Education should not be limited to the classrooms, but should go beyond the borders of the school walls and touch the lives of people living on the other side of the world. ICT in the classroom has made the impossible, possible. Who would have thought thirty years ago that schools would be linked as they are today by cooperation and networking, making education global?
For Spring Day in Europe 2004 one of the main activities undergone by many registered schools was Together in Europe. The main aim of this interactive activity was to match schools in pairs, one from the EU and one from a new member state or a candidate country, to work together on a topic. There were many topics to choose from: art, culture, traditions; eating habits, recipes; green initiatives; historical events; buildings and architecture; unusual geographical features or other ideas.
At Osnovna sola Pivka, Slovenia, one of the school twinning activities undertaken was with 9th Primary School Zografou in Athens, Greece. We found each other through the myEUROPE partner-finding forum. Together we decided on the topic of art, culture and tradition, because we found that even though our countries are quite close to one another geographically, there is so little we really know about each other. Each school researched the art, culture and traditions of the participating country. We included things like the flag, the national anthem, a symbol of the country, a special landscape phenomenon, the national costume and dance, a famous person, a famous poem, a culinary speciality and the young people of today. All this was then prepared as a PPT presentation at each school and sent to the participating school where the facts presented were checked by the students. Each school then reported on the Spring Day 2004 Web site.
Besides the PPT presentation we took this collaboration one step further. Each school prepared a culture box filled with items that for them represented their country and their lives. Our students, for example, collected some items of typical Slovenian handicraft, souvenirs, and other objects that would give the partner school in Greece a view of a small part of Slovenian culture. They also included a CD with a presentation of Slovenia and our school. A similar box was prepared by the Greek school and the boxes were exchanged through the mail and displayed to the public.
The impact the activity made on the pupils themselves is best expressed by our Greek friends: The pupils enjoyed preparing a presentation in power point form and collecting treasure for a culture box they sent to their Slovenian friends. They discovered the new member country while at the same time they spent time thinking about their own history and culture. The hours spent working on the subject were happy and creative ones, full of wishes and dreams about our common future. If only we could put more into that culture box! If only Spring lasted forever!
School twinning gives both pupils and teachers the opportunity to share ideas and view points with people who come from different cultural backgrounds and different surroundings. It is an asset to improving education as a whole. The pupils begin looking at education from a different angle. By sharing their work with pupils from a different country, they begin to appreciate it more. Young people nowadays need a good reason for learning and studying and school twinning is another very interesting approach that can be used to this end.
At Osnovna sola Pivka, Slovenia, one of the school twinning activities undertaken was with 9th Primary School Zografou in Athens, Greece. We found each other through 
The impact the activity made on the pupils themselves is best expressed by our Greek friends: The pupils enjoyed preparing a presentation in power point form and collecting treasure for a culture box they sent to their Slovenian friends. They discovered the new member country while at the same time they spent time thinking about their own history and culture. The hours spent working on the subject were happy and creative ones, full of wishes and dreams about our common future. If only we could put more into that culture box! If only Spring lasted forever!
