Teachers Without Borders

ISLAMABAD - Nokia and UNESCO Islamabad have launched “Mobile Learning Project for Teacher’s Professional Development” on Thursday as formal collaboration took place in the presence of senior government officials, Nokia and UNESCO representatives.

In Pakistan, through the project, Nokia will help UNESCO to enable the delivery of high- quality educational materials to teachers who lack training and resources.

Nokia developed the Nokia Education Delivery programme to allow using a mobile phone to access and download videos and other educational materials from a constantly updated education library

BULILIMA, Zimbabwe, 7 December 2011 – After completing the fourth grade at the top of her class, 13-year-old Ellen Mbedzi was forced to drop out of Mafeha Primary School in Bulilima, a district in south-western Zimbabwe. Her unemployed father did not see the value of spending the family’s limited resources on a girl.

Ellen became a recipient of the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM) programme, a school grant programme that helps disadvantaged children stay in school, or, in Ellen’s case, return to the classroom. Her school also received support from the Education Transition Fund (ETF), which provided textbooks in four core subjects – math, English, environmental sciences and a local language – to every student in the school.

ETF, an innovative partnership of the government, UNICEF and the international donor community, offers large-scale support to the education sector, and provides much-needed resources and textbooks to every primary school. So far, 15 million textbooks were distributed around the country, and an additional distribution of 7 million is planned.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Do Palestinian school textbooks "teach terrorism," as Newt Gingrich claimed in a recent debate among U.S. Republican presidential hopefuls? His example — that Palestinians "have text books that say, 'If there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left?'" — is not in any of the texts, researchers say. As for Gingrich's broader claim, the textbooks don't directly encourage anti-Israeli violence, but they also don't really teach peace, studies say. A review of some texts by The AP, as well as several studies by Israeli, Palestinian and international researchers, found no direct calls for violence against Israel. However, the books lack material about the historic Jewish presence in the region and scarcely mention Israel and then mostly in a negative way. Peace with Israel rarely comes up. Texts for religious schools are harder-core, openly glorifying martyrdom. Researchers disagree sharply in their interpretation of the material.

ISLAMABAD, Dec 9 (APP): United Nations International Children’s  Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has planned to establish 1,550 Temporary Learning Centres (TLCs) in the flood-affected areas. According to UNICEF Progress Report 2010, UNICEF took detailed assessments of school facilities and staff capacity.  In total, 150,200 women and children in flood-affected districts across the country benefitted from assorted school supplies, including tents, the report said. UNICEF has sent 2,600 tables and 2,500 chairs to flood affected districts as well as 930 temporary school in a box kits, 1,200 recreation kits and assorted stationary, including individual school kits and bags.