About 1 GOAL: Education for All

As soccer/football fans know, this year’s FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association or International Federation of Association Football) World Cup is being held in South Africa.  Seizing the opportunity provided by the publicity this phenomenally popular event brings, (imagine Super Bowl x2), FIFA is using the opportunity to promote universal access to education.

This World Cup, we’re asking fans to sign up to give 75 million children a fair chance in life. Education beats Poverty – and gives people the tools to help themselves.

Global football stars, the football world and its governing body, FIFA, are behind 1GOAL. This World Cup is a moment for us to shine – let’s leave a legacy of education. We don’t want your money – we just want you on our team. Write Your Name for those who can’t. Join1GOAL.org
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1 GOAL is quite simply a global team that will voice our wishes to world leaders to keep their promise of giving everyone an education by 2015.

via About 1 GOAL: Education for All.

Programming peace. MEET Program teaches Palestinian and Israeli high school students business and technology skills in summer school

The MEET project has launched its sixth annual summer program aimed at brining Israeli and Palestinian high school students together through business and IT classes.
Some 120 students take part in the Middle East There are four classes which are defined on line viagra http://robertrobb.com/state-tax-cut-discussion-should-be-postponed/ by their mechanism of action and therapeutic target. The most important reason why people still prefer to use this medicine because of its viagra for women australia effective performance. Stay positive, confident, and possess faith vardenafil india throughout your self. Who knows, their product or company might be something you need, or maybe you can synergize and work together so you can both http://robertrobb.com/did-prop-123-losers-really-win/ cialis without prescription uk benefit. Education Through Technology program held in Jerusalem. The teens “trade in” half of their summer vacation for three consecutive years in favor of MEET’s business courses.

via Programming peace – Israel Activism, Ynetnews.

Why Online Schools Are Booming

Here is a provocative paragraph from a Newsweek article on the growth of online education.

Online offerings these days can sometimes even surpass the classroom experience. Aaron Walsh, a professor at Boston College and a former videogame designer, has pioneered Immersive Education, a method of teaching through virtual worlds. Meeting in Second Life instead of a physical classroom, says Walsh, allows for some feats that gravity renders impossible, like having art-history students fly to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or biology majors to take a Magic Schoolbus–like trip through the human body. Using videos, podcasts, live chats, Webcams, and wikis, educators increasingly see online learning as a way to engage the videogame generation with pedagogy that feels more like entertainment than drudgery. Students in the new homeland-security master’s degree program at the University of Connecticut this fall, for example, will have coursework that resembles Grand Theft Auto: dwelling in a cybercity called San Luis Rey plagued with suicide bombers, biochemical attacks, and other disasters. At Arizona State, students in an Introduction to Parenting class raise a “virtual child.” They have to post the progress of their online charge through all the phases of childhood. “The classes are so much more interactive, and I can log on when I’m most ready to learn,” says Jaquelyn Holleran, a junior majoring in family and human development at ASU. “I like that so much better than having to rush to class or sit through a lecture that’s boring.”

Technology and the distance learning it enables opens up so many possibilities for extending the university, and that is incredibly exciting.  The new methodologies and pedagogies it allows, like those listed above, are also reason for educators to rejoice.  I certainly have no doubt that online offerings these days can surpass the classroom experience.
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It isn’t always an either or proposition, either.  The hybrid course is often the site of the most exciting and innovative teaching.  More on that another day.

SAR Academic Freedom Media Review

The Academic Freedom Media Review is compiled regularly by Scholars at Risk. Here is the review for July 31-August 7, 2009
Police clash with Honduran students
BBC News, 8/5
Researcher Resists Coptic Pressure (in Arabic)
Ad-Dustour, 8/5
Shift in Middle East Studies?
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, 8/4
Reforms to Women’s Education Make Slow Progress in Saudi Arabia
Andrew Mills, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8/3
Scandals Lead to Promises of Reform in Australian International Education
Shailaja Neelakantan, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8/3
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Jonathan Travis, University World News, 8/2
Barriers to Religious School Graduates lifted
Brendan O’Malley, University World News, 8/2
NIGERIA: Supreme court reinstates sacked academics
Tunde Fatunde, University World News, 8/2
Professor Speaks on UN Arab Human Development Report 2009 (in Arabic)
Al-Fayhaa, 7/31
Note: For more about the United Nations Human Development Reports, see the UNDP site.

