
Inspire Inform Involve	News from TIGed May/June 2012
Exciting Updates from DeforestACTION! Over the past 50 days, the Eco Warriors associated with the DeforestACTION project have been hard at work supporting projects in Borneo, Indonesia that empower local communities to take action against deforestation and support orangutans who depend on rainforest ecosystems. TIGed's Sara Hassan visited the Eco Warriors to see first-hand to how the online learning and fundraising support of youth and schools around the world has translated into real-life impact for communities in this region. The Eco Warriors are working in four teams to raise awareness about the impacts of deforestation, and to take tangible steps to help them. The Education Team put together an educational theatre program that culminated in a series of presentations to schools in the West Borneo region. They have been promoting dialogue between students, teachers, and the Eco-Warriors about the important topics of deforestation, palm oil, and protecting wildlife such as the orangutan. So far they've presented to over six hundred students, including attendees to a conference for educators and government leaders in the region. Continue reading about exciting DeforestACTION updates about the activities of the Reforestation Team, Mapping Team and Animal Rescue Team on our TIGed blog in an entry posted by Sara and Eco-Warrior Mark Kuroski. For more information on how you and your students can get involved, visit www.deforestaction.org. International Days May 15 - International Day of Families Families come in all different shapes and sizes. Have your students celebrate their families today, and learn about family life in other parts of the world. Play Ayiti, a game that has students assume the roles of family members living in rural Haiti. May 17 - World Information Society Day We are living in the information age. World Information Society Day celebrates the notion that societal change can be driven by new technologies and the internet. This idea is at the very the heart of our work at TIG! Celebrate alongside us by encouraging your students to use TIG’s extensive resources to start affecting positive change. The resources and global issues site sections are great places to start! May 21 - World Day of Cultural Diversity for Dialogue & Development What better way to celebrate World Day of Cultural Diversity for Dialogue & Development than by connecting with another class through the TIGed community and have your students strike up a conversation about their cultures. Have your students learn about all the organizations on TIG that are dedicated to international development and start a dialogue about this as well! May 22 - International Day for Biological Diversity Let's celebrate biodiversity in the world today, and take action to protect it from the effects of climate change in the future. Take the Tread Lightly Challenge with your class, and get involved in DeforestACTION to learn more about deforestation and the loss of biodiversity in Borneo, Indonesia. May 31 - World No Tobacco Day Use TIGed's free thematic classroom on tobacco to inform your students about the negative effects of smoking, and get them to have fun testing their knowledge about the harm that smoking causes with TIG's Butt Out Tobacco matching trivia game! June 1 - International Children's Day Our TIGed community is full of wonderful educators who celebrate the joys of children every day! Have your students reflect on everything they have to celebrate about being young, and have them investigate what it means to be a child in other contexts around the world. Commit to ensuring all children get a primary education to spread the celebration. June 4 - International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression Take the opportunity on this day to discuss children's rights with your class. Take advantage of the wealth of information and resources available on TIG, starting with the youth rights global issues page, and make time to watch the recording of our inspiring Global Encounters video conference that was held on May 10th, "Caught up in Conflict: Child Soldiers". June 5 - World Environment Day Is environmental education something that you are passionate about? TIGed has several options for you and your students to learn and take action about the environment. From DeforestACTION to Tread Lightly to Global Encounters (check out our Live from Rio event on this day in upcoming events!) there are so many options for your students to get involved. Check them out! June 12 - World Day Against Child Labour Child labour is a fundamental violation of human rights. Have your class learn about their rights as youth in the Global Issues page for Child and Youth Rights, make a commitment to alleviate child labour, buy ethical products or create your own class commitment on TIG today! June 17 - World Day to Combat Desertification & Drought Take time out on this day to learn about the critical environmental issue of desertification and drought. Visit the official page for the United Nations Convention to to Combat Desertification and check out this Global Dought Monitor tool by the University College of London. Have your students report their findings in a TIG discussion board. June 20 - World Refugee Day Celebrate the spirit and courage of youth refugees the world over today! You can start by visiting TIG's refugee rights global issue page to learn about resources, publications and organizations that are involved in refugee issues. You can also check out some of the powerful artwork submitted to TIG's Global Gallery and have a conversation with your students about what you find there together. June 21 - World Music Day Music is a language everyone speaks! Celebrate the universal appeal of music on an international scale by hosting a collaborative musical event. Find a class in TIGed's community to work with, and enter into a dialogue about music. Can music change the world? Share your thoughts, musical tastes, and videos in a free TIGed virtual classroom. June 26 - International Day Against Drug Abuse & Illicit trafficking Substance abuse and mental health issues are difficult, but important, topics to explore with your students. Check out TIGed's thematic classroom and games related to mental health, or start an art project about drug abuse in your community to upload to TIG's Global Gallery.	