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Teachers Without Borders

UNICEF - At a glance: Occupied Palestinian Territory - UNICEF provides support to Pales... - 0 views

www.unicef.org/...oPt_59933.html

children community education UNICEF palestinian territory Palestine Israel

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 06 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • DKAIKA, Occupied Palestinian Territory, 29 September 2011 - Located just 70 metres away from the Green Line - the 1949 Armistice Line – in Israeli-controlled Area ‘C’, the villagers of Dkaika are forced to suffer under the daily risk of home demolition and harassment.
  • Country website Countries in this region All countries   UNICEF provides support to Palestinian students through rehabilitation and psychosocial sessions By Monica Awad DKAIKA, Occupied Palestinian Territory, 29 September 2011 - Located just 70 metres away from the Green Line - the 1949 Armistice Line – in Israeli-controlled Area ‘C’, the villagers of Dkaika are forced to suffer under the daily risk of home demolition and harassment.
  • Despite these efforts, a newly added classroom was knocked down a few months later, right before the eyes of 15 students who were forcibly moved out just minutes before the walls caved in.
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  • Rana Najadeh, 12, recalled her horror as she bore witness to the destruction. “I got very scared when the soldiers came to demolish our class,” she said. “I rushed out to check on my six year old brother Suleiman, who was crying.” The demolition did not end there, however, as nine other residential structures were also destroyed that day, leaving 30 children and their families homeless. 
  • Thankfully, UNICEF and Islamic Relief Worldwide took action to address the tragic situation, by rehabilitating the school and providing a better environment for the students. In addition, UNICEF partnered with both the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO), to help the traumatized children find relief from their fear and anger by providing psychosocial sessions through dance, drama, arts and play.
  • amic Relief Worldwide took action to address the tragic situation, by rehabilitating the school and providing a better environment for the students. In addition, UNICEF partnered with both the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO), to help the traumatized children find relief from their fear and anger by providing psychosocial sessions through dance, drama, arts and play. “Sometimes for children it is simply the opportunity to play and have fun – be a child – in a safe environment,” said UNICEF Deputy Special Representative, Douglas G. Higgins. “In the end, the psychosocial project is important for children to have a sense of stability, normality and opportunity to reach their potential.” Dkaika children are not the first ones to receive help however, as UNICEF has worked with ECHO since 2003 to help Palestinian children and their families cope with the conflict and violence that affects their daily lives. The activities focus on children who live in areas exposed to frequent home and school demolitions, as well as young Bedouins and children with disabilities. “We must not fail Dkaika children,” said the Deputy Special Representative. ”Education is the cornerstone for peace and security and is at the heart of equity.” var emailarticleloc = location.href; emailarticleloc = emailarticleloc.replace("http://www.unicef.org",""); emailarticleloc = emailarticleloc.replace("http://unicef.org",""); var emailarticle = "Email this article Email this article UNICEFBLOG.addentry({ linkClassName: "bloglink", image: "", title: "UNICEF provides support to Palestinian students through rehabilitation and psychosocial sessions", blurb: "DKAIKA, Occupied Palestinian Territory, 29 September 2011 - Located just 70 metres away from the Green Line - the 1949 Armistice Line – in Israeli-controlled Area ‘C’, the villagers of Dkaika are forced to suffer under the daily risk of home demolition and harassment. 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The story's headline, main picture and summary will be displayed on your page as in the preview below. Writing the rest of the blog post will be up to you! Click in the area below, then copy the code and paste it in your blog page: <div class='UNICEFBlogEmbed' dir='ltr'> <h2><a href='http://www.unicef.org'><img src='http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/images/unicefSmallBlue.png' alt='UNICEF' /></a></h2> <h3><a href='http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/oPt_59933.html'>UNICEF provides support to Palestinian students through rehabilitation and psychosocial sessions</a></h3> <p class='embed_teaser'>DKAIKA, Occupied Palestinian Territory, 29 September 2011 - Located just 70 metres away from the Green Line - the 1949 Armistice Line – in Israeli-controlled Area ‘C’, the villagers of Dkaika are forced to suffer under the daily risk of home demolition and harassment. </p> <div class='UNICEFPush'> </div> </div> <style type='text/css'> .UNICEFBlog { background-color: #F3F3F3; color: #000000 !important; border: 1px solid #C3C3C3; height: 425px; width: 425px; } .UNICEFBlog h2, .UNICEFBlog h3, .UNICEFBlog p, .UNICEFBlog a, .UNICEFBlog li { margin: 0 !important; padding: 0 !important; line-height: 1.3 !important; font: 10px verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif !important;} .UNICEFBlog img { border: 0 !important; } .UNICEFBlog a { text-decoration: none; } .UNICEFBlog h2, .UNICEFBlog h3 { margin: 0 0 7px !important; } .UNICEFBlog .content { padding: 10px !important; padding-bottom: 20px !important; } .UNICEFBlog #closebtn { float: right; height: 18px; width: 18px; } .UNICEFBlog h2 { color: #DF5E32 !important; font-size: 15px !important; font-weight: bold !important; } .UNICEFBlog p { font-size: 10px !important; margin-top: 10px !important; } .UNICEFBlog strong { font-size: 10px !important; } .UNICEFBlog form { margin: 10px 0 3px !important; } .UNICEFBlogEmbed { margin: 8px 0 !important; padding: 10px 5px !important; } .UNICEFBlogEmbed { background: #ffffff none !important; border: 1px solid #0099FF !important; border-width: 4px 0 1px !important; } .UNICEFBlogEmbed h2, .UNICEFBlogEmbed h3, .UNICEFBlogEmbed p, .UNICEFBlogEmbed a, .UNICEFBlogEmbed li { margin: 0 !important; padding: 0 !important; line-height: 1.3 !important; font: 10px verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif !important;} .UNICEFBlogEmbed img { border: 0 !important; } .UNICEFBlogEmbed a { text-decoration: none; } .UNICEFBlogEmbed h2 { margin-bottom: 0 !important; } .UNICEFBlogEmbed h3 { margin: 0px !important; margin-top: 2px !important; } .UNICEFBlogEmbed h3 a { color: #0000ff !important; font-size: 12px !important; font-weight: bold !important; font-family: arial,sans-serif !important; } .UNICEFBlogEmbed a.img { float: left !important; margin: 0 7px 1px 0 !important; border: 0; } .UNICEFBlogEmbed a.img img { border: 1px solid #999999 !important; width: 100px; } .UNICEFBlogEmbed p { margin-top: 2px !important; } .UNICEFPush { clear: both; font-size: 1px; height: 1px; line-height: .1; } </style> Preview: http://www.un
Teachers Without Borders

