iEARN in Action, May 6, 2005

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

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

JOIN THE KINDRED PROJECT! As part of the project, students are asked to interview member of their immediate family (mother, father, brothers, sisters), extended family (grandparents, uncles, aunts), neighbours or friends in the local community. They should ask them about experiences in their life that have been affected by the events of world or local history. Events may include war, natural disasters, migration, important discoveries, monuments, famous places and so on. Students should focus on the impact for the family. Contact Judy Barr in Australia. For more information, see http://www.iearn.org/projects/kindred.html

ERADICATION OF MALARIA PROJECT. Tommie Hamaluba in Botswana writes, "Hi folks around the iEARN community. April 25th is recognised in Africa as Africa malaria day, set in the year 2000 by our leaders. Let me call upon all iEARNERS committed to life saving to believe that this disease is preventable and if people are educated on the dangers of the disease, it can be easily avoided and let me say there is need for people to take preventative measures to avoid the disease and that can only be spear headed by me and you where ever you are! Join us at http://botswana.malaria-eradication.org to save lives." Contact Tommie.

ENO ENVIRONMENT ONLINE PROJECT. For 2005-06 there will be about 200 ENO schools in 75 countries...Please see the current list here. To learn more about ENO visit http://eno.joensuu.fi and write to the progamme coordinator in Finland Mr Mika Vanhanen.

NEW iEARN POETRY PROJECT PROPOSED! In this project everyone could send poems relating to any topic. Interested? Contact Sumaiya Zehra in Pakistan.

NEW PROJECT, "NATIONALISM, NOW AND THEN" PROPOSED. Participants will define "Nationalism" as it pertains to them, and will explore its causes and effects. They will research nationalist movements in their own country as well as others around the world. They will share national symbols of patriotism, such as anthems, birds, and flags with students in an online forum. Interested? Contact Holly Briel in the USA.

THE RESPONSIBILITY - STUDENT FILM.  Doug Cooper of the Mead Educational Partnership Program in Washington State, USA writes, "My students have spent all year making our film called "the Responsibility". We have been trying to put it on the website for quite a while now, and we don't have many ideas how. We have posted part of it, including a preview, in the Global Arts Forum.One idea we had was to mail the DVD to teachers who wanted to show it to their students. If you are interested in this please reply (on the Teachers Forum). Thank you!.

TEENAGER'S FEARS PROJECT PROPOSED. Nausheen Ehsan, Fatima Khan, and Bisma Sohail, in Pakistan propose: Goal: To help teenagers to overcome their fears. Most of our teenagers are having many kinds of fears like loosing friends,losing parents, attentions, cultural restrictions, not treating like a youth or lack of independence specially when they compare level of freedom and independence with teenagers of European countries, lack of confidence,fear of facing audience etc. August 2005 - December 2005. If interested, contact Nausheen, Fatima, and Bisma.

A PICTURE TELLS A THOUSAND WORDS. Lynn Rosen from NYC-USA
and Farah Kamal from Karachi- Pakistan proudly presents this new project for creative minds from around the world. This very unique project invites students from around the world to engage in discussions sharing their ideas, thoughts and perception in the form of poetry and prose focused around a
visual image that the project facilitator or participants will post in the project forum. This project is taking place in the iEARN Writers Forum. See here

NUCLEAR ENERGY PROJECT. This project aims to re-educate people and correct misconceptions about nuclear energy. It will also provide information on how to handle nukes for it to be Earth-friendly. Contact Rory Ian Bualan, in the Philippines. For more information, see http://www.iearn.org/projects/physics.html.

NEW BOOK CHOSEN FOR ONE WORLD, ONE BOOK READING GROUP! Celia Einhorn in the USA writes, "Friends, Amy Dwyer, from Delaware, USA, recommends we read No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu in our next online book group. Join us at http://foro.iearn.org/.1df6d197/ in a the next weeks to start the conversation! Susan Seyforth from Michigan, USA, suggests we look at the online book at http://gutenberg.org to select our next title. Involve your colleagues, your students! Let's make this the biggest, international book club around!

LEWIN WELCOMES NEW FACILITATOR. Teacher facilitators Farah Kamal of Pakistan, and Bob Carter and Virginia King of Australia write, "Dear Friends, We are happy to announce that Lynne Rosen, from U.S.A. has joined the Lewin Team as a Teacher Facilitator. We are looking forward to working with Lynne." For more information about joining the project, see http://www.iearn.org/projects/lewin.html.

