iEARN in Action, January 4, 2006

NEED HELP INTEGRATING AN iEARN PROJECT INTO YOUR CLASSROOM? ENJOY LEARNING IN A COLLABORATIVE, INTERNATIONAL AND STRUCTURED ENVIRONMENT? Join us in our next session of online professional development courses starting January 30th - April 2nd, 2006. iEARN's nine week online courses will help you integrate international collaborative project-based learning into your curriculum and fulfill your curriculum standards using technology. You will learn how to connect your classrooms with their peers around the world. This is a great chance to become an active member of the iEARN global learning community and receive a certificate as an "iEARN Master Teacher." At least 10 countries are represented among the participants in each 9-week course. Facilitators live in 15 countries, speaking about 20 different languages! Professional Development credits available for US teachers. Read course requirements and Register before they fill up! http://www.iearn.org/professional/online.html For more information, write to onlinepd@us.iearn.org.

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

**Download the 2005-2006 iEARN Project Book:
http://www.iearn.org/projects/projectbook.html, (available in Arabic, English, French, and Japanese)or for a full listing of iEARN projects, see: http://www.iearn.org/projects/

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SIGN UP NOW FOR THE NEXT SESSION OF iEARN LEARNING CIRCLES - PLACEMENT FORUMS DUE JANUARY 15. Learning Circles are highly interactive, project-based partnerships among a small number of schools located throughout the world. Each session is 14 weeks. Sign up now for the January to May Session: Begins January 30, 2006 and ends on May 19, 2006 (15 weeks with a 1-week break). See http://www.iearn.org/circles/ for more information about Learning Circles, including an extensive Teachers' Guide. Register online here.

SYRIAN CLASS SEEKING PARTNERS IN THE "A PICTURE TELL A THOUSAND WORDS" PROJECT.  Ula Almoujabber writes, "I'm a teacher of English as a foreign language in a secondary school in Damascus, the capital. I teach girls and they are in the 11th grade, and they range between intermediate and pre-intermediate levels of learning English. We are working this month on " A Picture Tells a Thousand Words", and I'd like to find some partners to share our work. Join the A Picture Tells a Thousand Words Forum.

CONNECTING MATH TO OUR LIVES. Students are invited to a) explore how math is used in their families and communities; and b) use math skills to investigate community or social concerns and then take action to promote greater equity in the world around them. For details about this semester's activities, beginning in February, write to orillas-math@igc.org.

EGYPTIAN CLASS SEEKING PARTNERS IN THE GOOD DEEDS PROJECT.  Doha Ghoneim of Riada Language School, Alexandria, Egypt writes, "Me and my colleague Abeer are working this year on Good Deeds Project. We are looking for partners from Egypt and also from other countries. So if you are interested please contact us, or you can kindly send us suggestions if you have worked on that project before. Peace to you all." Join them in the Change the World: Good Deeds Forum.

FUTURE TEACHERS PROJECT. Participating university professors, teacher educators, and future teachers (studying for their teaching certificates) will interact through on-line dialogues on social justice and other themes related to teaching for equity and diversity. To sign up for the next phase of the project, beginning in February, contact Kristin Brown (USA), Enid Figueroa (PR), and Ramon Iriarte (Paraguay/Japan). Discussions take place in English or Spanish.

FRENCH TEACHERS AT PRIMARY SCHOOL IN THE USA SEEKING PARTNERS FOR GLOBAL ART-A SENSE OF CARING PROJECT. Jennifer Geist writes "Bonjour teachers around the world! I am working with four elementary school French teachers in Tacoma Washington USA who would like to do the Global Art-Sense of Caring Project with students of a similar ages (6-12 years old) in French and English. This is a unique bilingual school with wonderful teachers and students who are just getting started with iEARN. They are hoping that after getting to know you through art, you can continue to do other projects, like Connecting Math to Our Lives! Please email me. Merci beaucoup!"

CIVIL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS. This interactive project links classrooms together across geographic lines in dialogue and action on issues of civil rights, social justice, and people's movements. Facilitated by Ilana Sabban, Kevin Rocap, and Kristin Brown. To sign up for the February/March session or April/May session, visit: http://www.iearn.org/projects/civilrights.html

SECOND LOVE VOICE ONLINE MAGAZINE HAS BEEN PUBLISHED. Read the December issue at http://ict-club.schoolnet.ir/LoveVoice/, including " Heaven on earth", "Interview with Tommie," "Women's Rights," " Ageism," "Christmas wishes," and many more interesting articles in this issue!! Love Voice is a monthly online magazine published by MAMEA Group with the help of Iran iEARN.

