News Update

Dear iEARN Educators from Pakistan,                                                                                          August 05,2002

Welcome to the new school year, I am sure everyone definitely had a great summer vacation and now fresh and full of new ideas to have a dynamic start.

There are some changes in my  bi- monthly follow-up messages to you, it will be no more the iEARN CIVICS-3 follow up, rather it  is now going to be the iEARN-Pakistan, Newsletter, and would be mailed to all who are interested. The newsletter will contain iEARN-Pakistan activities, updates, achievements, new projects and programmes, important announcements, teaching tips, iEARN lesson plans etc.  These information will be useful for the ever growing number of iEARN educators from Pakistan.   This news letter would be circulated once every two months.

New and News:

1. From the new academic session, I hope to see enhanced and regular participation of your students in the iEARN Projects. If anyone requires any help in the project implementation please contact country coordinator at: iearnpak@iearnpk.org

2. The first CIVICS Publication is out of press and available. iEARN educators in Karachi, Lahore and other cities will get directly from us in mail by mid August. In Islamabad Zia Fareeha from American Centre would be mailing them to the CIVICS-3 participants. If anyone requires CIVICS Publication for their school libraries kindly contact Sarah Alam sarah@iearnpk.org giving her your full mailing address.

3. We are now in the process of recruiting new schools for the CIVICS-4 program. CIVICS-4 will involve participation and training of 15 new iEARN schools nationwide. There will be one, 3 days iEARN CIVICS National Workshop in Karachi for 30 educators coming from all parts of Pakistan. We would appreciate your help in reaching new schools for CIVICS-4. The brochures containing information about CIVICS Project are available, kindly write to us if you need them for introducing iEARN in your community. Please write to iearnpak@iearnpk.org for further information and participation criteria.

4. ‘A Vision’ is an iEARN Creative Writing Project, with great pleasure I wish to announce that for the ‘A Vision 2002-2003’, a team of  Pakistani student and teacher editors were selected from Al Muratza School, Boys Branch-Karachi. Rehan,  Mustafain, Imran, Frahan, Sadqain, Jamshed, S. M. Ali Zaidi with their teachers Ms. Afshan Khan, Ms. Shabnum Asif and Ms. Tayyaba Zaidi will work as editors under the leadership of Eliane Metni of Lebanon, the A Vision facilitator.  

5. Sarah Alam , the iEARN Pakistan student facilitator , Farah Kamal-Country Coordinator  alongwith a teacher and a student from Egypt, and Edwin Gragert of iEARN-US, attended and presented a keynote in National Education Computing Conference-San Antonio, USA from 16^th-19^th June 2002.

6. In the NECC Conference, San Antonio, USA The Global SchoolNet presented Farah Kamal, a special Online Shared Learning Global Ambassador Award. This award recognizes school-based educators, worldwide, who have distinguished themselves in the area of online shared learning

7. Sarah Alam and Sobia Ali of Habib School attended the iEARN Annual Conference in  Moscow from 7^th -14^th July 2002. They met and networked with iEARNers globally and attended the various conference sessions and activities. Highlights were Sarahs’ presentation of the Fight Against Child Labour project and Sobia being one of the members in the team of facilitators for the iEARN Beginners Workshop.

8 . Sobia Ali conducted an iEARN beginners workshop in her school Habib Girls School-Karachi, on 26^th and 27^th of July, and added 20 more teachers to the iEARN global family. Thankyou  Sobia for being so enthusiastic and disseminating iEARN.

Please remember to share important achievements and significant news of iEARN in your school and community so we could add them in the future newsletters.

Wish you all a great start of the new academic session.

Farah S. Kamal

iEARN Pakistan, Coordinator