EUN-SIF MEETING BRIDGES US AND EU EXPERIENCES IN INTEROPERABILITY
Linking US and European experiences in the field of interoperability was the highlight of the EUN-SIF Conference, which took place on 19-20 April, 2005. The School Interoperability Framework (SIF) Executive Director Larry Fruth along with representatives from, among others, Blackboard, Microsoft and Schoolnet discussed possible synergies and a collaboration strategy with European Schoolnet.

SIF brings together 250 departments of education and software vendors in the US and the EUN visit is part of its internationalisation strategy. "Education is not that different across the different countries," said Larry Fruth, "the more we talk, the more we find similarities all the way from policies, technologies and school needs"..
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CSS-NSS eTWINNING MEETINGS
Three CSS-NSS workgroup meetings took place on 20-22 April, 2005 in Brussels to discuss and take stock of the eTwinning action in Europe. On 20 April, various aspects related to the content and functionality of the portal were discussed as was the coherence between the central and national portals.

On 21 April, the focus was on sharing practices, forming partnerships, teacher training, quality and reward projects.

On 22 April, partners took stock of eTwinning and each country presented results and activities undertaken so far.
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TWINSPACE BOOSTS eTWINNING COLLABORATION
TwinSpace, a collaborative workspace developed specifically by European Schoolnet for eTwinning activities, was launched in April. TwinSpace is dedicated to registered and approved eTwinning partnerships.

It provides schools with a single place where they can publish documents on a bulletin board, exchange messages via internal messaging systems or chats, share online resources and more.

In future, schools may also use the TwinSpace to make their eTwinning project website available for everyone.
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SCHOOLPLAZA HELPS TEACHERS COMMUNICATE ACROSS BORDERS
The EUN SchoolPlaza is to be launched. It is a hub for social and professional communication among teachers. SchoolPlaza is an EUN project to connect teachers in Europe who share similar interests or teach the same subjects.

For this project, EUN developed a new backend that it will also use for other EUN collaborative environments such as eTwinning, Pencil and EUN communities.

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VIRTUAL SCHOOL MOVES ON
The Virtual School has been the backbone of European Schoolnet school networking services ever since the launch of the EUN in 1998. Following a review and a discussion of options, the Virtual School Board decided that the initiative should come to an end with a taking stock conference in September.

The Virtual School was one of the first teacher networks and many projects have come into being from it such as myEurope, eSchola and Spring Day.
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GREEN WEEK COMPETITION CLOSED
The Green Week Competition has now closed for entries and more than 3,000 paintings and 120 movies made by groups of children have been submitted through the website.

A panel of teachers and environmental experts from all over Europe will be judging the entries. Winning entrants will attend an awards ceremony during Green Week organised by the European Commission's DG Environment from 31 May to 3 June 2005 in Brussels.

For the competition, children from all over Europe were asked to submit entries on the theme of climate change.
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SPRING DAY 2005 MEETING IN BRUSSELS
On 23-24 April 2005, teachers and national liaisons from all EU member and candidate countries gathered in Brussels to discuss the results of the last Spring Day in Europe campaign and events.

Over the last three years, the project, which aims at 'making the voice of young people in Europe heard', has become very popular among schools. On 17 March 2005, more than 6,620 schools joined the debate on the Constitution, the highest number of schools ever registered for the event. Also, several important European and national politicians visited schools to debate the topic with young people.

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NEW EUN WEB EDITOR
Anne Pinstrup joined European Schoolnet in April, from Denmark, she is a web editor for eTwinning, responsible for the editorial policy and content of the eTwinning portal.

She is in charge of providing news and information on eTwinning and school collaboration for teachers and other school-related actors. .
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OPEN POSITION:
eTwinning pedagogical manager (Brussels).

EUN INTERNS
Four interns joined the EUN Office in the past month. Clémence Roinat completed her training within the translation team.

The web development team received three additions to help on a number of projects: Said El Haddati, from France, is working with chief web developer Mourad Etbaz on an error message scheme for EUN websites; Cu Nguyen and Chhuoy Bunchheang from Vietnam are helping respectively with the iClass project and the Celebrate Brokerage System.