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The idea of using digital technologies and in particular web 2.0 tools to enhance school collaboration has recently been received with great enthusiasm and a range of new collaborative initiatives has emerged. Through a comparative qualitative case study of four schools in the UK and Greece, this article analyses how online tools are supporting and facilitating school collaboration within the 'e Twinning' programme - an EU initiative that seeks to promote web-based learning and collaboration between schools across Europe. In particular, it examines teachers' and students' compromised experiences of the tech-based e Twinning projects and highlights the factors that seemed to be undermining collaboration. It analyses whether the implementation of digital technologies for school collaboration has the potential to transform classroom practices or whether existing habits and 'ways of doing' are brought into new contexts - leading to another case of 'the old wine in new bottles' syndrome often attributed to the use of digital technology in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that, despite globalisation forces, national education and training systems have kept their particularities. Policies of convergence, enhanced by supranational organisations such as the European Commission, have not yet led to a homogenisation of national education and training systems. The latter are still influenced by the political, economic and social framework. Thus, no single model of lifelong learning prevailed in Europe. There were countries close to the demand-led model of ‘voluntary partnership’ (e.g. UK), countries representative of the ‘formalised social partnership’ model (e.g. Sweden) and countries adhering to the ‘statist’ model (e.g. Greece). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]