. The school. Preferences. Photo gallery. This

area is reserved to modify the data the user inserted when he/she registered in

the eTwinning platform. The idea is to state who we are, the way we are or

we work, interests, hobbies and any other information about our personality

we want other eTwinning users to know.

2.1. Personal.

The teacher's data. We can see our personal information in the centre of the

screen and modify those that are wrong. Remember that the username cannot

be changed. You can change the password and email address, as well as other

important data. Should you have modified any of them, click on the 'Save

information' button and the data will be changed.

Would you like to receive the eTwinning Newsletter? It is an online monthly

magazine publishing the most important events taking place in different

countries, as well as the Central Support Service (courses, workshops,

campaigns, etc.). Register and you will learn new and interesting ideas.

Do you wish to receive news by email? When a general circumstance affects the

entire eTwinning community, if this option is activated, you will receive an alert

via email. The email address used is the one provided by the user when

registering in the platform.

2.2. Schools.

1.- Vertical drop-down menu of the schools we have worked in and the school

we are at now. Once we have chosen a school, at the bottom you will see

information about it and the subjects the teacher is imparting.

2.- Adding a new school. You should only modify your school data if they are

wrong or they have changed. If we have changed schools, we must add the new

one.

IMPORTANT! If once you have registered in eTwinning you change schools, you must not

modify the data of your previous school. If you do that, you will be changing all

the registers of all the teachers associated to that school. What you should do is

add a new school. The process is the same as in the registration form; first you

have to look for it in a list and, if it does not appear, register it.

Once you have done this, tick the schools as active or inactive (if you are

sharing the school, you can keep more than one as active).

2.3. Preferences.

This is a form with a short description of our preferences. In this section we can

explain basic information about what we want to do in eTwinning: if we want to

use a project kit, fields of work, languages, students' ages and, especially,

provide a short description of our project expectations. If you change any of

these data, click again on 'Save information'.

Photo gallery-Image management

Whenever a potential partner accesses our profile to learn more about us, if they

can see our photo and images of our school, they may get a better impression of

what we are like.

We can add images to two galleries from our profile:

Teacher's gallery, where we can include our own images. School gallery, where we can include images of our school .

When we access the profile of an eTwinning user, we can see their photo on the left (if they have uploaded more than one photo to the gallery, we

can browse through them). If we click on the school name, we can see photos of it.

How to add an image to the 'Teacher's gallery' ? We would have to go through

the same process to add an image to the 'School gallery'. The first step would be

to click on 'Upload a photo'.

1. Click on 'Search’ and look for the image you wish to add to the gallery.

Maximum size is 4MB.

2. In 'title', we must add a title (compulsory).

3. In 'Short description' we can add a short text describing the image

(compulsory).

4. It offers the possibility of only showing this image to eTwinning users

or to anyone who visits the CSS website. Choose the option you prefer.

5. Click on 'Submit' to upload the image.

This is the result:

We can see that the image we selected in the gallery. This way, we can add as

many images as we like. When we choose an image, we will see several options:

Default picture. By ticking this box, we can make this our default image, which means it will

be the first image shown in our profile when other users check it.

Edit picture. By clicking here we can modify the title, the description and the place where

the image will be seen.

Delete picture. If you wish to delete the image, click here.

The usual process is to add an image to the teacher's gallery and make it the default image.

Therefore, eTwinning users who check our profile can see what we look like.

Projects

This section allows us to manage the projects we are already working on, as well

as start other new ones.

1. Selection tabs. They allow us to change from one section to another. In this

case, we would be in the 'Projects' section.

2. Projects. It briefly describes a series of actions that can be carried out in

the projects from this area (invite new members, request a Quality Label, etc.).

3. Open. Closed. Pending. By clicking on each section, we will see a list of

the eTwinning projects we are working on, those that are closed and those that

are pending approval.

For each project we can see the following information:

Our photo, if we have uploaded it.

Name of the project and registration date.

Project quality labels. The Quality Label is a special reward to the best

eTwinning projects. The Quality Label can be requested from this section.

Actions. Here we can see links to register new members, modify certain

aspects of the project, access TwinSpace, etc.

4. Search. We can search for an eTwinning project by description, topic,

age and/or language.

5. Creating a new project. This link takes us to a form to register a new

project.

Finding partners

The first step to be taken after registering in eTwinning is to find a partner to

agree on a project with. To find a partner who can adapt to our expectations, the

eTwinning Desktop offers its users the 'Finding partners' section. In this section

we can see two useful tools to search: search per key word and the partner

search forum.

1. Selection tabs. They allow us to change from one section to another. In

this case, we would be in the 'Finding partners' section.

2. Quick search. Search per key word. It allows us to search for other

eTwinning users by using some key words (it can be used to look directly

for someone we already know, name, surname, school...).

3. Advanced search. It allows us to filter words per fields (position at the

school, country, region, subject, etc.)