Announcements Welcome New TIGed Team Members! TIGed has some fresh new faces for you to get to know! We are thrilled to introduce you to this wonderful group of enthusiastic people who will be working with us for the next four months as interns. Jubeen Sharbaf is joining us to help get the word out about our programming as the TIGed Marketing and Promotions Assistant. Niall Coristine is here to assist us with the administration of our professional development offerings as the TIGed PD Program Assistant. You'll be hearing a lot from Puninda Thind, our new TIGed blogger. Finally, Tania Rashid is our new super-organized TIGed Program Assistant. We are also privileged to have Amber Worsfold, teacher candidate, joining us for the month of May to help us further develop our resources, lessons and activities centred on Aboriginal issues and women's empowerment within the TIGed database. Welcome everyone! We're lucky to have you all on board. Congratulations JC Santos, Winner of a Fantastic myWorld TIGed Opportunity! With the support of Pearson Education and TIGed, JC Santos has won the opportunity to attend the International Society for Technology in Education's annual conference in San Diego this year to speak in a panel session featuring educators in TIGed's global programs, and a scholarship to one of TIGed's professional development e-courses! This opportunity was open to teachers in myWorld TIGed, a program offered in partnership with Pearson Education. Participants were asked to submit an impact story about their class's experience with a TIGed activity in April. JC brought the game Ayiti: the Cost of Life into his grade seven social studies class at Our Lady of Guadalupe School in Seattle. In his impact story, JC wrote about how the game helped him to teach his students about the real challenges of poverty in the developing world. Congratulations, JC! We are so excited to have you in our e-course, and to meet you at ISTE! TIGed and Pearson Education would like to thank all myWorld educators who applied for this opportunity. Your work is inspiring! Opportunities Ride to Learn Launches! Teachers, students, are you looking for an online community in which your classroom can explore the stories behind our clothes, shoes, bicycles, and other everyday items? World By Cycle's Ride To Learn online learning environment is now open for registration! Join Nic Arney and Kristina Stoney as they cycle 30,000 km across six continents in 300 days! The Ride To Learn program features interviews with people we're connected to through the material economy, and showcases inspiring stories of communities which have already taken steps to live more sustainably. To register yourself or your class, visit worldbycycle.tiged.org/ridetolearn/register. Enter registration code "WBC/RideToLearn!" Have questions? Email christina@ismotion.info for a detailed brochure, and for help getting started! Come ride with us! Participate in Challenge 20/20 We invite your school to participate in the 2012-2013 Challenge 20/20 program! Through this program, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) partners schools in the U.S. with schools from other countries and together, the teacher-student teams work to identify local solutions to one of 20 global problems. Participation in this program allows students to develop cross-cultural competency and stronger communication, problem-solving and leadership skills. NAIS is now accepting applications for this free, online-based global education program and the deadline to apply is August 17, 2012. To learn more about Challenge 20/20, visit www.nais.org/go/challenge2020, or contact Ioana Suciu Wheeler at wheeler@nais.org. Here at TIGed, we are eagerly anticipating the launch of our third professional development e-course, "Empowering Student Voice in Education!" This course, developed and delivered by UK TIGed Team Member and winner of Microsoft's Innovative Teacher award in 2009, Mandeep Atwal, will explore how to involve your students and amplify their voice in important decision making processes. This graduate-level, accredited e-course will be delivered online for five weeks starting on May 30th, featuring real-time sessions every week, a mix of theory-based and practical readings, culminating in a project that enables and enhances student voice in education. Register today! From Learner Voice to Global Peace EFF Debate Attention teachers! We are pleased to announce this wonderful opportunity for students around the world to participate in Promethean Planet's first youth-only Education Fast Forward debate on July 15th! Education Fast Forward debates connect participants from all over the world through Cisco telepresence technology. The topic of this debate is "From Learner Voice to Global Peace" and will feature Jeremy Gilley, founder of Peace One Day, an