iEARN in Action, January 14, 2005

TSUNAMI RELIEF EFFORTS - UPDATE! 
iEARN has created a special bank account to receive funds donated for Tsunami relief:
Account Name:  iEARN-Earthquake
Account Number: 091-501964965
Bank Name:  JP Morgan/Chase Manhattan Bank
Bank address:  109th Street & Broadway, New York, NY 10025, USA
Swift Code: CHASUS33, BA routing: #021000021

Bank wire transfer expenses will be covered by anonymous donors up to a maximum of US$5,000. This means that 100% of the funds raised will go directly to serve the people and schools in need until the $5,000 in expenses is reached.

In addition to creating this fund, iEARN reiterates its long-term commitment to school and educational re-development in the affected countries and will work closely with iEARN organizations in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh for the distribution of funds as well as to plan and implement activities and long-term projects.
Furthermore iEARN is in the process of partnering with the American India Foundation (AIF) to leverage donations. The AIF is offering to match funds allocated to India both from iEARN International Relief fund as well as by other organizations (up to US$1million).

iEARN has created an International Disaster Relief Coordinating Committee, including Bob Carter, Eliane Metni, Yoko Takagi and Peter Copen, to work with iEARN people in the tsunami-devastated affected countries to allocate funds, develop recovery and rehabilitation projects focusing on children and education. The committee is planning actions and waiting for concrete requests on how to direct fundraised resources. The committee will then ask Ed Gragert to make the recommended payments from the account. A place for representative teachers/students will be announced in the iEARN forum shortly.
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"My students have been doing IEARN projects for only two years. I am the Social Studies Chair at an International Studies Magnet School. Before we joined IEARN we were building international partnerships one at a time. After joining IEARN, our international partnerships and collaborative projects have grown exponentially." - Freda Goodman, Riverwood High School, Atlanta, GA, USA

NEW YEAR'S GREETING TO iEARN -- View a greeting from Computer Teacher, Naren Solanke and his 5th grade students from Lions Vidyaniketan Washim School in India. http://www.iearn.org/happynewyeariearn.

REGISTER NOW FOR FEBRUARY 2005 iEARN ONLINE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT COURSES. Nine week interactive online courses begin February 21 - April 25th, 2005. Course listings and information on each course are available at http://www.iearn.org/professional/index.html. Early enrollment is recommended, as courses fill up quickly.

12TH ANNUAL iEARN CONFERENCE - JULY 17-24 2005 IN DAKAR, SENEGAL - see photo at left for a view of the conference region!!! To receive a registration form to participate, e-mail to: confregistration@us.iearn.org and to receive an application to present a workshop, e-mail to: workshopregistration@us.iearn.org

Join Us! iEARN Projects, Seeking Contacts, Contributions and Collaborators

**DOWNLOAD THE NEW iEARN 2004-2005 PROJECT BOOK!  See http://www.iearn.org/projects/projectbook.html (available in Arabic, English, French, and Slovenian), or for a full listing of iEARN projects, see: http://www.iearn.org/projects/

LOOKING FOR A NEW PROJECT AND SOME CLASS-TO-CLASS COLLABORATION? - IT IS TIME TO REGISTER FOR LEARNING CIRCLES 2005: JANUARY TO MAY SESSION. The new session begins January 31 and ends on May 20 (15 weeks with a 1-week break in the spring).  Learning Circle Placement forms are due on January 15, 2005. If you want to be a part of the January session please go to: http://www.iearn.org/circles. Select and complete the placement form at: http://www.iearn.org/circles/lc-placement.html. If you have any questions or need more information please contact Barry Kramer in the USA.

YOUTH GROUPS LOOKING TO BE INVOLVED IN INTERNATIONAL CONVERSATIONS ABOUT SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD.  Please join Crossing Boundaries: Youth in Dialogue About the Rights of the Child online discussion forums. For more information contact the project coordinator, Samara Shapiro. Feel free to visit our website at www.cil-usa.org.

