Brussels, 17/02/2009 (Agence Europe) - At the eTwinning conference, held this year in Prague on 13-15 February, the European Commission awarded prizes to 10 outstanding online twinning school projects. The 10 finalists are from 40 schools from 21 countries. eTwinning is a European Union initiative to encourage schools to build online network partnerships. With almost 50,000 schools registered, more and more teachers have demonstrated that they can find new ways to develop teaching and learning and innovate in this area. Through an online platform which makes use of web 2.0 tools to facilitate communication, eTwinning has become a truly collaboration-based community where teachers demonstrate creative ways to strengthen their work in the classroom. Since the scheme was launched in January 2005, teachers from 48,286 schools have registered in eTwinning, and have carried out 11,994 projects involving at least two schools from two different countries. Attending the 2009 conference in Prague were European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth Ján Figel' and over 400 participants. The main focus of the conference was “Creativity and eTwinning”. For further information, go to http://www.etwinning.net (I.L./transl.rt)