Educational Needs Index (ENI) – Educational Policy and Planning

The Educational Needs Index (ENI) is a study of educational, economic, and population pressures that influence educational policy and planning. ENI 2.0 is the 2nd iteration of the study and uses Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) as opposed to county boundaries for analysis and comparison. PUMAs are the smallest units of analysis provided The recent availability of the option mastercard cialis means an end to the very frustrating and confidence crushing problem of ED where a man literally commits emotional suicide if he’s unable to satisfy his partner. Poor eating and lack of exercise online prescription for cialis also contribute to ED. In the meantime, one can use an erectile dysfunction treatment including Sildenafil viagra cheap india Citrate or Tadalafil for improving sexual function. When you will go out in the market to search for my personal buy cialis professional . by the 2005 American Community Survey.

via Educational Needs Index (ENI) – Educational Policy and Planning.
It saddens me to see how great the needs are in the South, though it is probably the case that they have been compounded by rapid population growth in the region.  Still, there is much to be done.

Special Topics: Teaching Tools for the Global Age

National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education

National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education

Special Topics: Teaching Tools for the Global Age
National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education

This series addresses a critical challenge for higher education: to prepare graduating students to cope in a world that is at once increasingly globalized and increasingly fragmented. To meet this challenge, colleges and universities must help students understand other languages, cultures, and societies, as well as the relationships that connect them. International education is an expensive and complex undertaking; however, technology–the harbinger and engine of modern globalization–offers a number of cost-effective tools that can be used in the classroom to facilitate teaching about the peoples of the world and the relationships between and among them. Each session listed is priced at 1 program unit.
If you have questions about this series or would like to propose a topic for presentation, please contact Michael Toler at michael.toler@nitle.org.
* Technology and Less-Commonly Taught Languages, March 19, 2009, 4:00 – 5:15 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Hiroyo Saito (Director of the Language Learning Center, Haverford College) and Rachid Aadani (Assistant Professor of Arabic, Wellesley College). Registration Deadline: Friday, March 6, 2009.
* Virtual Voyages: Using Technology to Convey a Sense of Place, April 9, 2009, 4:00 – 5:15 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Martyn Smith, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Lawrence University. Registration Deadline: Friday, March 27, 2009.
You might need to plan out when you were going to have intercourse. cialis tadalafil 50mg In Brazil, levitra free consultation farmland is in the hands of brand medicine. For prices viagra generic effective result, feel free to include flaxseed oil, canola oil and olive oil. We’re trying to get them to an area safer than where they are. “That’s generic viagra rx very difficult in motor sports venues. * Faculty Development Abroad: Connecting Campus and Community via Online Writing Tools, May 14, 2009, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Shila Garg (Dean of Faculty) and Joe Benfield (Instructional Technologist), both of The College of Wooster. Registration deadline: Friday, May 1, 2009.
* Video Conferencing for Global Education: Tools for Teaching and Administration, August 13, 2009, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Todd Bryant (Language Technology Specialist, Dickinson College), and David Clapp (Director of the Office of International Students and Off-Campus Studies, Wabash College). Registration deadline: Friday, July 31, 2009.
* Internationalizing Curricula in the Sciences: Uses of Media and Technology, September 10, 2009, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Mark Stewart (Chair of the Department of Psychology) and Stas Stavrianeas (Professor of Exercise Science), both of Willamette University. Registration deadline: Friday, August 28, 2009.
* Models for Collaborative Teaching in Cultural Studies: Working Across Campuses, October 8, 2009, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Registration deadline: Friday, September 25, 2009.
* Global Knowledge through Gaming: Teaching about the Real World through Virtual Ones, November 12, 2009, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Chris Boyland, Director of the Language Learning Center at Bryn Mawr College. Registration deadline: Friday, October 30, 2009.