SECOND INTERNATIONAL iPEACE PAINTING AWARD HELD BY MAMEA GROUP. Everyone is welcome to join. All participants will receive a certificate and the best paintings will be awarded in the coming iEARN conference in the Netherlands and will be shown in a painting Exhibition there. For more information see here.

WANT TO WORK IN CHINESE? iEARN forums enable students and teachers to write in any written language in the world, including Chinese. IEARN has had a forum for writing in traditional Chinese characters for a number of years http://foro.iearn.org/.ff5f3fa/.  There is also a forum for writing in simplified Chinese http://foro.iearn.org/.1e225708/ and in a partnership with World Links and the World Education Corps, teachers from around China are coming together in several workshops to start to use iEARN forums as a place to communicate and engage in collaborative projects in Chinese. Feel free to introduce yourself and talk about project ideas.

DEUTSCHES SPRACHFORUM: Logge Dich in unser neues deutschsprachiges Forum ein unter Jeder, der deutsch lernt, deutsch lehrt oder einfach nur Interesse hat, ist eingeladen! Lasst uns uns kennenlernen und ueber Projekte sprechen, die unsere Schueler zusammen machen koennen.
TRANSLATION --> GERMAN LANGUAGE FORUM: Log in to our newly created German language forum. Everyone who is learning German, teaching German or simply interested is invited!  Let?s meet each other and talk about project work our students can do together.

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

FIRST LADY OF SYRIA RECOGNIZES STUDENT WORK IN iEARN. iEARN Syria reports that student and teacher project work has received recognition of their country?s First Lady, Ms. Asma Al Assad. A photo collage report of recent iEARN-Syria accomplishments is available here (2.75mb). Congratulations to Samah Al-Jundi and other teachers and students in Syria!  The iEARN-Syria webpages are here.

iEARN-LATVIA UPDATE. Coordinator Talis Bercis writes: "Many fans from iEARN-Latvia now are leaders in IT activities in my country. From former iEARN board and those who were involved in iEARN projects many teachers became well known leading IT experts for the Ministry of Education or became principals in their schools, e.g. Aija Cunska (Smiltene Gymnasium), Leons Lidums (Aizkraukle Gymnasium), Fridis Sarcevics (Auce Secondary school), Aina Berce (Ogre Gymnasium), Ligija Kolosovska (Kraslava Gymnasium) etc.  In 1998 iEARN schools launched the annual LatSTE (Latvian i-Society Technology Exposition) and at the end of October'2005 we organized LatSTE for the 8-th time http://www.latste.lv/en/?id=Organisers and http://latste2004.ogre.lv/english.html. The iEARN Latvia steering board of 6 persons took part in the eTwinning project Launch Conference in Brussels in January 2005.  We have good cooperation with Microsoft Education Forum and we took part in their European Conferences and at the Innovative Teachers Forum in London in 1st of May?2004.  Now we are going to support the International conference  TEACHER OF THE 21st CENTURY: Quality Education for Quality Teaching.  The conference  will be held on June 2-3, 2006 in Riga . Please see details here and of course -- You are welcome to Latvia!

DO YOU HAVE A SKYPE ADDRESS? DO YOU WANT TO USE SKYPE TO TALK TO OTHERS IN iEARN?  We have added a field in the iEARN Teacher database for you to enter your Skype address/number in your database record.  To access and update your record, go here.  Log in with your e-mail address & password.  If you have forgotten your password, you can have it sent to you.  If you need help logging into the database, write to: password@us.iearn.org.   After logging into your My iEARN Page, click on Update Your Personal Information. You can then enter your Skype address (and update any other information in your record).  You can search for the skype address for others by clicking on Find a Person.

NOMINATIONS FOR GLOBAL SCHOOLNET'S ONLINE SHARED LEARNING AWARD - DEADLINE, JANUARY 27, 2006. These awards recognize exemplary tele-collaborating teachers, media specialists, and other school-based educators. For complete details:
http://www.globalschoolnet.org/GSNawards/.