How Blogs, Social Media, and Video Games Improve Education - Brookings Institution - 0 views

www.brookings.edu/...education_technology_west.aspx

social media education blogs blogging Brookings report PDF video games gaming

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 01 May 12 - No Cached
  • Teachers Without Borders on 01 May 12
     
    The appearance of collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis, social media, and video games has altered the way individuals and organizations relate to one another.[i] There is no longer any need to wait on professionals to share material and report on new developments.  Today, people communicate directly in an unmediated and unfiltered manner.
Teachers Without Borders

An update on the use of e-readers in Africa | A World Bank Blog on ICT use in Education - 0 views

blogs.worldbank.org/...ereaders-update

africa world_bank education ict e-readers e-books literacy worldreader reading

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 23 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • One result is that they deliberately decided to complement the delivery of the devices with extensive engagement with local stakeholder groups, did a lot of capacity building with teachers and trainers, and tried to help align what they were doing with what was happening in the formal education system.
  • hat said, there are very real concerns in some quarters that e-book initiatives from the 'West', however well-intentioned, are potentially an important tool contributing to a subtle form of, for lack of a better term, cultural imperialism. Worldreader is apparently working on a platform for African authors and publishers to be able to distribute their works electronically, so that it will be easier for students to read books from local authors, consistent with the learning goals of local school systems.  While not downplaying the difficulties of getting large educational publishers to make their content available digitally for use by students in Africa, this desire to help promote digital marketplaces for African reading materials is perhaps the most ambitious aspect to the Worldreader initiative.
  • When they went back and asked, "what if content was digitized and made available at $1/book?", many people suddenly got very interested. 
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  • A number of research efforts of various sorts are underway trying to help provide some tentative answers to this important question, based on Worldreader pilots.  Most notable has been the iRead pilot in Ghana (here's an executive summary of the first independent evaluation commissioned by USAID [pdf]), which used a set of pre- and post- literacy tests to three groups
  • Worldreader is encouraged by the results it is seeing so far -- the biggest effects are being seen around grades 4-5, a result that many of the literacy experts attending the Worldreader presentation did not find surprising, for a variety of reasons -- but they are not yet seeing the types of 'blockbuster results' it is hoping.
  • Worldreader does appear serious and diligent in its approach, however, and so I look forward to receiving updates on the research output that I expect will emerge over time, which it plans to make available on part of its web site dedicated to "learnings". (Parenthetical note: Preliminary results from the World Bank's e-book pilot in Nigeria are expected later this year; background here, here, and here.)
  • The first challenge in this regard is (as always) money. Here Worldreader is now starting to confront a phenomenon known to many who have worked in the ICT4D area for awhile.  Finding funding support for small pilot projects, while not always easy, can be done. Large national educational technology projects are being funded in various countries around the world.  But what about the in-between level, where you do things at a much larger scale so that you can learn about how best to scale when you do things at a really big, national level?  Few funders seem able to provide support at this level.  As a result, one approach being explored is a franchising model, combining both donor and local partner funding, and a prototype 'Worldreader-in-a-Box' solution for local implementing groups is being rolled out and tested.
  • The first stage of Worldreader activities in introducing e-books and e-readers into a few small communities in Africa has convinced the organization and its backers that what it is doing is worth doing.  We no longer need to convince ourselves "if" we should be doing this, they say.  Now the question is, "how?" 
Teachers Without Borders

