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January 2008
iEARN-Azerbaijan
GCE Program Expands as Project Activity Flourishes
GCE scholarships have enabled 2 teachers to enroll in the spring session of professional development courses of Creative Writing and Environment. Two teachers were also registered to participate in Learning Circles, where they will get a guided experience working in a team with students and teachers around the world on collaborative projects. Adding to the teachers who took online courses in the Fall session, these teachers will be a great asset to iEARN-Azerbaijan, their schools, and their communities.
Six iEARN alumnae came to the AZETA (Azerbaijan English Teachers Association) office to present to the Enjoy English Club on the advantages of participating in the GCE program through iEARN. They discussed the benefits of a virtual exchange, including how it can prepare students for a physical exchange through the FLEX program. The presentation was well received and the alumnae were invited back to make a presentation at the Young Learners Conference in early February 2008.
Teachers and students in Azerbaijan are currently engaged in about 25 online collaborative projects. Students from School #164 are working on the Quilt project, which teaches girls craft skills and builds self-confidence. Azeri students have also recently become involved in YouthCaN, where students learn about local and global ecological problems with their peers around the world. As part of the Women in My Country project, educators have been arranging meetings with famous women in the community for the students.
GCE Students Promote Community Service As Part of Islam
Six GCE students at the Al Ma’arifa Secondary Girls School have put together a brochure promoting community service and emphasizing its important place in Islam as part of the Good Deeds project.
The Good Deeds project encourages students to make the world a little bit better through small acts of kindness. They then share the stories of their good works in the iEARN online forums and learn from reading about the good deeds of their peers from around the world. The project aims to create proactive citizens who are able to serve their community, country, and the world in a positive and dynamic way.
The brochure devotes a panel to the emphasis given to community service in Islam, from the many Hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad to the rewards promised to those who do good deeds. As the students point out, the rewards to be expected are spiritual in nature.
The brochure also suggests some ways that people can serve their community and points out the advantages of community service to society as a whole as well as the individual involved.
iEARN-Egypt
 GCE Event Honors Volunteerism
Last month iEARN-Egypt held a meeting at the Student Union in Agoza to praise volunteerism among youths and inspire others to get involved. GCE students talked about their experiences as volunteers in GCE projects, and especially their experiences organizing and hosting the iEARN 14th Annual International Conference & 11th Youth Summit from July 21–26, 2007.
The students also discussed what they expect to accomplish under GCE in the coming year. Ms. Dalia Khalil, Director of iEARN-Egypt, gave a presentation about youth and leadership and they watched a film about the work GCE students accomplished in 2007 put together by Mohamed, an iEARN-Egypt Student Board member and head of the Project Committee.
 In other news, Shehab, a 15-year-old GCE student at El Wessam Secondary School in Cairo, won the international YouthCaN logo competition. His elegant design was selected to be the official logo for the April 2008 YouthCaN Conferences held all around the world with the theme of “Helping Ocean Habitats.” YouthCaN is a youth run organization that uses technology to inspire, connect, and educate people worldwide about environmental issues. GCE students in Egypt will be hosting the 4th YouthCaN conference in Egypt on April 7, 2008.
iEARN-Indonesia
GCE A Part of HIV/AIDS National Workshop
The Ministry of National Education collaborated with UNESCO Jakarta, the Indonesian National Commission for UNESCO, Braillo Norway, and iEARN-Indonesia to organize a three-day national workshop on “Using ICT as a Tool to Get Updated Information about HIV & AIDS.” The workshop took place at Labschool Rawamangun in Jakarta, a GCE school, from February 1-3, 2008. The workshop brought together 40 participants from 18 schools, 4 universities and 2 government institutions across Indonesia.
The participants received updated and detailed information on HIV/AIDS in Indonesia from Mira Fajar of the UNESCO office in Jakarta. Hasnah Gasim, the National Coordinator of iEARN-Indonesia, gave presentations about project based learning and GCE projects relating to HIV/AIDS education. The participants were also shown how to join a learning circle and to use mailing lists associated with the forums.
