
Teachers exchanging ideas at
2000 iEARN world conference inn Beijing, China. |

Teachers from Cleveland OH,
USA at the 2000 iEARN world conference in Beijing, China. |
I was working in a project about
water pollution. At first, I didn't believe in that dangerous
problem. I took it out of my mind, but when I began to
look at it with the right vision. (Thanks to iEARN) I
believed in it and the result was attending the annual
conference of iEARN in Moscow 2002. And now after one
year of change, I thank iEARN because I have completely
changed.
HOW?
-Thinking positively in the important issues such as environment
and human rights
-representing my country in an annual conference.
-having friends with the same interests all over the world.
-improving the level of English.
Really, believe me iEARN is great!!
Mohamad Hamza
Orman Secondary School for Boys |

Beginner workshop at the 2001
iEARN world conference in Capetown, South Africa. |

Participants from Egypt and
the USA connect at the 2000 iEARN world conference in
Beijing, China. |
 Starting
points inn an iEARN workshop. |
iEARN sets you free from the
"glass box" you are locked in, making you a
person with a natural state, feeling yourself unique in
the creative
power. This is what I felt while working in an iEARN project;
all my imaginary
treasures were sent to the other persons, in order to
bring a sweet smile
on everyone's lips...I tried to enter a universe where
the work is combined with the joy of
knowledge.
Adina Huza, student
" Alexandru Papiu Ilarian" Highschool Dej, Romania |
|
Presentations to Colleagues/Administrators/Parents
iEARN Professional Development
Face-to-Face
Workshop Toolkit
There is no single formula for designing an
iEARN workshop. Attention should always be paid to the particular
needs and interests of each participating group in determining
which content and skills should be covered in a workshop.
Below are some example activities and resources
you may wish to use during an iEARN workshop. Feel free to
adapt the activities to fit your training goals and schedule.
If you are an iEARN trainer, and would like to share some
of your activities with us, we would love to hear from you!
For further information, please contact us at iearn@us.iearn.org.
Key concepts to consider when preparing
your iEARN workshop
Icebreakers / Introduction
Activities
World
Figures Activity .
In this activity, participants have a chance to work individually
and collectively to identify the faces on a slide filled with
"world" figures. Provide participants with 2-3 minutes
to work alone, and then 2-3 mintues with a group of partners,
and you will likely find that the opportunity to collaborate
increases their individual knowledge.
This activity provides a similar opportunity to demonstrate
the power of collaboration, using a matching exercise involving
country capitals. Participant
Handout (
in Microsoft Word), Facilitator
"Answer Key" (
in Microsoft Word)
top
Overview of iEARN
:
Gaining an understanding of the vision and purpose of iEARN.
Below is a link to the "Introduction to iEARN" slide
show that has been previously used in iEARN workshops. You
may download the slide show, simply by clicking on the link
below. Please feel free to modify the slides to update the
content and tailor it to your audience.
Introduction to iEARN
(in Powerpoint): A basic introduction to iEARN.
iEARN also has a number of videos that can be used as introductions
to iEARN. These are available at the cost of reproducing and
shipping. Contact iearn@us.iearn.org
for more information about ordering copies.
top
Using E-mail
Sending and Receiving E-mail
A week before
the workshop, post a message to the Teachers
forum (via newsgroup: apc.iearn.teachers)
asking for iEARN participants to send greetings to the group
of teachers you will be introducing to iEARN. You may also
wish to write to individual iEARN teachers to ask them to
send greetings.
Distribute
printed copies of e-mail messages that have been sent to the
group. Ask volunteers to read their messages out loud and
then locate the senders on a map so that they get a feeling
of the scope of the iEARN community. In some cases, more than
one participant will have the same greeting message. Assign
participants the task of sending their first e-mail message
as a response to the message they received.
This is a good time to talk about our suggested "Pedagogy
of Writing E-mail Messages" in a classroom. Using an
overhead, walk through the important steps of the writing
process behind published e-mail messages.
- "Pedagogy of Writing E-mail Messages"
Computer e-mail is a tool that teachers and students use
to share information with each other. The writing process
is most successful when they write from the deep knowledge
of their own rich cultural, community, and school learning
experiences. The writing process includes:
1) Conversations taking place among the whole class,
in small groups, or in individual teacher or student peer
conferences about the experiences they wish to share on-line.
Discussing a topic before putting it in print facilitates
clarification of ideas and the building of rich descriptive
words in a collaborative social dialogue before actual writing
takes place.
2) The first draft of the e-mail message focuses first
on content ideas and then on organization of ideas, on sentence
syntax, and on spelling. The first draft can be typed
on the computer using a word processing program.
3) The initial draft will then be shared with someone
else through writing conferences with student peers and/or
teachers. The author or another person can read the
draft aloud with the purpose of "hearing" how
the text reads. The conferencing process is an important
time for clarifying meanings and talking together about
the ways words could make the text more descriptive. When
sending e-mail online, it is critically important to understand
that you are sending language across diverse cultural contexts
and without the prior opportunity to know one another face-to-face.
Careful attention needs to be given to define vocabulary
indigenous to a culture or context.
4) The writer does the final editing. After conferencing,
the writer then does a final editing of the e-mail message
with careful attention to clear sentence structure, spelling,
and punctuation. The spelling feature of a word processing
program is an important tool for final editing.
-
-From
"It
Takes Many Village to Build a World: Honoring People and
Learning"
This is also a good time to discuss the issue of avoiding
"ethnocentrism" when writing in a global
context. How much of what is described in the transmissions
needs explanation or description for an audience from a different
culture. Have proper names been explained? Foods described?
Slang or colloquial terminology elucidated? Imagine how a
non-native speaker of English might interpret the following
sentence: " I have dirty blonde hair." This makes
for interesting class discussion prior to transmission.
Move to the computers to draft individual e-mail responses
to the messages. If participants do not have individual e-mail
accounts yet, they may be able to use a school account, or
they may want to consider setting up a free web e-mail account
through a service such as hotmail, excite, etc. It is important
however, if they do set up such an account, that they have