EXPLORING COMMUNITY LEARNING SPACES. Today, the word learning is associated with schooling. Whenever the term learning or education is used in any part of the world, it is directly associated with schools. Students, teachers, parents, community members are not aware of the indigenous knowledge and learning systems and cultures because there seems no discussion or debate being carried out in schools. This project is aimed at helping explore the types and nature of the learning communities across the globe. Coordinated by Nooruddin Merchant, Naushad Khalique, Kalsoom, and Naila Saad Khan in Pakistan.  http://www.iearn.org/projects/communitylearningspaces.html.

JOIN A NEW FRIENDS CIRCLE! Students at Hosni Mubarak Secondary School for Boys in Egypt write, "The word "Friends" proves that every one in the world is just a human and we are all humans, so it's our world. We should defend it from bad ideas. We are all friends, it doesn't matter what is our nationality or our religion. The important matter is how to respect each other. If we became friends, sure we'll respect each other and be a one big family. By that, we'll forget our differences and spread peace everywhere." The project will deal with 10 activities to have a wide variety of options to allow all the members of a team to participate. Contact Ahmed Mosaad Hassan / Marwan Mustafa Abd  El Aziz / Khaled Abd El Latif  Salah/ or Mr. Yasser Hussein Omar

NEW iPEACE PROJECT FORUM. iPEACE seeks to promote world peace and friendship. Contact Mostafa Nejati, Mehran Nejati, Azadeh Shafaei, Armaghan Shafaei, and Elham Shafaei in Iran, Nuria Peguero in the USA, or Raiya Mirza in Pakistan. For more, see here.

SCHOOL IN EGYPT SEEKING PARTNERS FOR FIGHT AGAINST CANCER PROJECT. Contact Ahmed Mahmoud Bastawy at the Middle East School, Egypt.

A DAY IN YOUR LIFE - DIGITAL PHOTO EXCHANGE. Students aged 13-19 digitally photograph some of their daily routines, such as mealtimes, getting to school, after-school jobs, home life, family traditions, etc. Afterwards, students will write a paragraph or two to accompany each photograph, explaining the photograph's contents and rationale. What are we looking at? Why did you take this photograph? What does it mean to you? The digital photos and captions will be exchanged by email, and, provided proper permissions are obtained from any people identifiable in the photos, may be included in a web gallery. Contact Chris Baer at the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School in the USA.

THIRD GRADE CLASS IN BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, USA SEEKING PARTNER CLASS IN CHINA. Students would like to interview/develop a partnership as they investigate the question of what it is like to grow up in China. Interested parties can contact Nancy.

ONE BOOK, ONE WORLD READING CIRCLE FOR TEACHERS. Interested in joining a reading group? The group's first selection is Purple Hibiscus, by Nigerian born author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. For more information, contact Susan Seyfarth or Celia Einhorn in the USA. A new forum has been created for book discussions: One Book, One World

INTERNATIONAL FOOD PROJECTS. Seeking partners to compare food tasting and videos. Each group would pick a recipe from a country and organize a booklet with ingredients, a detailed recipe, and pictures or videos of making and finishing the food to send to other groups. Partners would receive the booklets, pictures and videos, and make the other countries' food at home, take pictures and film videos, get together with others of their culture to try it. Interested? Contact Ines Pearson in the USA. For more about the Cultural Recipe Book Project, see here.

SHARING HAPPINESS PROJECT. This projects calls for students, educators and other interested people around the globe to share what they have done or can do to make others happy and overcome hatred and conflict making this world a better place to live. Contact Erum Rahil in Pakistan.

INTERESTED IN OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS? Join in discussions on the new Open Source Forum. Participants in Uganda and Iran are currently focused on Linux Based Thinclient (Using an Open Source).

Check it out! Resources, Contests, Web Sites and Announcements (This includes resources that are not part of iEARN)

IN ADDITION TO ENGLISH, THE 2004-2005 iEARN PROJECT BOOK NOW TRANSLATED INTO ARABIC, FRENCH, AND SLOVENIAN. See here.

CALL FOR CHAPTERS IN "GLOBALIZED E-LEARNING CULTURAL CHALLENGES" BOOK. Submission Deadline for Proposals: February 28, 2005. See here for more details.

