iEARN is featured on the Arkus Inc Blog “Bringing Students Together with iEARN and Salesforce.org” Katharine Atwood, June 20, 2018.
“iEARN makes global collaboration possible between everyone from students to teachers to their own technical staff with help from Salesforce.org and Arkus.”
Read the article at: http://www.arkusinc.com/archiv…
Stephen, Adranisha. “Teachers working to BRIDGE the gap.” The Journal, January 29, 2018: 1. Print.
“MARTINSBURG-Teachers and students from South Middle School in Martinsburg, are the first in West Virginia to introduce global education through the International Education and Resource Network-iEARN.”
Read the full article at: http://www.journal-news.net/ne…
iEARN-USA is excited to co-host a workshop on Global Collaboration and Virtual Exchange for Bilingualism with Partners of the Americas as part of their pre-conference on October 25, 2016 in Guadalajara, Mexico. This workshop, co-hosted by staff from iEARN and volunteers from the Partners of the Americas network working on bilingualism initiatives, will provide teachers, administrators, and volunteers hands-on tools and resources to empower them to build global connections.
The workshop will include panel discussions, presentations, and hands-on sessions to explore the core elements of virtual exchange for collaborating with other classrooms around the world and incorporating global projects into English and other subject curricula. This Bilingualism pre-conference is open to the public but best suited for teachers and school administrators from any country.
This event will take place in MIND Building, located on Av Faro 2350, Col. Verde Valle, Verde Valle, 44550 Guadalajara, Jal., Mexico, from 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM. For more information or to register for the event, please visit this page.
We hope to be able to count with your participation in this event. Contact the Partners of the Americas event organizers at [email protected] for questions on registering for this event.
iEARN-USA and Partners of the Americas (Partners) announced this week that they will continue their alliance to further strengthen the relationship between their two networks of educators — who are committed to building relationships across cultures and improving their communities.
As two known leaders in cross-cultural collaboration, the alliance between Partners and iEARN-USA aims to address key challenges and opportunities facing educators in the Americas, including bilingual education. Many Latin American governments have outlined national bilingual programs, yet lack the resources to implement effective language education.
To this end, iEARN-USA will offer classrooms access to other cultures and bilingual materials as an alternative to costly study abroad programs and language academies. Today, iEARN’s global corps of educators connect through online projects with other classrooms in more than 140 countries via virtual exchange. These projects add a global citizenship component to local curricula while exposing students to online communications technology and authentic language interactions with their peers from other countries.
“iEARN-USA is thrilled to partner with Partners of the Americas on intercultural learning activities to build bridges,†said Dr. Tonya Muro, Executive Director of iEARN-USA. “We look forward to collaborating on other projects and activities to further strengthen this valuable partnership in the future.â€
Among other benefits, a limited number of memberships to iEARN-USA’s network will be offered to registered U.S. teachers in Partners. Their classrooms will be able to access the full range of iEARN’s online collaborative projects offered across the world and connect and communicate with a network of global peers.
“Partners is extremely excited to be renewing our alliance with iEARN-USA and further strengthening the relationship between these two unique and important networks,†said Steve Vetter, President and CEO of Partners of the Americas. “Education is a global priority and through this alliance we will work together to provide greater resources and support to teachers and classrooms throughout the Americas.â€
To train educators in iEARN projects, Partners will award travel grants to master teachers from Latin America, Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United States to journey to their partner chapters. iEARN-USA will share strategies for how Partners teachers can incorporate virtual exchanges into classroom activities and standards-based curricula, including the Common Core and 21st Century Skills.
Since the early 1990’s, Partners chapters have been involved in iEARN initiatives. Today, teachers from 12 partnerships are engaged in iEARN projects ranging from simple teddy bear exchanges in English, to studying native birds in students’ regions around the world.
In addition, Partners and iEARN-USA are excited to announce that they will be co-presenting a workshop on bilingual education through virtual exchange to over 100 educators at the annual Partners Convention in Guadalajara, Mexico on October 25.
“The annual Partners Convention is a great opportunity to share like-minded missions and objectives to further support mutual understanding and cross-cultural dialogue amongst educators,†Muro said.
The mission of Partners of the Americas is to connect people and organizations across borders to serve and to change lives through lasting partnerships. These partnerships create opportunity, foster understanding, and solve real-life problems. Inspired by President Kennedy and founded in 1964 under the Alliance for Progress, Partners is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization with international offices in Washington, D.C. Learn more at www.partners.net or via Twitter @partnersamerica.
The International Education and Resource Network (iEARN-USA), with support of the Longview Foundation, is announcing the Teachers’ Guide to Global, Collaborative Teaching and Learning, a new effort to bring together resources, opportunities, and global project initiatives.
