Exploring Learning

Even as far back as 1988, Elise Boulding stated that to point of global education is to “create a peaceful, interdependent world which would be a good place for people to live”. Idealistically, this is what we all want - however, having worked in five different international schools, and having experienced global education in four different countries, the “tensions between the national and the global, as well as between unity and diversity, remain highly relevant in today’s increasingly globalized world” (Ho, 2009). Finding this balance, of retaining identity and culture whilst at the same time promoting tolerance and peace, is exactly the point, to me, of what a global education means, echoed by Global Education for Canadians (2017), which recognises that “relationships with emerging countries are becoming increasingly important” for a successful future. If the global workforce is increasingly dependent on technology (Adams, 2002; Karkouti, 2016) and the point of education is to ready...

Learning Issue: Basic Sentence Conventions As a teacher of Grade 6 Language and Literature, I have found that many learners enter middle school without basic foundational knowledge of sentence conventions, particularly capitalisation and ending punctuation. The IBO May 2018 MYP Subject Report for the Language and Literature examination supports these observations, stating that “candidates seemed to have lost track of basic conventions like capitalization and the use of ending punctuation despite exhibiting good control in other areas of language use” (2018). In addition, data from externally marked online examinations in Language and Literature, at the exit point of the MYP in Grade 10, also indicate that our learners are not quite yet reaching the global average grade. Data has also been gathered from a diagnostic writing test administered to the sample group at the beginning of the academic year. Anecdotal evidence of the learning issue also comes from teaching Grade 6, leading the E...

According to Kaminski and Bolliger (2012) a lack of technology skills remains one of the main concerns of employers around the world. If the global workforce is increasingly dependent on technology (Adams, 2002; Karkouti, 2016) and the point of education is to ready the next generation for employment, schools must consider the impact that digital competencies will have on their level of readiness for the world of work in a global society. Education has always made this provision in terms of a basic level of literacy necessary for communication. However, if we consider literacy as not only the ability to read and write but also to have education and knowledge enough to operate successfully, then we need to rethink what literacy means in today’s digital world. With particular reference to Qatar's Educational System in the Technology-Driven Era: Long Story Short (Karkouti, 2016) and What Motivates and Engages Students in the Education Process - An Examination of Qatari Students...

I was the event manager for a Google Bootcamp in October 2017, which was hosted at my school, ACS Doha International School. Marketing asked me to cover the event and I wrote this article for a magazine, Qatar Today, published November 2017.

Here is a reflection on a hypothetical district and how the ISTE and NETP standards can be applied. It analyses the current state of educational technology and the implications these standards have on thinking about professional learning.

This week, we have been exploring andragogy and how we can use learning theory to motivate and design learning for adults. We had to create a Padlet to share our ideas. Access mine HERE or click below.

"You must leave digital footprints so people know you’re treading among them and part of the community" Vicki Davis, ' Global Education by Design '. I joined Twitter in July 2012 and I honestly can’t tell you what prompted me to join. I had been in a school in Malaysia for a year and that had been my first exposure to teaching with technology. We were a 1:1 Mac school just starting to implement GSuite for Education (or Google Apps for Education as it was then). At that time, the apps were limited, tables for example, in Google Docs, didn’t work properly and the formatting options were limited. There was no Google Classroom either. However, it revolutionised my teaching and I began to write websites as schemes of work that had my learners as the audience and focused on what they were doing, rather than an list of instructions that I, as the teacher, should do to them. I also began to use Edmodo to share all my resources and lessons with my learners online for 2...