Helpage International Blogs » Blog Archive » Haiti: Coping during times of em... - 0 views

www.helpage.org/...ping-during-times-of-emergency

Haiti earthquake

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 02 Mar 10 - Cached
  • “My seven-year-old said he will only go to school if I sit beside him,” said Jean “Neil” Moretta,
  • Neil “Junior” and his mother, Kateline, were at her aunt’s house when the 12 January earthquake struck, so were unharmed when their apartment building collapsed.  But Neil “Junior” is still distraught about losing his home. Luckily, the grown-up Neil had had a house built in Port-au-Prince and already was in the process of moving his family there.  So he’s optimistic things will settle down for his son very soon.
  • The first days and weeks after the quake were not easy for Neil.  He swiftly relocated his wife and son to their new home.  He helped pay for emergency medical treatment for his wife’s first cousin, Danny, whose leg was crushed when her building collapsed, killing her 5-month-old baby and her aunt.  Neil stayed by her side as volunteer Cuban doctors amputated her leg the day after the earthquake.  The surgery was performed under a tent outside the city’s general hospital.  With no anaesthesia.
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  • “I’ve had a lot of experiences in my life, but this one?” Neil said.  “I don’t think anything can compare to it.  They had the stretchers lined up by the tent, patients waiting for amputations. I probably saw 60 amputations while we were there.  The doctors said they were doing 100 a day.” And he lost all the money he’d invested in his latest crop of chickens.  While none was harmed by the quake itself, Neil was unable to get them food at a crucial point in their development. “And chickens, when they are not given food, turn on each other.  Roughly 2,000 pecked each other to death.”
Teachers Without Borders

How do you evaluate a plan like Ceibal? | A World Bank Blog on ICT use in Education - 0 views

blogs.worldbank.org/...evaluating-ceibal

ICT ICT4D UNESCO TWB OLPC laptops technology education children teacher development teachers

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 19 Dec 09 - Cached
  • n many ways, Ceibal can, and perhaps should, be seen not so much as an education project, but as a larger societal transformation project (of the sort often associated with e-government initiatives), with the education system as the primary and initial dissemination vector.
  • Under Plan Ceibal (earlier blog post here), Uruguay is the first country in the world to ensure that all primary school students (or at least those in public schools) have their own personal laptop.  For free.  (The program is being extended to high schools, and, under a different financial scheme, to private schools as well).  Ceibal is about more than just 'free laptops for kids', however.  There is a complementary educational television channel. Schools serve as centers for free community wi-fi, and free connectivity has been introduced in hundreds of municipal centers around the country as well.  There are free local training programs for parents and community members on how to use the equipment.  Visiting Uruguay last week, I was struck by how many references there were to 'one laptop per teacher' (and not just 'one laptop per child', which has been the rallying cry for a larger international initiative and movement). 
  • There is no doubt about the numbers (over 380,000) in Uruguay -- the laptops are not sitting in boxes under an awning at the Ministry of Education collecting dust.  You see them everywhere you see school children.
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  • Notably, and tellingly, Plan Ceibal rolled out first in rural and poor communities, with schools in the capital city of Montevideo reached only in the final stage of deployment.  This stands in stark contrast to the way educational technologies make their way into schools and communities pretty much everywhere else in the world, where urban population centers and wealthy communities are typically first in line (and in many places, the line may end with them!)
  • Standing amidst the computer-enabled hubbub of activity that now characterizes the standard learning environments in Uruguayan schools, there can be no denying that something new and different is happening in a big way. Every student in every classroom in every school (and, just as importantly, in every home) is different by multiple orders of magnitude
  • What might the consequences be if young people in Uruguay have what is essentially an 'extra' ten years of technology literacy -- what might happen during those ten years (and beyond) as a result? No one knows, but it will be quite interesting to watch.
Teachers Without Borders

