iEARN-Moldova NATIONAL TEACHER NETWORK

Access students from Criuleni were actively engaged in the international project entitled "Learning Circles: Places and Perspectives” . We collaborated with our Moldovan colleagues Grusca Dumitru and Irina Livitchi and international partners from Jordan and Tunisia. It was the first experience for me it was very interesting and useful as for me as for my students. We discovered beautiful places of interest from Tunisia and Jordan. We also learned about new traditions of Easter celebration from the Northern part of Moldova .

My students and I liked all the iEARN projects we participated in so far. The most exciting experience is related to "Talking Kites Around The World" Project which involved 36 countries from all the continents and "My City And Me" Learning Circle which involved 6 teams from 4 countries: Russia, Moldova, India and Morocco. Our involvement in these projects allowed us to improve our skills in the use of technology and to get involved in community work. As a result, our students became much more interested in global events. In addition to that my students from "Petru Movila" Lyceum organized a charity collection of books within "The Echo Of Chernobyl" Campaign which helped us celebrate the Global Youth Service Day. In the last two years our participation in iEARN projects has been a wonderful journey together with the Academy for Innovation and Change through Education. We are so grateful for this amazing experience!

I have been an active iEARN educator for several years. I like how iEARN improves my teaching experience and enlarges the student perspective on gobal issues. This year, for instance, my students from 9th grade from Scumpia, Fălești were actively engaged in the international project ”Learning Circles” in collaboration with other schools from Moldova (Irina Livitchi "Gheorghe Asachi" Lyceum from Ungheni and Sclifos Tatiana "Boris Dînga" Lyceum from Criuleni,), Jordan (Khuzama Al Momani Al Amal School for Special Education, Zarqa) and Tunisia (Hajer Tekaya, Teboulba Prep School, Teboulba, Monastir). We covered such topics as school life, Easter traditions, famous railways in our country, places of interest and fishing ports in our country. My students found out interesting facts about Tunisia and Jordan. I would like to recommend to all English teachers from Moldova to implement this project in their schools in order to offer their students the chance to develop their writing and speaking skills in English and collaborate with peers from around the world.

My students and I worked on several iEARN projects this year. My 6th grade students had their first experience with "My Hero" Project. They participated in this project from January till May 2017. During this period they collaborated with their peers from Canada, Jordan, Moldova, New Zealand (Aotearoa), Russia, Sierra Leone and United States via iEARN forums. They were very excited to communicate and learn about other countries and their heroes. Also created digital projects based on their heroes and shared their opinions and inspiring stories. It was their first international project in English and it was a great beginning. My 8th grade students had a very fruitful collaboration with students from different countries as part of "My City and Me" Project. We collaborated with students from India, Morroco, Russia and Moldova. We learnt about their culture and traditions, their monuments and famous places. My students prepared different presentations and wrote many essays about their own town and school, monuments and buildings from Dondușeni. They had a cultural exchange and learnt many things about traditions of other countries, schools and communities.

My students from IP Gimnaziul nr. 2 from Drochia had a very busy year, but nevertheless we succeeded to take part in some interesting projects on the iEARN forums, such as: Holidays Cards Exchange and Our Story Book. We also celebrated Global Youth Service Day together with other iEARN students, helping to clean the park near our school. It was a very hard, but fruitful year for us and we will for sure continue our iEARN experience in the future, as involving pupils in online projects makes English lessons more attractive, more interesting and more "waited for" by my students.

Some of my most active and gifted students from American Language Centre in Chisinau, embarked on a pilot Social-Action Project within Global Teenager Project in autumn 2017. They were ready to make meaningful changes in their community and to share their ideas and plans with their global peers from the Netherlands, Canada, Nepal, Ukraine and Romania.
The Project lasted from September 2016 till January 2017. It consisted of 4 main phases: introduction, challenge 1, challenge 2, and completion and evaluation, including an individual assignment in PeerScholar application. The participants could get a hold of ICT (information and communication technologies) skills, and learn to communicate efficiently virtually. While accomplishing their assignments they used a variety of creative digital tools, such as: Powtoon cartoon maker, Camtasia video maker, Piktochart, Animoto, and Storyjumper.
By working together and completing the challenges they increased understanding of people's living conditions and lifestyles across the world, as well as raised awareness about the responsibilities we need to take in order to assure that we and the members of our community live decently. By the end of the project, all the participants had a great opportunity to speak out their message to the world by getting involved in a writing Contest “Why Bother”. I am proud to announce that 2 of my students won the Writing Contest and their letters will serve as models for the next project editions. Now, I can firmly state that our young generation is definitely ready to be the change in their community and we are all wishing them good luck and beautiful outcomes.