School life

I thought I would add an update about my work in the Qatar schools. We are coming to the end of Semester one and we will have a two week break. Semester two starts 8th Feb and goes through for 20 weeks without any breaks - no public holidays, no long weekends. It's going to be strange especially as the temperature will start to heat up.

My job has been about encouraging the ICT teachers to try out new software, adding projects as their focus rather than just skills and activity sheets. They are very positive and appreciative of new ideas and have commented that they have noticed student behaviour has changed. One said he felt like he was making the learning more relevant to the boys! (I love it!). Some are now keen to offer their support to the class teachers, working with the english, science and maths classes.
I ran a webquest workshop with teachers at one school in their ICT Lab- I need a translator for these sessions! Lots for them to learn and take in but it has meant that teachers are feeling a little more familiar with the Lab and are booking their classes in there, in curriculum class time. Some English teachers are making use of photos and movie footage to motivate writing - they were impressed with the boys ideas and said they had written more using this idea.
I have set up a wiki for use for all the Cognition teachers (Advisory Teachers - ATs) in Qatar -as a way to share online resources. The neat part is some of the ATs can see the usefulness of them and are setting up wikis for their schools and their particular curriculum area. A couple of local teachers have made themselves one as well. Yay - we're making a start with the Web 2.0!! - we are making progress.

The kids are great - they love it when you show an interest in what they are doing. They love it when you try to speak a little bit of Arabic. I get them to help me with new phrases.
Marhaba - hello or welcome or salam ali coom
Mumtaz - excellent (they laugh when you say their work is mumtaz!)
Kaif harlitch - how are you, to which the reply is - ahum dela la
Mar sa la ma - good bye
I'm getting over my shyness at speaking in Arabic - it's getting a little easier.

I had to take a photo of the classroom ruless.