GIMNASIUM #1, NUKUS, UZBEKISTAN CREATES WEBPAGE FOR BREAKING STEREOTYPES TOGETHER PROJECT AND LOCAL HISTORY PROJECT. See their contributions to Breaking Stereotypes at: http://nukus1.connect.uz/break/. Join the project via http://www.iearn.org/projects/breakingstereotypes.html. And, see their work on Local History at: http://nukus1.connect.uz/LH/. Join the project via http://www.iearn.org/projects/localhistory.html

MAKE A DIFFERENCE ONE-MINUTE VIDEO CONTEST. Deadline for submission: 1 March 2005. Looking for a way to make a difference? Create a one-minute video telling the world how young people are speaking out, taking action and making a difference. Videos will be reviewed by a global panel of media professionals and displayed on the main UNICEF website. The winning video will be the official Voices of Youth public service announcement, receive prizes, and will be made available for broadcast around the world on The International Children's Day of Broadcasting. For criteria and to find out how to submit your video, click here.

YOUNG ECO-HEROES SOUGHT. Action for Nature is seeking applications from kids 8 to 16 years old for its 2005 International Young Eco-Hero Awards Program. Cash prizes up to $500 will be awarded. The 2004 award winners include Janine Licare (14), who helps to save endangered animals in Costa Rica; Christina Faust (16) of Georgia, who studies the vegetation around streams to better understand how plants contribute to the stream's ecosystem; and Salaar Khan (11) of Pakistan, who influences his neighbors to use cloth bags and eliminate the toxins created when plastic bags are burned. http://www.actionfornature.org/eco-hero/index.html.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: UNESCO'S INFORMATION FOR ALL PROGRAMME. UNESCO calls for proposals for projects to be funded by its Information for All Programme (IFAP), an international information society initiative. IFAP furthers UNESCO's mandate to contribute to education for all, to encourage the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, and to increase the means of communication between peoples. Proposals with budgets ranging from approximately US$25,000 (national projects) to US$45,000 (international projects) should cover one of three areas: information literacy; preservation of information; and ethical, legal, and societal implications of the information society. Applications must be submitted no later than 20 February 2005. For this year, $750,000 is available for grants. See here.

Coming Soon! Upcoming Events and Projects!

YouthCaN 2005 ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE TO BE HELD ON APRIL 11, 2005. Every year, YouthCaN collaborates with organizations around the world to put together conferences at which youth exchange their ideas, findings, and knowledge about the environment. The conferences include students from local schools, as well as video conferencing with students in other locations. If you would like to participate or join in any of the events, please contact youthcan@us.iearn.org. iEARN-USA (American Museum of Natural History, New York City) and iEARN-Lebanon (American Community School) are already planning to host gatherings. See http://www.youthcanworld.org for details and to get involved! Students have chosen the theme for this year's conference to be "Species becoming endangered due to human abuse."

12TH ANNUAL iEARN CONFERENCE - JULY 17-24 2005 IN DAKAR, SENEGAL. The conference will be held at the Ngor Hotel. Want to present a workshop proposal at the conference? send an e-mail message to: workshopregistration@us.iearn.org and a workshop application will be sent to you automatically. Want to register to participate in the conference?  Send a message to: confregistration@us.iearn.org.Watch http://www.iearn.org for more information, or login to the 2005 Senegal Conference Discussion Forum. See top for a photo of what the Ngor area looks like, and begin making your plans to travel there in July!

3RD WORLD YOUTH CONGRESS IN SCOTLAND, JULY 30 - AUGUST 8, 2005. The congress theme is "Young People working together for a sustainable world community".  All applicants must be 18-25 years old on July 30, 2005 and will fall under four categories: Activists, Performers/Artists, and Young Journalists. For further details and an application form visit www.scotland2005.org and register for our newsletter.

Recent Events!

iEARN PAKISTAN HOSTS WORKSHOP IN PESHAWAR, NOVEMBER 22-24. iEARN Pakistan organised and conducted the first iEARN Teachers Training in Peshawar, reaching 18 educators and 11 schools. The Consulate General of the United States in Peshawar provided support for the launch of online project-based learning through iEARN in this region of Pakistan. See the workshop details here.