How cycling set deprived Indian girls on a life-long journey | Bike blog | Environment ... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...g-indian-schoolgirls-bike-blog

India girls' education girls schools bicycles access EFA

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 01 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • In Bihar, one of India's poorest and most populous states, half of the women and a quarter of the men are illiterate, and about 90% of its 104 million inhabitants live in rural areas. Life here is particularly difficult for girls, and one of the greatest hindrances to their development is the simple journey to school. For many, the trip is long, expensive and dangerous.But here, in rural Bihar, we recently saw that a two-wheeled solution to the problem has been found.Three years ago the state's new chief minister Nitish Kumar adopted a "gender agenda" and set about redressing his state's endemic gender imbalances in an attempt to boost development in one of India's most backward states. His vision was to bring a sense of independence and purpose to his state's young women, and the flagship initiative of this agenda is the Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojna, a project that gives schoolgirls 2,000 rupees (about £25) to purchase a bicycle.
  • 871,000 schoolgirls have taken to the saddle as a result of the scheme. The number of girls dropping out of school has fallen and the number of girls enrolling has risen from 160,000 in 2006-2007 to 490,000 now.
  • Girls like Pinki Kumari (15), a student from the high school in Desari, previously had 14km round trip each day. When she got back home, she would have to help her mother with daily chores. "At the end of the day, it became tiring and attending school became a ritual. I hardly got any time to study,"
Martyn Steiner

Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom: - 0 views

joedale.typepad.com

ICT education blog MFL languages TWB

shared by Martyn Steiner on 05 Feb 12 - Cached
  • Martyn Steiner on 05 Feb 12
     
    Blog of ideas about using ICT in foreign languages classes. 
Teachers Without Borders

3 Teacher Evaluation Mistakes to Avoid - Washington, DC, United States, ASCD EDge Blog ... - 0 views

edge.ascd.org/...127586.html

professional educators teacher development teacher evaluation

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 25 May 12 - No Cached
  • Teachers Without Borders on 25 May 12
     
    School districts across the US are creating new teacher evaluation systems that are supposed to better identify ineffective teaching and, in some cases, tie a teacher's rating to student performance. My quarrel is not with the evaluation systems themselves however. My quarrel is with how they are being implemented. Here are three of the most common mistakes I've seen:
Teachers Without Borders

Poverty News Blog: World Vision on the differences between the last two earthquakes - 0 views

povertynewsblog.blogspot.com/...on-on-differences-between.html

Chile earthquake

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 02 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Aid group World Vision has weighed in on the differences between the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.
  • “Haiti was concentrated and that led to the challenge of tons of aid and hundreds of aid workers being sent into a small zone,” he said. “This quake off the Chilean coast has potential to reach remote areas and thus it will be extremely difficult to assess the number of deaths and amount of damage, but we can expect that children and families will have taken the brunt of it.”
Teachers Without Borders

An international digital library for children | A World Bank Blog on ICT use in Education - 0 views

blogs.worldbank.org/...icdl-1

TWB library children international UNESCO WorldBank ICT4D ICT

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 19 Dec 09 - Cached
  • At the heart of Bederson's wide-ranging talk (and indeed at the heart of the ICDL itself) is a belief in the value and importance of child-centered design. Notably (and rather famously, in some quarters) the ICDL utilizes children as design partners in the development of the digital library, and how it is used.  Adopting this approach sometimes yields approaches that, at least for many in the audience in Hangzhou, were rather surprising.
  • The ICDL (not to be confused with the International Computer Driving Licence, which shares the same acronym) is dedicated to building a collection of "outstanding children's books from around the world and supporting communities of children and adults in exploring and using this literature through innovative technology designed in close partnership with children for children". The ICDL, which is part of the World Bank-funded READ project in Mongolia, currently features children's books in over 50 languages and receives over 100,000 visitors a month to its web site.
  • These are representative questions of some of the desires for books that children express to the ICDL, and its on-line presence is organized and searchable in a way that can help meet such demands.   Observing that children are not well served by most existing dictionaries, Bederson and his colleagues use definitions from children themselves, and then enable children to rate each other's definitions. By incorporating teams of children into all stages of the design and development of the various component parts of the library, the ICDL team is able to be guided by what children want, and how children act.  Given the strong research focus of project principals, findings from the ICDL experience are being well documented and made publicly available.
Teachers Without Borders

