We are continuously striving to make TIGed more functional and easy to use, but we cannot do this without input from our community of educators. Please help us to build a better TIGed.org by taking a few minutes to respond to our feedback survey.

If you would prefer to provide your input via telephone or email, please get in touch with Katherine. Thank you!

Thanks to generous support from the Longview Foundation, TIGed recently produced the Digital Media Literacy Primer. Providing explanations of great online tools and suggestions on how to teach with them, this guide is an invaluable resource for all educators. Check it out!

This year Elluminate’s award winning Fire and Ice project challenged schools in Colombia, the USA, Canada and Burkina Faso to develop local projects that combat climate change. Participating schools delivered some impressive initiatives, and shared their knowledge with each other, with their communities, and beyond.

The Burkinabé school, Le Petit Séminaire de Pabré, was recently awarded a plaque, a “Classroom-in-a-Box,” and a one-year premium TIGed license in recognition of its efforts to overcome great technical barriers and effectively implement a tree planting project to combat desertification.

For more information about the Fire and Ice project, or Elluminate, please contact Fire and Ice Global Coordinator Stace Wills.

Class Videos: In your Class Settings, you can enable a new Class Videos feature, allowing you to connect a YouTube account to your classroom, automatically organizing your videos from YouTube in this new section in your Virtual Classroom. Want to include video within other class content, or use another video service? You can include video from Google Video, TeacherTube, Youth Media Exchange and other sites within TIGed classrooms! To do this, simply copy and paste the 'embed code' from the video on that video service wherever you would like the video to appear on a page.

Class Files: A file folder system has been created in TIGed which allows both teachers and students to create, and add files to, folders. Both files and folders can be made to be viewable only by teachers and teaching assistants, or by the whole class. Students can also choose whether a file relates to a class assignment when you're uploading it!

Multiple Class Gallery Albums: Rather than having all classroom art displayed within a single album, teachers may now create multiple gallery albums in order to better organise and track class artwork according to theme, assignment, or student!

The TakingITGlobal site will be highlighting these as the next few issues focused on in the community! You may want to think about how you can incorporate these topics into an activity or assignment to take advantage of the activity happening on TakingITGlobal.org during these months:

December 2008: Youth Migration

January 2009: Mobile Communications

Educational Computing Organization of Ontario Conference 29th Annual Conference
November 12-14, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada

• Emily Briggs led a session on “Social Networking for Global Education: Best Practices”
• TIGed friends Jim Carleton, Mali Bickley and Anita Townsend of Simcoe County District School board discussed the “Power of Global Collaborative Learning”

• Katherine and Jennifer Meagher, an active TIGed teacher, led sessions on “Social Networking for Global Understanding” and “Digital Citizens, Global Citizens”
• TIGed had a booth in the wonderful International Alley!

For more information about these and other upcoming events, please see the TIGed events calendar.

Are you a high school teacher interested in global issues & opportunities for your students to volunteer abroad?

Canada World Youth is a national, not for profit organization with more than 36 years experience developing innovative educational programs for young people.  More than fifty Canadian educational institutions have already collaborated with us on projects in countries such as Ecuador, Costa Rica, Honduras, India, Benin and Cuba.  Our Global Learner Program develops experiential education programs for groups of young people aged 15 and up and each itinerary is adapted to your specific curricular objectives.  While there, you and your group will receive support from a Canadian Project Supervisor as well as a representative from our international partner organization. Projects typically run from two weeks to three months and include cultural immersion through living with a host family, participating in community based volunteer work placements and educational excursions.

Contact Canada World Youth's Global Learner Program at gl@cwy-jcm.org to find out more, and visit www.canadaworldyouth.org to read about these and other CWY programs!