access to the WWW to send and retrieve their messages in the
future.
top
Overview of the iEARN Website
To give participants a general sense of the kinds of resources
that are available on the iEARN website, it may be helpful
to start by pointing out the resources along the navigation
bar at the top (Projects, Globe, News, Professional Development,
About Us, Join iEARN), before you move into the interactive
forums and databases on the top right. A few things to point
out:
- Projects: This area of the website provides brief
descriptions of the various projects currently active in
iEARN. Each description also provides a link to the online
forum in which the project is taking place. So, this is
actually another area through which participants can link
directly with the online forums.
- Globe: This area provides descriptions of the activities
happening in countries active in iEARN, and whenever available,
provides links to the country websites. Countries can be
found either by region along the left or on the map, or
can be found on the pulldown menu. In addition, this section
has a link to the Language Resource page, providing links
to specific language forums, websites, and resource translations.
- News: This area of the site provides a web version
of the online newsletter that all members of iEARN receive
twice a month by way of email. The web version has all the
same content as the email version, but is missing the actual
contact information of members, who may not want their email
addresses distributed outside the network. This area also
contains such resources as press releases, the iEARN "Interaction"
hard copy newsletter, and links to articles, books, and
videos about iEARN.
- Professional Development: This section, which we
are in now, provides access to the iEARN handbook and Workshop
Toolkit, both of which help to answer questions about getting
started in iEARN, and integrating it into the curriculum,
and also about organizing trainings to introduce iEARN to
additional teachers and students. There is also a form for
requesting information about professional development options.
- About Us: Links to the history of iEARN, FAQs,
Annual Reports, Partners, Programs, Funders, as well as
opportunities to request information or donate to iEARN.
- Join iEARN: Here, those who are interested in joining
the network can submit an application form to iEARN-US,
or for those outside the US, can contact their country coordinator
directly to get involved.
top
Using the iEARN Forums:
If you are conducting a large training, it is
always nice to post a note on the Teachers
forum
(via newsgroup: apc.iearn.teachers)
about a week prior to the training to request greetings. This
way, when you bring your workshop participants onto the forum
for the first time, they will get a sense that this truly
is a global community into which they are welcome.
Your group can either post their replies to
these greetings individually, or you might consider posting
a whole-class message as a response. A group message can even
be created in a word-processing program (a facilitator can
first help the group to brainstorm and list points to include
in the message) and then be posted to iearn.teachers.
This exercise is a good way to get a sense of
how to collaboratively write a group e-mail message that effectively
reaches out beyond their local context to other schools and
communities around the world. This provides an opportunity
to collectively talk about issues of language in cultural
exchange. How much of what is described in the transmission
needs an explanation or description for an audience from a
different culture? Remember that slang or colloquial language
needs to be used carefully.
The group might include a short greeting, mentioning
the names of their schools, the city and state or region where
their schools are located, the age range of the students they
teach, any special interests you and your students have, why
they are interested in getting involved in iEARN, etc.
A common practice in introductions on the Teachers
forum is to briefly tell about what you see when you look
out the window of your school or organization, as a way to
give readers a feeling for the place where they live and work.
Feel free to be creative with this description. In other words,
this does not have to be a literal description of what is
seen from a particular window. In some cases, it might more
interesting to describe a nearby scene that characterizes
the environment.
After posting a group message, participants
should be encouraged to continue by posting a reply to an
existing message of interest on iearn.teachers.
From here, they can begin exploring the various
project forums, using the iearn.ideas forum (a comprehensive
listing of all the ongoing projects in the network, including
project descriptions, outcomes, suggested activities, age
levels, language groups, etc.), the Project pages of the website,
and/or the Project Description Book as a resource for navigating
the large number of active project forums.
top
Finding iEARN People and Projects:
Activity 1
Finding Projects
Project Description
Book.
Participants
read project description book and choose one project in which
they would like to become involved. In pairs, discuss their
choices and possibilities for how to incorporate such a project
into what they are already doing in the classroom.
Activity 2
Finding Projects
This activity
has two parts: a "guided tour" of two projects that
the facilitator will choose and further exploration of another
project that's of interest to each of the participants.
- Whole group activity: First the facilitator will
take participants through a project he or she is comfortable
with.
- In pairs or individually: Go to Projects section of the iEARN Collaboration Centre and look for one that is of your interest.
- While you explore the project try to imagine how you would
use it in the classroom.
- Try to associate the project with learning theories and
pedagogical approaches.
- Whole group discussion:
Describe the project you explored to the group and discuss the
pedagogical implications of working with these projects.
Activity 3
Using the Database to find people and projects
Explore
databases beforehand to create scavenger hunt.
Scavenger hunt.
Participants are led through the various functions of the
database by traveling through it on a search for various people
and projects. This hunt can be tailored to the particular
needs and interests of each training group. One example:
People Database
- 1) Go to the database by clicking on the Member
/ Project Databases
link on the upper-right side of any iEARN web page.
- 2) Type in your userid
- 3) Type in your password. (Write to https://media.iearn.org/forgot_passwd
if you do not know this password)
- 4) Give small groups the task of finding:
- -a secondary school teacher in Beijing
- -a primary school teacher who has worked on a Global Art
Project
- -all teachers living in their home state or region
- -in which country does an iEARN participant named Siriluck
live?
Project Database
- 1) Go to the database for "Projects" on http://media.iearn.org/projects
.
- 2) Give small groups the task of finding:
- - a primary school project that deals with environmental
issues
- - a math project
- - a Spanish-language project
- - an arts project
top

