Connecting Buffalo and South Korea

Here's another example of how students (university in this case) are making glocal connections.  I've been thinking of ways we can incorporate some micro-credit ideas into my work in Haiti and this article speaks to this as well.  The work I have been doing around using digital technologies to develop educational leadership capacity in Haiti requires financial support from the north (the university and private donors to this point). We need to be able to make this work sustainable and that will require helping Haitian school leaders to find ways to support the training.  If you have creative ideas of ways that we could use micro-credit concepts to support Haitian educational leaders in this way, please let me know (ssider@wlu.ca)!

Click on the link below to read the article:


Buffalo and South Korea

Article in local paper

Here is an article in our local paper (Woolwich Observer) regarding the work in Haiti (click on the title below):


Making things better, a bit at a time

Technology to Teach in Bihar, India

Bihar is where I grew up.  It's considered one of the poorest parts of India.  I found this article incredible - it describes how Skype is being used to teach children in this impoverished province of India:

Skype connects New Delhi to Bihar

Houston, BC

I'm just about to leave Houston, BC (northern BC) after spending a few absolutely delightful days here.  A workshop on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) on Thursday night was well received with about 25 parents and teachers in the audience.  Burns Lake, just a short distance away, has the highest prevalence of FASD in Canada.  In many ways, FASD is a disaster within our own land, particularly amongst our First Nations brothers and sisters.

Three keynote sessions yesterday focused on glocal perspective building. I provided some of my favourite activities to stimulate dialogue on how we can engage our students in expanding their ideas and knowledge of the world:  maps of Bangladesh, perspective pictures, cross the line, etc.  There was some great dialogue and lots of positive feedback.  Three other highlights of the day were:  a panel discussion (conservative Mennonite, east India, and Carrier First Nation), an international cuisine lunch (featuring bannock and salmon, perogies, butter chicken, samosas, sausage and saurkraut sp? - all favourites of mine!), and a number of dances by gr. 4 students of the Carrier First Nation.  What a lovely day!

Presentations on Haiti this week

This week I'm doing seven presentations in Waterloo schools regarding the digital mentoring project in Haiti!  This, combined with presentations at two universities in the past month, has really increased interest in the project.  Next week, I'm talking to a group of interested adults in Toronto. 

As momentum builds, we are working on the leadership modules which will be electronically available as of May.  We've received a number of the iPads and are considering how we can most effectively use them.  I'm starting to hear from my principal colleagues in Haiti too and excitement is building there too!

Skype in the classroom

Skype has introduced a great new resource to connect teachers (and schools) globally.  Check it out: http://education.skype.com/