Participants were put into groups to create lesson plans focused around HIV/AIDS that they could submit to a lesson plan competition organized by UNESCO Bangkok. On the last day, three groups of teachers from GCE schools presented their lesson plans. Teachers learned about how they can help to remove the stigma suffered by those living with HIV/AIDS in addition to the most up to date information about HIV/AIDS in Indonesia and will share the information with their peers and students.
iEARN-Iraq
GCE Classroom Learns IT Skills While Studying the Environment
After taking an online course in the Fall of 2007, a teacher at the Hawler Typical Secondary School in Erbil had her class study water pollution as part of the Water Habitat project. In this project, participants study a local water habitat and share observations and data with one another.
Water habitats are complex environmental systems that are globally interdependent, much like the students in the project. Students develop scientific understandings with which they can make positive contributions to the environment and learn how they can take responsible action to improve and sustain them.
The teacher wanted her students to understand that water must be protected in nature and treated for human consumption. Over the past few months she taught her students how to use the computers and internet as means of participating in the GCE program through iEARN’s online forums.
The students researched microbes, water pollution, and water borne illnesses online. Then they collected samples of water from different ponds around the city and examined it for microbes under microscopes. The class then went on a fieldtrip to the water filtration plant to see how the water is treated before it is put in the city’s water tanks.
The students were excited to be learning about technology as they learned about the importance of protecting the environment and made connections with their peers around the globe.
iEARN-Israel
GCE Virtual Exchange Activities a Success
During much of the month of January schools in Israel are closed for winter vacation, but thanks to the virtual exchange aspect of the GCE program and the grassroots approach of iEARN, activities do not come to a stop even when schools do.
Students and teachers in Israel remain engaged in several iEARN projects as part of the GCE program. The most popular activity is the Teddy Bear Project, which is ongoing in several schools. Classrooms from around the world partner up and send each other a Teddy Bear, which then sends home diary messages by email at least once a week, which are written by the students as if they are the visiting bear describing its experiences in the new culture. Classrooms in Israel are currently involved in this exchange with classrooms from the US, Wales, Pakistan, Russia, and Uzbekistan.
Students also remain active in the My City Then and Now project with an American classroom, and in the Global Partners project with a school in Brooklyn New York. They are exchanging their thoughts on different topics such as culture, lifestyle, tourist attractions, local history, values, and many others.
iEARN-Lebanon
Four GCE Alumni Mini-Grants Approved
For the first two weeks of 2008, GCE alumni held a series of 2 multi-day meetings for the purpose of developing mini-grant proposals. The youth brainstormed proposal ideas, the best of which were then presented to the group. The alumni decided that working with youth in the schools was the most effective way of reaching large numbers with their funds and that environment and social issues were the most pressing issues that needed to be addressed.
After the merits of each proposal were debated, the GCE alumni selected the four proposals that they thought would have the greatest impact: Save the Water in Ghazir; Remember, Preserve, and Care for Nature in Beirut; Surfing Online Safely in Saida; and Safe Driving in Nabatieh.
All of the projects will be implemented in March and April of 2008, and they will all be working with local organizations to maximize their impact. The Save the Water project will focus on teaching students and their families the importance of water conservation and the ways they can reduce the amount of water they use. The alumni involved will also collect statistics on water consumption so that they can measure their impact.
The Remember, Preserve, and Care for Nature project will present information about environmental issues as well as ways preserve and protect the environment. It will then host a camp where community members can learn more as well as take action to restore and preserve the local environment. Surfing Online Safely will make students aware of the dangers present in the online world and teach them to protect themselves when using the internet. The Safe Driving Project will work with 3 schools in the community to raise awareness of the dangers of careless driving and launch a community based “Drive Safely” campaign.
iEARN-Morocco
GCE Workshop Results in Global Collaboration on Community Service Projects
The Students Unlimited project was launched in Morocco through a GCE workshop in November 2007. This project centers around students taking action through community service projects and instills values such as citizenship, leadership, creativity, generosity, and collaboration.
Mr. Abdenbi Zouitni, an English teacher at the Fatima Zahra High School in Khenifra, is working with his students looking at the causes, effects, and potential solutions to the problem of illiteracy in Morocco with a specific emphasis on women. Only about half of Morocco’s people are literate, and for women the literacy rate is about 40%. The class posted their project to the forums asking for comments and suggestions to help them and have been receiving feedback.
Mr. Said Belgra of Yaacoub El Mansour Middle School, is working with his English class on addressing the problem of high student dropout rates. The class has been researching the causes and consequences, as well as what is being done to remedy the situation, particularly the Dar Talib and Dar Taliba (House of Boys and House of Girls). These are boarding houses for students who live far away while they are attending school. Mr. Belgra’s class is planning to visit the Dar Talib to learn more and see what activities they might do to improve the lives of students there.