A Talking Book for Africa | A World Bank Blog on ICT use in Education - 1 views

blogs.worldbank.org/...talking-book

TWB Africa Ghana literacy ICT4D Education4All education talking_book

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 19 Dec 09 - Cached
  • The 'Talking Book' is a low-cost audio device device with recording capabilities -- imagine a rubbery MP3 player about the size of a grapefuit -- rather ingeniously engineered (and re-engineered) to meet specific needs and usage scenarios in very poor communities in Africa.  It is designed for use in local languages, using locally produced content, as tool to promote literacy among primary school children (to cite just one goal and target group). One way to think of the device, Cliff said, is as a  'small portable computer without a display'.  While the project is still in its pilot stages, it is notable for its express interest in investigating solutions that are low cost and scalable from the beginning, and in rigorously monitoring and evaluating the impact of its interventions.
  • Literacy Bridge began, he said, with the idea that the most effective approach towards ending global poverty requires empowering people with better access to knowledge, and that those in greatest need are impeded by illiteracy, disability, and inadequate infrastructure. (Here's video from a talk Cliff gave at Google about the project's goals and approach to development.) The project is operationally very lean, supported financially by hundreds of individual donations and by thousands of volunteer hours. 
  • I have never heard a presentation from a project proponent about the development of an ICT device (of whatever sort) meant to be used by poor people that contained so many comments like what I heard from Cliff: "our users told us"; "we learned from our users that ..."; "what we found out when speaking with and observing our users caused us to radically change how we were thinking, and so we re-designed ..." etc.  The iterative, user-centric design process the Literacy Bridge has been engaged in to develop the Talking Book stands in stark contrast to that demonstrated by most (almost all?) of the 'ICT for development' initiatives in the education sector that come through our offices here at the World Bank. 
Teachers Without Borders

EVOKE -- a crash course in changing the world | A World Bank Blog on ICT use in Education - 0 views

blogs.worldbank.org/...h-course-in-changing-the-world

EVOKE serious games socialchange socialissues Africa developing nations

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 03 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Evoke emerged from discussions with universities in Africa who increasingly wanted to find avenues to encourage their students to engage in local communities and develop innovative solutions to local development challenges. The universities were searching for ways to engage students in real world problems and to develop capacities for creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurial action that many believe will be the engine for job creation now and in the future.
  • Evoke  therefore is designed to empower young people all over the world, and especially in Africa, to start solving urgent social problems like hunger, poverty, disease, conflict, climate change, sustainable energy, health care, education, and human rights.; to collaborate with others globally; and to develop real world ideas to address these challenges.Players will be challenged to complete a series of ten missions and ten quests -- one per week, over the course of the ten-week game.   The "text book" for this course is an online graphic novel written by Emmy-award nominated producer Kiyash Monsef. 
  • The game's creative director, alternate reality pioneer Jane McGonigal, is debuting the game at this week's TED conference in Long Beach, California.  As she describes the game, "An evoke is an urgent call to innovation.  When we evoke, we look for creative solutions. We use whatever resources we have. We get as many people involved as possible. We take risks. We come up with ideas that have never been tried before. That's what we're asking players to do in this online game. To learn how to tackle the world's toughest problems with creativity, courage, resourcefulness and collaboration."
Teachers Without Borders

School Reform in Baltimore: Fewer Suspensions Equal Better Results | Open Society Found... - 0 views

blog.soros.org/...spensions-equal-better-results

USA suspensions black students reform

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 14 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • At a time when the underachievement of black boys in the United States can only be described as a national crisis, there is finally some good news. This fall, Baltimore City Schools chief executive Andres Alonso proudly reported that black male teens in his district are staying in school and graduating in higher numbers. The announcement made headlines, and for good reason: It proves that there are successful strategies in approaching this seemingly intractable problem. We urge other cities across the country to learn from Baltimore's creative approach.
  • We have long known that excessive use of suspension and expulsion results in higher rates of school absence, academic failure and, eventually, quitting school altogether.
  • Consider: In the 2003-04 school year, fewer than one out of two black male students graduated. Baltimore schools handed out nearly 26,000 suspensions to a student body of just over 88,000 kids. Two-thirds were to boys and, reflecting the city's population, nearly all were to black students.
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