PROJECT REPORT - TEDDY BEAR PROJECT!
Anahí Ramos in Argentina joins facilitation team! Anahí is a future teacher of English who has participated in iEARN projects last year and is very happy to help with the coordination of the Teddy Bear. She will be joining Tatsuya Inagaki from Japan. Together, they have volunteered to monitor the Teddy Bear forum and to assist interested classrooms in finding partners. For more about joining the Teddy Bear Project, contact Ananí and Tatsuya, or see
here to post directly to the project's online forum.

-From Pecan Valley Elementary School in Texas, USA. "Because of a grant we received from the East Central School Foundation, we were able to join the iEARN network and participate in this fabulous program. Our first grade class (Mrs. Lowak's) and Mrs. Flores' fourth grade class are working together on an across the world learning project. We have teamed up with 3 schools in Egypt for this exciting new adventure. Each country (USA & Egypt) sends a teddy bear to the other country. When the teddy bear arrives we begin writing daily emails describing teddy's new experiences. During the 6 weeks of this project we will be working on specific assignments. We will learn about each others schools, communities, culture, and governments. Our teddy bear "Texas Teddy" left for Egypt on April 7, 2005." See here for the class's report.

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

CHECK OUT THE NEW iEARN-ARMENIA WEBSITE! Karine Durgaryan, iEARN-Armenia coordinator, writes, "I would like to invite you to visit iEARN-Armenia new web site." See http://www.iearn.childlib.am

CHECK OUT THE NEW iEARN-USA WEBSITE! http://us.iearn.org

iEARN-PAKISTAN PRESENTS WEB REPORT OF GLOBAL YOUTH SERVICE DAY ACTIVITIES. iEARN-Pakistan Coordinator, Farah Kamal, writes, "With great pleasure I take this opportunity to present the web report of the Global Youth Service Day activities conducted in Pakistan. It has been an extremely rewarding event and a great learning experience for our Youths in terms of developing social responsibility, community issues awareness and academic excellence. I take my hat off to the iEARner Naila Khan of The Cardinal Public School -Lahore for being a great leader and support to the students and schools for the project participation. Please join me in congratulating Naila for her fabulous work and exceptional leadership abilities. The detailed reports and power point presentation of the projects can also be accessed from the website http://www.iearnpk.org/YVS/GYSDE/index.htm and the iEARN Forum Students Unlimited for reading and responding to students work.

MOVING VOICES: DIGITAL FILMMAKING IN THE GLOBAL CLASSROOM ARTICLE FEATURED IN TECHNOLOGY AND LEARNING MAGAZINE. May 1, 2005 by Mercedes Del Rosario. See here.

ART MILES MURAL PROJECT ACHIEVES GUINNESS RECORD FOR LONGEST PAINTING IN THE WORLD! Joanne Tawfilis, Director of The Art Miles Project, writes, "Dear all friends and supporters, students, teachers, coordinators, and well wishers! We did it...it was fun and lots of hard work...Many thanks to all the children, youth and all ofyou who helped make this possible...we beat the Guinness Record that was established on March 21 in AbuDhabi 9,771 feet ....we had to paint an additional length of murals in Denver to end up with 10, 912 feet we did remind everyone though that it wasn't about the length or the even the murals themselves...it was the process...fun, love, creativity, passion, opportunity, communication...a pathway to peace!!! See more here. To join discussions about the project, see http://www.iearn.org/projects/artmiles.html.

DIRECT CALL FOR RESPONDENTS - POWER USERS. Do you feel you know more of computers and technology than your teachers? Do you feel you could even improve the technology you use? Do you use this technology to broaden your horizon and communicate with people all over the world? For an international research project we would like you to fill out a short questionnaire. With this questionnaire, we try to map people like you, and are willing to let you decide what follow-up research will look like. For people whose mother tongue is not English we apologize: the questionnaire is only available in this language. We nevertheless hope you will take the effort to participate in this project and be able to influence this research which is, after all, about you. To participate, please click the following link:
http://www.101research.nl/powerusers Thank you very much! Go to www.dgroups.org/groups/Powerusers to link to Learning Circle ?learning4all? - a dynamic learning environment where 13 Power Users of technology from 11 countries around the globe work and learn together. The Power Users work on creative and innovative solutions to enable basic education to all children in the world. This Learning Circle is facilitated by EDC-Europe (Bob Hofman). .

Coming Soon! Upcoming Events and Projects!