Using iEARN Projects in Your Classroom
Below is a link to the "Project-based Learning"
slide show that has been previously used in iEARN workshops.
You may download the slide show, simply by clicking on the
link below. Please feel free to modify the slides to update
the content and tailor it to your audience.
Project-based Learning
(in Powerpoint ):
A basic introduction to project-based learning, including
the following components:
What is Project-based learning?
Constructivist theory
Eight features of project based learning
"Disadvantages" of PBL
Implementing iEARN projects in the classroom.
None
iEARN Project
Template, Project Description Book, Student Publications,
iEARN website.
As background to this activity, show participants the
WRITE!
to Care
framework by Kristi Rennebohm Franz and explore how a
primary school teacher implements different projects in
different content areas. This framework will not only
take participants through the process of implementing
curricular projects, but will also show them how the iEARN
philosophy is present while students learn and act. |
1) Participants group together based on discipline:
- Creative & Language Arts Projects
- Science / Environment Projects
- Math Projects
- Humanities & Social Studies Projects
- Foreign Language Teaching
- Arts
- Other
2) Participants work collaboratively to pick an existing
project that will be relevant for the content area and curriculum.
3) Participants reflect on their school and classroom
settings, that is: how many computers they have, when they
are available, and how they can get students to receive and
send messages to interact with another class outside their
own school.
4) Participants design a plan imagining how they would
organize their class to carry on this task. The plan may include:
- Goals
- Objectives
- Timeframe
- Classroom management/ procedures (individual student work,
cooperative learning groups, whole group class work, etc.)
- Classroom techniques (brainstorming, dialogues, group
presentations, role-playing, narration, problem solving,
simulation, discussions, etc)
- Interaction between classes (how you will handle the e-mail
exchanges, how often, who'll be in charge)
- Materials and resources they will need
- Evaluation
top
Sample Activities, Schedules
and Presentations
- Sample Two Day iEARN
Teacher Training Program
,
compiled by Farah Kamal, iEARN-Pakistan Coordinator
- Overview of a Sample Train-the-Trainer
/ Mentor Workshop
,
compiled by Eliane Metni, iEARN-Lebanon Coordinator (pdf)
- Introduction to iEARN
(In Power Point): A basic introduction to iEARN. Please
feel free to modify the slides to update the content and
tailor it to your audience. Could be used to give presentations
on iEARN (the audience does not necessarily have to be teachers)
or at the very beginning of an iEARN teacher workshop. Includes
information on the countries that participate in iEARN,
the different types of projects, keys to interactive on-line
project success.
- iEARN for Civic and English
Language Education
(In Power Point) slide show that has been previously used
in iEARN workshops. Please feel free to modify the slides
to update the content and tailor it to your audience. Could
be used to give presentations on iEARN, Civic Education
and English Language Education (the audience does not necessarily
have to be teachers) or at the very beginning of an iEARN
teacher workshop. Includes information on the countries
that participate in iEARN, the different types of projects,
keys to interactive on-line project success.
top
Online
Courses: Integrating technology and collaborative teaching
into your classroom
With support from the Longview Foundation and Copen Family
Fund, iEARN's first online professional development courses
completed in November 2001 have become a model for online
teacher training in global education. Each course will bring
together K-12 educators worldwide who wish to integrate technology
into their teaching using online collaborative projects that
meet their local/state/national educational standards. See
http://www.iearn.org/professional/index.html

top
|