Over the course of three days, the three work groups – which focus on (1) the Portal, (2) Pedagogical Issues and (3) Communication and Networking – met in Brussels for their last meetings of the school year and first phase of eTwinning. In addition to regular business, all three work groups took time to evaluate their work over the last three years and discuss the future of their groups.

From the Central Support Service (CSS), participants included Marc Durando, Santi Scimeca, Anne Gilleran, Christina Crawley, Bart Vanhulle, Evita Tasiopoulou, Sylvia Binger, Katerina Bavorova and Silvia Spinoso. From the National Support Services (NSS), representatives came from 27 out of the 28 countries involved in eTwinning. And finally, from the European Commission, participants included Eugenio Rivière, Virve Vakiala and the new Head of Unit for the Lifelong Learning Programme, Adam Pokorny.

The first meeting on the Portal was chaired by Santi Scimeca. In addition to going through the development of the Portal over the last three years, a discussion on how to manage school data took place in light of the now large number of registered schools and teachers. Presentations came from Donatella Nucci (Italy) and Eleni Stergatou (Greece) about how their NSS concretely manage data and a task force on how to analyse data was set up in order for the CSS to develop over the summer months new tools for the NSS to analyse and sort school data.

The second meeting on Pedagogical Issues was chaired by Marc Durando and Anne Gilleran and led by members of the Pedagogical Advisory Group (PAG): Anne Gilleran, Conor Galvin, Pieter Hogenbirk, Martha Hunya, Michelle Selinger and Bettina Zeidler. The PAG presented their findings based on the eTwinning Conference 2007 on various issues linked to workshops and training in eTwinning and discussed with the NSS in groups about various aspects linked to professional development. The PAG will soon finalise a set of recommendations for eTwinning in its next phase.

The final meeting on Communication and Networking was chaired by Yves Beernaert. Starting with a presentation by Mr. Beernaert based on a survey filled out by NSS, the group discussed their various approaches to applying communication strategies, with more in depth presentations from Pierre Auboiron (France), Matt Crestwell (UK) and Maike Ziemer (Germany). In the afternoon, Guy Tilkin from Alden-Biesen did a presentation on networking and organised some group work for NSS to discuss activities their common and differing approaches to networking.

During the last meeting on 16 May, the group was also introduced to Adam Pokorny, the new Head of Unit for the Lifelong Learning Programme. Mr. Pokorny introduced himself and his background and expressed his commitment and interest to working with the NSS and CSS groups in the future.

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