10th MIRK CONFERENCE, MAY 19-21 IN SLOVENIA! Alenka Adamiã Makuc , Coordinator of iEARN-Slovenia shares that iEARN teams from Austria (Maria Bader), Egypt (Dalia Khalil), the Netherlands (Bob Hoffman), Serbia and Montenegro (Katarina Mihojevic), and Wales (Cheryl Morgan) will meet there. See http://www.vsezavse.com/mirk.

JOIN IN ONLINE COMPONENT OF NECC (NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL COMPUTING CONFERENCE) IN PHILADELPHIA, USA, JUNE 27-30. http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2005/. iEARN-USA is hosting 13 sessions, as well as the NECC International Reception on June 27 from 4:00-5:30 pm. A US Cadre of Facilitators is coordinating the sessions, with plans for video-conferencing from NH, WA, the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, Botswana, Egypt, Japan, Lebanon, Pakistan and Taiwan. In addition, Celia Einhorn in the USA writes, "I invite you to join my week as online facilitator, May 15th - 22nd, in the Learning From and With the Global Community Forum. My topic is assessment with global online learning. Questions I suggest are: What about reporting authentic learning? How does a teacher grade for collaborative work? How are standards met? And anything else you would like to discuss. Join in on the fun by registering today. For more information, contact Celia.

THIRD ANNUAL BRIDGE REGIONAL CONFERENCE, BEIRUT, LEBANON, JULY 8-13, 2005. iEARN-Lebanon (http://www.iearnlb.org/) will be hosting the Third Annual BRIDGE Regional Conference in Beirut. The conference will include educators from iEARN programs in Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and the United States The focus will be on professional development and curriculum building, affording participants the opportunity to exchange educational tools and resources. Train-the-Trainer seminars, project planning workshops, and community service learning projects will be among the topics of discussion.

12TH ANNUAL iEARN CONFERENCE - JULY 17-24 2005 IN DAKAR, SENEGAL. iEARN-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. Youth are encouraged to join in the new 2005 Youth Summit Forum to help organizers in planning the youth summit.

Looking for Less-expensive flights to Senegal in July? iEARN has arranged for lower fares to Dakar from Europe via TAP Air Portugal and from the USA via Air France. For example, the round trip fare from JFK (NYC) is about US$988, plus $215 in airport and other taxes. From Amsterdam via TAP, it will be around US$940. More information will be posted here as it is available. See you in Senegal!!!

The Senegal Minister of Education, His Excellency Moustapha Sourang, welcomes us to Dakar and writes: "I have received your letter regarding the conference you will organize in Dakar.  Enthusiastically, I want to thank you for your support of iEARN-Senegal. I am most grateful for this."

- From the iPEACE team: Take part in a the iPEACE Painting Exhibition held in the 12TH Annual iEARN Conference in Senegal, and contribute to promoting world peace, and friendship. All youth, students and teachers can take part. We've received paintings, poems, and articles from Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Morocco, USA, and are still looking for your artistic pieces. The deadlines have been extended up to June 15th. Should you have problems with posting the artistic peaces, or have any other questions feel free to contact Mostafa Nejati. To find everything about this Exhibition and how to take part see here.

- From Samaneh Sadeghi in Iran - "As a suggestion for iEARN Conferences we suggest to have an International but National Song, which is written by all students all over the world and will be sung by iEARN Conference Participants(in every year not just this one in Senegal). So, 1 or 2 students would be chosen from each country as its agents for writing the poem. As we don't have much time to Senegal Conference please send their Names as soon as possible! The students should have a good talent in writing the poem and be fluent in English. Please, choose them & Send their names & E-Mail addresses.

WORLD YOUTH DEVELOPMENT AND ICT CONFERENCE 2005, ARUSHA, TANZANIA, AUGUST 11-12, 2005. Theme " Young People Creating Global Culture." The conference will bring more than 250 young professionals, community leaders, NGO leaders, University students, ICT professionals, and all lovers of youths. For more information, contact Titus Tossy Organizing Chairman. Website: http://www.onevillagefoundation.org

Recent Events!

iEARN/BRIDGE MASTER TRAINER SEMINAR A SUCCESS! SEE PHOTOS! From April 14 - 17, iEARN-USA hosted a Master Trainer Seminar in New York City. Teachers from all of the world came together for worskshop trainings and cultural activities. This unique seminar was a "train the trainer" gathering including presentations that provide various methods on how to teach and encourage iEARN learning. Various workshops included: Building Community, Community Service, Curriculum, Professional Development and iEARN Technology Tips. For more information on the Seminar and pictures click here.