An online project space is a virtual place where you and your team/coworkers/collaborators can discuss and plan your project. You can also upload documents and multimedia files and share your work. The project space is secure and only accessible to its members (Source: British Council, retrieved online on March 13, 2019).

Example of project spaces: basecamp. Source: Time Doctor Blog. “53 Online Collaboration Tools to Help Your Team Be More Productive”. Retrieved online on March 13, 2019

There are many platforms already available that people can use to collaborate and develop projects (Time Doctor Blog). The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, among other things, offers a database of learning tools, including project spaces with different characteristics. An interesting example related to education is Etwinning, which is the online community for schools in Europe. eTwinning offers a platform for staff (teachers, head teachers, librarians, etc.), working in a school in one of the European countries involved, to communicate, collaborate, develop projects, share and be part of a large learning community. Teachers from different schools in different countries can meet to develop projects for their students. Looking through the outcomes of those projects, I realized how linked it is to my second concept: participatory learning. Participatory learning can happen off and online. Participatory learning differs from traditional learning which is based on a top-down approach in which the teacher transfers knowledge to the student as a one-way channel. Participatory learning focuses on the act of participation in activities and projects, the act of sharing in the activities of a group. By doing so, it is a horizontal approach of mutual learning. A traditional classroom can host a participatory learning experience, but online tools and technology in general offer the possibility of expanding your team and your sources of collaboration exponentially.

I think that Etwinning is both a project space (twinspace) that facilities participatory learning among teachers (by using this platform to design and implement projects, share different knowledge and experiences from around a country or around the world) and among students involved in the project. An interesting example is “Who do you think you are?” involving students from England, Germany, and Sweden. The project aimed at challenging students’ perceptions with respect to migration. Students constructed their own family tries, learning about their past, and then shared their tries with students from other countries. As part of the project, students prepared posters and recordings about traditions (food, dancing) of other countries. They learned in a participatory way something that traditional learning would have taught in a geography and a history classroom.