Coming Soon! Upcoming Events and Projects!

iEARN-PAKISTAN ANNOUNCES THE JANUARY-MARCH 2006 SCHEDULE FOR TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES. 
http://www.iearnpk.org/PD/curriculum2.htm

2006 iEARN NATURAL DISASTERS YOUTH SUMMIT MEETING IN TAIWAN, National Science and Technology Museum in Kaohsiung, JANUARY 6-8, 2006. http://ndys.jearn.jp/ndysconf_taiwan.html, or for more about the project, see here. Doris Wu, iEARN-Taiwan Coordinator, writes, "iEARN Taiwan takes the great honor to host 2006 NDYS in Taiwan! There will be guests from Japan, Malaysia, Iran, and Trinidad. Together with Taiwan schools, we will have about 400 teachers and students getting together to work for one simple but very important theme--- Natural Disaster Youth Summit! Meanwhile, along with gathering, there will be the 2nd Elite Workshop (English Learning in Technological Environment) in the same place. By having both events together, English teachers in Taiwan will have the precious opportunity to observe and witness how iEARN projects can be fitted into English cirriculum. We will have 80-90 English teachers joining us." Welcome them in the iEARN Teachers Forum.

STUDENT WORKSHOPS AT YOUTHCAN ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE, 2006. One of the most exciting parts of the YouthCaN project are the student workshops in New York City and other sites on April 10th. The event is a great opportunity to see what others are doing in environmental projects, and to share your projects and activities. It is a chance for your students to develop their presentation skills.  At this point we are looking for students who are interested in presenting their projects as either workshops or display tables.  For more information and a workshop presentation/registration form, send a blank e-mail message to: youthcan info@us.iearn.org. Most workshops are in person, but also can be through technology. For more about YouthCaN, see http://www.youthcanworld.org/.

MEGACONFERENCE, JR. 2006 - MAY 18. An Event For and By students of the World http://megaconferencejr.org/. See streaming from previous years here.

eLearning AFRICA CONFERENCE, MAY 24-26, 2006. Join in the first international conference on ICT for development, education and training to be held in Addis Ababa from May 24 - 26, 2006 (more information available here). Girma Mitiku, iEARN-Ethiopia Coordinator and Conference Advisory Committee member (http://www.elearning-africa.com/partner_advisory.php) writes, "All iEARNers are supposed to participate, especially the African iEARNers!"

2006 iEARN WORLD CONFERENCE AND YOUTH SUMMIT IN ENSCHEDE, NETHERLANDS, JULY 3-7, 2006. Every year one of the countries active in iEARN hosts the annual World Conference and Youth summit as a meeting place for teachers and students in Primary and Secondary Education, NGO and corporate partners, field experts and governmental representatives. For more information about the Conference, contact:info@iearn2006.nl. For Youth Summit information see . http://www.iearn2006.nl/.

REGISTER NOW FOR THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ROLE OF ICT IN BRIDGE-BUILDING AND SOCIAL INCLUSION CONFERENCE. Northern Ireland, September 10-16, 2006. If you are involved in a project linking students together through ICT and want to hear about the latest developments in video-conferencing, the use of 'moodle' to create joint web sites, or the experiences of those in Ireland and elsewhere who are using ICT to build bridges, we'd like to hear from you. If you are an academic interested in the theoretical models behind such work or a policy maker for ICT at national or international level this conference will be an important event. Further details here.

Recent Events!

U.S. TEACHERS AND STUDENTS TRAVELED TO EGYPT DECEMBER 10-17, 2005 AS PART OF US-EGYPT YOUNG SCIENTISTS COLLABORATION - TWO RIVERS, ONE WORLD PROJECT. Learn more about their work in the Two Rivers, One World Forum. Visit the US Embassy in Cairo to see highlights.

iEARN-IRAN CONDUCTS iEARN WORKSHOP, DECEMBER 12, 2005. The workshop was designed to familiarize Iranian teachers with iEARN and online collaborative projects. Teachers from different parts of Tehran and other cities had a great time exploring iEARN and reading the kind hello and warm messages sent to them by iEARN members from around the world. iEARN-Iran.

iEARN-PAKISTAN SUCCESSFULLY CONCLUDED WEEK-LONG TRAINING OF TRAINERS PROGRAM IN DECEMBER, 2005. The training was a part of the iEARN BRIDGE program and involved 14 educators from different cities of Pakistan who will be looking after the iEARN programs in their school networks, and hopefully will be working with more then 45 schools nationwide throughout the year 2006. http://www.iearnpk.org/TOT/05/index.htm.

For Reference!