Delegates during the iEarn conference and Youth Summit held in South Africa.
DOHA: Around 500 teachers and students from over 50 countries are coming to Doha for the 20th Annual iEarn (International Education and Resource Network) International Conference and 17th Youth Summit next month.
Hosted by Reach Out To Asia (Rota) with the Supreme Education Council as event partner, iEarn will be staged in the Gulf for the first time since the conference began in 1994 in Argentina.
The participants will share and learn how technology is being used in the classrooms as well as plan future collaborative project work.
“We are proud to host the iEarn conference, as we believe that this will definitely support our mission and open the floor for exchange of ideas between educators and students,” said Rota Executive Director, Essa Al Mannai.
“iEarn offers us the rare opportunity to step into innovative uses of technologies, and thereby facilitate the integration of global technologies into local knowledge,” he added.
iEarn is a non-profit organisation, made up of over 30,000 schools and youth organisations in more than 130 countries, that works to connect classroom learning with real world issues, and to work collaboratively to find solutions to these issues.
The theme of this year’s conference will be ‘ICT for Education: Reaching Out, Building Bridges’, and will focus on the use of technologies in education to reach out, learn and build a better world together.
The conference attendees will expatiate on developing knowledge and skills about the use of ICT for inquiry and collaborative learning as in the iEarn context. Similarly, participants will be encouraged to promote innovative ways to use ICTs, share their iEarn experience, network with peers across the world, and experience and learn more about the Qatari/Arabic culture.
The conference is open to all educators and students involved in iEarn and those interested in the field of ICT for education. The conference programme will offer eight plenary sessions, two panel discussions, and over 90 workshops and presentations. In addition, there will be an exhibition for students and teachers to showcase their projects, or present about their cultures.
Rota has been the official representative for iEarn in Qatar since 2008. About 411 teachers from 90 schools in Qatar have benefited by attending Rota’s iEarn-Qatar workshops, and participated in iEarn projects with their students.
To facilitate Qatar-based learning community of educators and students, the iEarn-Qatar conducts workshops twice a year for teachers who are interested in integrating internet technologies and project-based learning into their curriculum.
This workshop provides educators with the opportunity to join the Rota Knowledge Network for professional development to enable them to integrate Internet technologies and project-based learning into their curriculum, besides this, Rota also organises an Open House every June to give students and teachers the chance to display their work and achievements and showcase their iEarn projects for the school year.
The Peninsula