organization that calls for one day of ceasefire and non-violence on September 21. If you know students of any age who would like to participate in a debate and discussion on the topic of peace, have them apply today! If you have any questions, please email TIGed Program Manager Kate Gatto at kate@takingitglobal.org. The deadline for applications is June 22. Good luck to all applicants! TIGed in the Media TIG Makes the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces We are proud to report that TIG has made the cut for WorldBlu's list of most democratic workplaces for the sixth year in a row! Axiom News featured TIG among six Canadian social tech innovator organizations in this article. Says TIG Co-founder and Executive Director, Jenniger Corriero: “The greatest benefit to practicing organizational democracy in the workplace is increased employee and volunteer engagement. Creating a dynamic where voices are heard and ideas are put into action contributes to an adaptive, relevant and energizing atmosphere where levels of motivation are high. Ultimately, this leads to greater levels of commitment, resourcefulness and project level success.” Global Encounters Featured in Video by the Government of Alberta The Government of Alberta's Department of Education has produced a series of videos to illustrate the benefits of technology use in the classroom. Global Encounters, a joint program of TIGed the The Centre for Global Education offering international student video conferencing is featured in the excellent video, "Making Global Connections". The "Live from Copenhagen" video conference from last December is the spotlight of the video. Watch to see what youth have to say about climate change and connecting with other students from around the world! TIGed Featured in Green Teacher magazine Check out the latest issue of Green Teacher magazine, hot off the press with an article by TIGed PD Instructor Deanna Del Vecchio. The UN Rio+20 Earth Summit is fast approaching, and Deanna's article provides background on the Earth Summit and outlines ways that educators can get their students involved, from lesson plans to interactive video conferences. TIGed Featured in NSSSA Leader Pick up a copy of The Leader this season, published by the National Social Studies Supervisors Association, and you'll find an excellent article written by TIGed's Jennifer Klein, e-course instructor of "Project-based Learning for Global Citizenship". In her article, "Taking Your Schoolhouse Global: The Role of Professional Development in Shifting School Culture", Jennifer covers the topics of globalizing the curriculum, professional development, education e-technologies, and more. Check it out! Recent and Upcoming Events The Social Learning Summit April 21-22, Online TIGed's Kate Gatto was honoured to have been a part of the first ever Social Learning Summit, a one-day virtual conference hosted by Classroom 2.0 and the Discovery Educator Network on April 21 and 22. The conference theme was the use of social media and Web 2.0 in teaching and learning - a great fit for TIG! Check out the recording of our session, "Social Networking for Social Good with TakingITGlobal for Educators". ISTE Conference June 24-27, San Diego, CA, USA We are gearing up for another exciting ISTE conference this year! We hope to see many of you in San Diego for one of the world's largest education technology conferences. TIGed will be hosting: four poster sessions featuring our programs DeforestACTION , Shout, TIG Games, and Tread Lightly; a a three-hour hands on workshop (there's still room for you to register!); and a panel session with educators in our various programs that has been featured as a spotlight session at the conference! The theme for the conference this year is "expanding horizons." We hope to help educators do just that! PGL12 Conference June 29-30, New York, NY, USA TIGed is excited to be attending the Partnership for Global Learning conference, hosted by Asia Society, for the first time this June. TIGed will be delivering a 75-minute workshop on using the tools available to educators on our websites and getting involved in our variety of global programs. We hope you will join us! Asia Society is renowned for their work in pathways to global competence, and we are honoured to be involved in this conference. Upcoming Global Encounters Events June 5 and 6, Online Global Encounters has two more exciting video conferences this season! Join us on June 5 - World Environment Day - for "Live from Rio: How Youth are Using Technology to Remake Our World," will feature guest speakers from the UN's Major Group for Children and Youth delivering insights and updates from the ground on the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. On June 5 and 6, Global Encounters will be studying the Transit of Venus: and event that occurs when Venus passes directly between the earth and the sun and appears as a small dot moving along the sun's surface. Attendees will view the transit as it occurs live from viewing centres in Australia and the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and hear from scientists about the importance of this event that will not happen again in our lifetime! Register your class for these events today!
Copyright 2013 TakingITGlobal This newsletter is a subsection of TakingITGlobal's TIGed division, electronically published via email, and compiled from various events and news from within the TIGed network. Questions and/or comments can be sent to education@takingitglobal.org. Please include your full name, age, and your TIG username. Click here to unsubscribe.