ePals Teacher Challenge 2009

tbarnes@epals.com — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:42:50 GMT

Entry Information:

Entries need to describe learning experiences that are focused on collaboration, digital literacy and/or global awareness.
Contest begins April 15, 2009.
Entries must be submitted by midnight, May 31, 2009, EDT USA.
Applicants may nominate themselves, or be nominated by others.
Questions? Contact: teacherchallenge@epals.com
Please submit your online application here. You may prefer to prepare your answers ahead of time in a word processing program and then copy your response to our online application form. See application questions or apply now!

Award Information

Awardees will be announced June 15, 2009
All awardees will be invited to present their projects via video conference at the ePals Globally Connected Classrooms Conference held on July 28, 2009, in Boston MA. A teacher who would like to present in person may do so, but will be responsible for travel and lodging expenses. ePals will waive the conference registration fee.
Awardees will need to provide project information and photos for online and conference publications. Dates for these items will be provided after awards are announced.
ePals will publish winning projects, and authors’ comments, on the ePals website.
ePals will provide press release information at the ePals Conference 2009 for winners to publicize their awards via their local media.

Criteria For Assessment

Entries will be evaluated by members of ePals Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee will use a rubric based on the following attributes:

Detailed description of teacher’s project, from initial planning to final evaluation
Inclusion of successful elements of collaboration, digital literacy, and/or global awareness
Description and anecdotal evidence of how engaged students were in the project and how the project enhanced regular classroom programs
Description of what the applicant learned from the project, including comments and recommendations for how other teachers could implement this project and modify it to meet their own classroom requirements
Quality and originality of educational content

Please note that descriptions should be sufficiently detailed so that other teachers can follow the same process or modify it to meet their own classroom requirements.

ePals Advisors 2009

tbarnes@epals.com — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:10:20 GMT

Candace Pauchnick

I teach English and Human Psychology at Patrick Henry High School in San Diego, California, U.S. A. I have been a member of ePals for over 6 years and have connected my students to other students in many countries. My website: http://henry.sandi.net/staff/cpauchni/pals0506.html shows my various international projects over the years with the most current ones at the top of the page. The most recent connection this past year was with China. Professor Yaodong Chen, from the Guangxi University of Technology in Liuzhou City, Guangxi, China. We had our students write emails to learn about each other's cultures and also to improve English writing skills. We had our students participate in an ePal SchoolBlog page where the students participated in discussions in our forum and
many other activities. This can be viewed at: http://sites.epals.com/cpauchnick/

Mirjana Milovic

My name is Mirjana and I've been teaching English for more than 18 years. Our school is located in Kragujevac, Serbia. We've been members of ePals for more than five years. The projects we did helped improve our students' writing, reading and even speaking skills. They are all involved in projects and e-mail exchange, which they simply LOVE. They love meeting new friends from all the continents and learning about other cultures.

More about what we've been doing could be seen at these web addresses:

Hagit Goldstein

My dream, as an English teacher in Junior High School, is to motivate students to learn English in an authentic and a collaborative way by integrating the computer and the Internet into my English lessons.

I have been using ePals with my 7th graders for the last seven years and what started as a “computer lesson” has had far-reaching results in terms of exposing our students to other cultures, customs and concepts of co-existence and international cooperation. I also make them aware of the big, wide world beyond the closed little society in which they live.

Because of the prospect of immediate feedback (via e-mail) the students’ interest is engaged and they manage to foster their reading, writing, and critical thinking skills.

The ePals project led to a video-conference with a school in Hong Kong, a Teddy Bear visit from Arlington, U.S.A., a literature collaboration with a school in San Diego, California: www.barlev.wikispaces.com

Our Global Newspaper site: www.accelerate.wikispaces.com

Finally, our School Blog which is monitored by ePals: http://sites.epals.com/barleveng1

Michael Casey

Greetings,I am pleased to part of the ePals Global Advisory Committee and to also be working with all of you dedicated educators. I currently live in Belize and have been here with my wife for 7 years teaching in a small, private school. Our school is blessed to be on 120,000 acres of rainforest. Therefore, we spend a great deal of time in the forest exploring and learning about all the wonderful creatures and plants. We have also been introducing more technology and computer use to our students in the past 5 years. In fact, our school only went online 3 years ago! So, thanks to ePals and the Global Coalition we have been able to connect up with the world and bring the world to our students fingertips. Thanks ePals!

The link for Global Coalition is: http://bcsd.k12.ny.us/middle/Global/global.htm Here you can find a coalition of schools from across the world!

The link for our school website is: http://gallonjugschool.googlepages.com/ Here you can find news from Gallon Jug, Belize and much more from our country.

The link to our school newspaper is: http://gallonjugschool.googlepages.com/gallonjugschoolnews Here are the monthly editions of our news.

We also hope to be adding a school/class blog site in the coming months. Personally, I enjoy hiking, sailing, biking, teaching and traveling with my family. I look forward to sharing ideas with you and learning about your cultures!

Geeta Rajan

I am Geeta Rajan from St. Mark's Sr. Sec. School, New Delhi, India. I have been teaching in this school for the past 14 years. I teach English and presently am teaching students of Grade 11 and Grade 12.It has been a great journey for me as I have really learnt a lot and have evolved not only as a teacher and a human being too. Teaching has been a real learning process for me. You can log on to www.saintmarksschool.com for more details about our institution. My students are an energetic and spirited lot and constantly stimulate me to be innovative. I enjoy every moment of the day at school. My aim is to bring the world closer through schools and students. Globalization is the key word. ePals is a beautiful forum to bring schools and classrooms closer. I consider myself very privileged to be part of the Global Advisory Committee. I hope I am able to do my best in the field of education.

Elaine Ireland

Hello, I teach grade 4 in Smiths Falls, Ontario, Canada. Our school, Duncan J. Schoular Public School, is just one block away from the Rideau River and Canal system, a World Heritage Site. ePals have been a fantastic venue for my students to learn about the world and meet peers in other countries. I also have been enriched by all the wonderful educators I have met. This school year I will be trying the Mapping project in the fall with a class from Nova Scotia, Canada.

What would you like to see at this conference?

tbarnes@epals.com — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:07:01 GMT

[poll]

ePals Globally Connected Conference