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home > Media services > News > European teachers meet at eTwinning launch European teachers meet at eTwinning launch The European launch of the eTwinning action took place on 14-16 January 2005 in Brussels during a conference which gathered more than 300 teachers, national and European education authorities. During the eTwinning launch conference European Education Commissioner Ján Figel’ highlighted the potential of eTwinning to increase pupils' ICT and language skills as they are given the opportunity to communicate across borders. During the conference, hundreds of teachers, school managers and education authorities discussed how school twinning can further be developed in Europe. Education Commissioner Ján Figel’ highlighted that eTwinning “will provide every child in Europe with the opportunity – at some point in their schooling – to engage, exchange and learn with other children”. eTwinning aims to develop pupils’ digital and media literacy as crucial basic competencies in today’s world. According to Commissioner Figel’, the eTwinning action will optimise school collaboration while fully exploiting the opportunities offered by ICT. Other keynote speakers to the conference included Claudie Haigneré, French Minister of European Affairs, Derrick de Kerckhove, Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology and Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto and Maruja Gutiérrez Díaz, Head of Multimedia Unit in the European Commission’s DG Education and Culture. At the conference several ICT-related prizes were awarded. Susanne Pratscher, an active participant in school cooperation at European level won the biggest raffle prize - a trip to San Francisco (USA) sponsored by Sun Microsystems. Intel offered a Finnish teacher a laptop and German publishing group Langenscheidt offered 250-euro vouchers to three teachers. Website: http://www.etwinning.net/ww/en/pub/etwinning/launch_conference.htm
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