4. Forum. It allows us to read other users' messages, where they explain

their project ideas and invite us to take part. We can also leave a message

stating our preferences for a future project or the profile of the teacher we

are looking for. Perhaps this is the best resource to find a partner if we do

not know one already. Note that it is organised into sections according to

the ages of the students taking part in the project, as well as another more

specific one to search for partners to start a school association within a

Comenius action.

5. Are you interested in using an eTwinning kit? If you tick this box, a

vertical drop-down list will appear, showing all the kits available in the

NSS site, which can become an idea and/or inspiration for a future

project.

6. Available for an association in another Comenius action? If you tick

this box, the list of teachers that appears after the search will show those

who have ticked “available for a Comenius project.

7. Available for an eTwinning project? If you tick this box, the list of

teachers that appears after the search will show those who registered in

the eTwinning platform.

Partner search

In order to start an eTwinning project, you must find one or more partners

whose profile is similar to your project expectations.

In some cases, a partner is a teacher from another country we already happen to

know. But in most cases we must search and find teachers from other countries

who wish to work with us.

Search keywords

One of the options given in the eTwinning Desktop is to look for partners using

keywords, such as the partner's name, the school or any other word that appears

in the profile.

This method is especially useful when we already know someone and we wish

to find them.

In order to do this kind of search, follow these steps:

In the eTwinning Desktop, access the section Find partners. Do a quick search

for a teacher called Antonella. Once this word has been typed in, click on

Search.

We will see a list of schools and eTwinning users featuring the word Antonella.

Several data are shown for each eTwinning user: links to their profile and their

school, project languages, project topics, nationality of the school and a link to

invite them to be our contact

If we are looking for partners through this system, we should check the profile

to learn more about them and, if they match our requirements, invite them to

become our contact (or even contact them directly by email).

We can also carry out an advanced search by filtering some of the search fields

(position in the school, country, subject, language, etc.). For instance, we can

search for all those people who are going to work on Art in English.

Once we click on Search we will see this screen:

Partner search forum

It is a forum where teachers registered in eTwinning make project proposals,

they express their preferences for languages or topics, etc., in order to find a

partner who matches their profile requirements.

The forum is especially useful when we do not know anyone in the platform and

we want to find a partner who wants to start a project with us.

The best thing to do is to read the last messages written in the forum: if any of

them match our ideas or we think they are interesting, we can reply to the

message and get in touch with whoever wrote it; also, if none of them match our

expectations, we can leave a new message in the forum and wait for someone to

reply.

If you wish to leave a message in the Forum, bear in mind that:

You must not make your expectations too clear. The idea is to slowly build the project according to the proposals we get.

You must use a language that can be understood by all potential users who may read the message. English is normally used, but you may also use another language. Users can delete their own messages.

To access the Partner Search Forum, follow these steps:

1. In the eTwinning Desktop, access the Forum module, on the top right corner of the Find Partners tab.

2. Choose the age category of the students you are going to work with. Try with the 16-19 age group.

You will see this image:

3. At the bottom you can see the discussion lines and the data for each

discussion line or topic: subject, last message, author and number of answers

generated with the first entry.

4. To read the messages in one line, click on the title.

5. You will see the messages in each line and the answers received until then, together with information about the author. To the right of each entry you will see two icons that will allow you to reply to a message and write a quote.

Creating a new discussion line or topic

Should none of the messages in the Forum seem interesting to us, we can create

a new discussion line. In this second case, we only have to wait for someone to

answer: we can get messages in the actual Forum, proposals to become other

users' contacts or internal messages.

A.- To start a new discussion line in the forum, click on the central right area

button that says create message. There is a form where we have to fill in several

fields. Once you have done that, click at the bottom on 'Post your message'.

The best way to find a partner using this tool is to start reading the last messages

included in the Forum. Should one of them match your expectations, you should

do two things:

Visit the teacher profile and carefully analyze the information on him/her and

his/her school. Using the icon we can send a private e-mail to his/her

internal mailbox.

• If according to the information contained in the profile we consider that he/she

is a possible contact we can invite him/her to be part of "My contacts". In this

way we will have his/her information for contacts at a later date.

• Answering the message from the Forum. To do this we must fill out the form

mentioned above.

You can see all your messages and the replies that have been posted by clicking

on the link that appears in the box at the top right of the page "List all my

messages".

Inbox

You may have realised that all the tabs in the Desktop show the same icon: an

envelope representing internal mail in the platform. It allows you to send

messages to other users who have registered in eTwinning, who will normally

be those we have registered as Contacts or whom we wish to include in that list.

Once you have added to your contacts anyone matching the profile you are

looking for, you can start a conversation with them by email in order to decide

about those aspects of the project you are about to begin.

You can access the 'Inbox' from any tab of the Desktop by clicking on the

envelope icon.

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