Mabel's Evaluation of the "Trip"

It was a privileged for me to participate in this trip. Unfortunately my contribution was brief due to many school work I had to do, but it was an enriching experience for me and for my students.

They felt challenged to participate in such a project, where older students, from different nationalities, shared their opinions about topics that also concern(ed) them. They felt they were not alone in this piece of paradise that is Portugal, but that there were several links of interest, worries, frustrations, fears and feelings among all these youngsters that could be discussed together.
The use of the English language was a problem to my students. They told me many times they wouldn’t be able to write directly to the blog whatever they wanted because they feared not to be able to write in perfect English. Probably (I hope) I made them realize or led them to reflect about the need to learn and use foreign languages. People need to communicate with each other and whenever we start something new,( that comes out of our routine) it is always hard .

So this trip in space and time allowed my students to give their first steps into a project like this and it really gave them the possibility to understand more about themselves and about the others. Moreover they also felt that it is very important to talk about issues that, many times, are still kept as tabus.

I do think etwinning projects are a wonderful tool to learn and to bring closer Europeans creativity and knowledge. Teachers and students have the chance to develop a collaborative work, working out together a lot of skills in real context and building up projects that are done according to student’s needs, what enhances highly their and our development.
As I love trips I hope to share my knowledge and work experience with this full of potential space and I expect to do it many more times…

To finish, I would like to congratulate Jorge Rocha and the other members of the project for this amazing work.