Mr. Belgra’s class has been creating PowerPoint presentations showcasing their research and sharing them with their peers in the online forums, including high school students in Orlando, Florida. The two classes have been discussing their service learning activities and what they can learn from each other’s experience.
iEARN-Oman
GCE Program Facilitating International Exchanges in Oman
Mr. Salim Al-Busaidi, an English teacher at the Osama Bin Zaid School in Adam, Oman, only became a part of the GCE program at the end of 2007 when he joined iEARN-Oman. Incredibly, he and his students have already begun to take an active part in two iEARN projects: A Day in the Life and YouthCaN.
Mr. Al-Busaidi’s case demonstrates the power of virtual exchanges. He began posting to the online forums almost immediately from when he joined and was actively participating in projects with his peers from the U.S. and around the world within months. In his first few weeks he was discussing classroom management techniques with an American teacher in Atlanta, Georgia. In January 2008 he has been discussing the types of successful projects in YouthCaN that his students might pursue with other teachers around the globe, including a Senior Educational Supervisor at the American Museum of Natural History.
Mr. Al-Busaidi and his students decided that they would focus on protecting Oman’s migrating birds as part of the YouthCaN project. They have noticed that the numbers of these birds has been diminishing and want to take part in a project that will benefit Oman as well as their new partners around the world. In the A Day in the Life project, Mr. Al-Busaidi has been posting his students writings about Oman’s celebrations, holidays, and festivals to raise awareness of Oman’s culture as they learn about the culture of others from the postings in the forum.
iEARN-Pakistan
GCE Workshop Held in Remote Northwest Frontier Province
 iEARN-Pakistan held a workshop for 16 teachers from 7 GCE schools in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, including Nowshera, Kohat, Mardan, and Peshawar. The workshop was held on January 26, 2008 at the Lincoln Corner Library at the University of Peshawar and focused on helping teachers to improve their students’ writing skills through the iEARN Folk Tales project, which engages students in writing their folk tales and then sharing them with their peers around the world.
“We can definitely integrate this project in the classroom and it is quite promising to motivate my students to be good writers using folk tales to share their cultures,” said one teacher as she responded to some folk tales posted by American students in the iEARN online forums. The Folk Tales project integrates easily into the curriculum and enriches it by preserving the local culture while learning about others’ culture from all around the world.
The Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan is underprivileged and teachers and schools there do not often receive professional development opportunities. The participants in the workshop came from some schools that had been participating in GCE before, but also brought new schools from the region into the GCE program. All the educators at the workshop were new to GCE and are eager to participate in the program and connect their classrooms to American classrooms.
iEARN-Pakistan has made a tremendous effort to make sure that the benefits of the GCE program are spread throughout the entire country, especially to traditionally underserved regions like the Northwest Frontier Province.
Article On Folk Tales Project in Pakistan Published in Edutopia
Congratulations are in order for iEARN-Pakistan facilitator Mr. Saleem Ibrahim, author of a wonderful article on the iEARN Folk Tales project published in the February Issue of the magazine Edutopia. He was extremely dedicated in his facilitation of the iEARN Folk Tales project in which Pakistani teachers and their students are actively involved sharing the folklore of their country with others around the world. Now his hard work will be shared with the world and help others to be part of this great project.
iEARN-Uzbekistan
GCE Grants Fund Natural Disaster Preparedness Workshops
 After an unusually harsh winter with heavy snowfalls hit Uzbekistan in January, GCE mini-grants were made available to alumni to hold workshops on preparedness for and responses to unexpected cold, snowstorms, and avalanches as well as floods and earthquakes.
The workshops were held at schools in cooperation with local governments and emergency services for teachers and students from the area and from local orphanages. Five trainings were held in the Fergana and Mingbulak regions of Uzbekistan for almost 200 participants, many of who were orphans or from low-income families.
Participants learned about the various natural disasters that affect them and made presentations about how these disasters affect all aspects of their lives as well as how to respond to them. Students also played games meant to help them remember what to do in an emergency, including “Pick Up Your Emergency Kit” and “Hide Under the Table in an Earthquake.”
Participants at the workshops shared their experiences with their peers around the world in the online forum of the One World, One Environment project.
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