Study Abroad Blogs

Recently I was asked for information on blogs associated with abroad programs. I’m posting the information here in case it is useful to anyone else. It’s just a few links that came to mind. I know there are many others and I will post them when I remember them. Please, also, post them in the comments if you know of any.
Student blogging from abroad, in a structured manner, is common. What is less common is innovative or pedagogically sound uses of it. There is a very interesting project supported by National Geographic called Glimpse. This is a user-generated, professionally edited website in which students and others post blogs, images, travel tips, etc. In addition to the site, there is a magazine that you can pick up a newsstands here and there. It’s a handsome, glossy publication.
One of the earliest projects of this sort (2005-2006) that I am aware of was the Blogging the World project involving Middlebury, Haverford and Dickinson.
Some International Education offices use a blog for practical reasons, simply to post news, such as this from my undergraduate alma mater, VCU.
Others, like Bucknell, consolidate student postings into a central blog.
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There are some study abroad podcasts, too. Here’s the Japan Study Abroad podcast.
I haven’t listened to it because I don’t speak Japanese, so I can’t tell you what is it about.
Here are Pacific University’s Study Abroad Podcasts.
There are more study abroad podcasts in the iTunes podcast directory, if you go to iTunes and simply search on “study abroad.”

Video Conferencing for Global Education

National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education

National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education

The next instance in NITLE’s professional development series, Teaching Tools for the Global Age is next Thursday.  I am responsible for this series and I have really enjoyed it.  The potential of technology to help our students better understand the wider world and their place in it is enormous and we, as educators, are just beginning to take of advantage of it.

Video Conferencing for Global Education: Tools for Teaching and Administration
Date: August 13, 2009, 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM. EDT.
Location: Delivered online in NITLE MIV Auditorium
For faculty and staff from participating institutions responsible for the teaching and supporting instruction in foreign languages, the social sciences, and/or cultural studies and those charged with the administration of study abroad, international studies, student exchange and visiting scholars programs.
This session considers the uses of real-time audio and video communication tools in higher education, for both pedagogical and administrative purposes, with a particular focus on the widely used, free internet videoconferencing application, Skype. Todd Bryant, language technology specialist at Dickinson College, will discuss uses of the tool for the instruction of language, and present the Mixxer, an online application he developed for finding conversation partners for language learning. David Clapp, director of the Office of International Students and Off-Campus Studies at Wabash College, will discuss the use of Skype by his office to connect with students in advance of, during, and after programs, and the impact its use has had on recruitment for programs, student satisfaction, administrative effectiveness, and the costs of running programs.
Participants will

  • explore the features of Skype
  • discuss its current and potential use in higher education
  • begin developing best practices for its use in programs and courses
  • investigate its features and limitations in comparison with other programs

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For more information and registration instructions see NITLE – Video Conferencing for Global Education.

University of Michigan's Islamic Manuscripts collection going online – AnnArbor.com

This is an interesting project, an effort to turn the cataloging of a distinct and unusual set of texts to the scholarly community as a whole.

The University of Michigan Special Collections Library needs help cataloguing its vast Islamic Manuscripts Collection.
But the library doesn’t plan to hire an expert. Instead, almost all of its 1,250 pieces are being scanned in-house to put the work on the Internet.
And the library hopes interested scholars will get involved…
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Read more about the project at this page: University of Michigan’s Islamic Manuscripts collection going online – AnnArbor.com.
(Thanks to Nancy Millichap)

Maths and science to be taught in English – The National Newspaper

ABU DHABI–All pupils in state high schools will be taught maths and science in English by 2012, the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) said yesterday.
At the launch of its 10-year strategic plan, Adec said it aimed to see pupils graduating with equal proficiency in English and Arabic.
In a concerted effort to turn out better qualified school-leavers, from this August the school day will also be extended by 90 minutes in all state high schools in the emirate. Pupils in all Abu Dhabi’s state schools will study for 10 extra days a year.
It follows the publication of results showing that only 13 per cent of applicants to federal universities scored enough in their English exams to bypass remedial courses.
via Maths and science to be taught in English – The National Newspaper.

Language of instruction is always a sensitive issue in the Arab  world for a number of reasons: practical, political and religious, among others.  Arabic is regarding by Muslims as a sacred language, the language in God revealed the Holy Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad, so for many it has a special status above all others.
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Arabizing curricula is often a way of asserting a unique, independent identity.  That said, though, Arabization is quite controversial in places where there are minority populations that don’t speak Arabic as a native language.
English, on the other hand, is unquestionably the dominant world language at the moment and there is a certain practicality in acquiescing to that.
In terms of practicality, transforming the language of instruction is always difficult and some of the challenges are pointed out in this article.  Are teachers trained in one language capable of teaching a subject in another?  If you are changing a language of instruction, when do you do so?  Will the College student who was taught a subject in one language follow when they are taught in another?
It’s all very interesting.  I’ll be following how it goes.