This online teachers guide will bring awareness of the myriad of opportunities across the global education field to those who need support for their initial efforts to foster global competence in their students. It will include new projects, new technologies and applications to the Global Competency Matrix and the Common Core State Standards to increase awareness and give specific examples of global interactive projects available to teachers across the U.S.
Global Education organizations, networks, and educators will be invited to share their resources and project opportunities in this guide in a “one-stop shop†site through which teachers could learn about opportunities for global collaboration and gain links to the organizations, people, and resources that make it possible.
Teachers’ Guide to Exchange 2.0 – Technology-enabled International Interaction
Ten years ago, the Teachers’ Guide to Exchange 2.0 – Technolgy-enable International Interaction was developed to help teachers use the Internet to connect globally as part of the Connect All Schools initiative. This project brought together institutions focused on international education so that educators could learn about different ways to get involved in global collaboration and virtual exchange. iEARN worked with 120 partner organizations that joined the initiative to help promote their programs and extend them to new U.S. classrooms. This new Teachers’ Guide to Global, Collaborative Teaching and Learning will expand on the work from the guide on the Connect All Schools site by building new, user friendly, easy to search site for educators to find their pathway to global collaboration.
Send Us Your Thoughts
We’d love to hear your thoughts and are conducting this feedback survey to assess the impact of the existing guide and to elicit recommendations for the new guide. Please send us your feedback by completing this quick survey.
April 8, 2016 – New York, NY – Two leading intercultural education organizations, iEARN-USA and AFS-USA, will work cooperatively to integrate virtual exchange and online learning opportunities into more U.S. classrooms. The missions of both organizations share a common interest in empowering students to create a more peaceful global community through physical and virtual exchanges.
“We are excited to explore the uses and benefits of virtual exchange, and thrilled to be working with iEARN-USA, who have led the way in this field for decades,†says Jorge Castro, President of AFS-USA.
“It’s a natural fit,†says Dr. Tonya Muro, Executive Director of iEARN-USA. “iEARN-USA and AFS-USA have been partners in the physical exchange space for many years. Through this partnership, we’re eager to provide a virtual exchange component to the intercultural learning experiences that we collectively provide for thousands of teachers and students each year.â€
As part of this collaboration, teachers at AFS-USA partner schools—namely schools who have either hosted AFS exchange students, or sent students on AFS programs abroad—will be offered training opportunities that will enable them to virtually connect their classrooms with classrooms in the foreign countries where their students either have studied or are studying currently. The training will include strategies for incorporating virtual exchange into standard curricula, including the Common Core. It will also provide general guidance on teaching and learning for global competency.
Additionally, iEARN-USA will help AFS-USA incorporate a virtual component into its Project: Change initiative, an annual program that challenges 8th to 12th grade students to think critically about how to solve some of the most pressing global issues. Participants compete for a full scholarship to go abroad on a two week program with AFS to carry out a change-making project through volunteer service. By leveraging iEARN’s worldwide network and digital infrastructure, future Project: Change winners will be able to use virtual engagement to extend the scope and duration of their impact.
“Exchange doesn’t end the moment a student’s program abroad ends,†explains President Castro. “Ideally, the critical thinking and broadening of perspectives begins in the classroom before students ever leave home, and it continues well after they return… Virtual exchange has the power to strengthen that long-term impact.â€
“Virtual exchange operates on the many to many model, meaning that the number of students who have access to intercultural learning opportunities increases exponentially,†adds Dr. Muro. “The hybrid physical-virtual exchange model is a game changer, and will become indispensable to global citizenship in the coming years.â€
Virtual exchanges have been the cornerstone of iEARN’s work since its inception. The organization was among the earliest adaptors of online communications technology for learning purposes, motivated by the belief that education could be enhanced, and the quality of life on the planet improved, if young people had the opportunity to collaborate across cultures. Their first initiative in 1988 connected 12 schools in New York with 12 schools in Moscow, Russia.
About AFS-USA
AFS-USA, a non-profit organization, has been a leader in international student exchange for more than 65 years. Its works to enhance the global competency of U.S. citizens through providing intercultural learning experiences for individuals, families, communities and schools through a volunteer partnership. Each year, AFS-USA awards more than $3 million in scholarships and financial aid to U.S. students, and it maintains a network of more than 4,000 U.S. volunteers who support educators, students and their families nationwide.
About iEARN-USA
iEARN-USA is the U.S. arm of a non-profit organization made up of over 30,000 schools and youth organizations in more than 140 countries where iEARN operates. It empowers teachers and young people to work together online using the Internet and other new communications technologies to engage in meaningful educational projects with peers in their own countries and around the world. Projects are designed and facilitated by teachers and students to fit their curriculum and classroom needs and schedules. Currently, over 150 projects are underway, with over 2,000,000 students worldwide engaged in collaborative work daily.