Welcome
Welcome to the World Ecitizens Online Environment, a resource for educational collaboration in topics such as responsible citizenship, mutual respect, combating social injustice, conflict prevention and resolution and using technology for learning.
The World Ecitizens (WE) Project aims to encourage understanding between peoples and communities, and to share the fascinating diversity within nations, and across the world. World Ecitizens take responsibility for our actions, and strive to make the world a better, more peaceful place, through collaborative learning projects.
Latest
We have recently been developing a new web site for any teachers, or teacher trainers, interested in collaborative work in Computing.
See: Creative Classroom Computing Projects
Many have an international dimension. See the section on Publications.
Coronavirus (Covid-19)
We need, as a world community, to work together to minimise the impact of the coronavirus threat. Accordingly, World Ecitizens are supporting the dissemination of some practical resources developed by our colleagues at De Montfort University (DMU). The website is called “A Germ’s Journey” It predates the Covid-19 crisis, and was originally aimed at children, but has recently gained even greater urgency.
First, on the website there is a free poster for use in schools and homes, which emphasises the importance of regular and thorough handwashing. To date there are poster versions in English, Polish, Gujarati, and Arabic.
Please download free copies of appropriate size, print them out, and place them wherever children (and others) have access to washing facilities, to encourage thorough hygiene habits, in accordance with current best medical advice.
There are notes for parents, a hand-washing song, games, and colouring-in activities, to engage children. There is also a charming commercial story book for children (£4.99) by Katie Laird and Sarah Younie (DMU) which might be of interest.
You can support this important initiative by joining the working group. Contact DMU for details. See: Be Part of the Project. Could you, for example, translate the poster into another language, or offer new ideas or expertise to the team?
Further information about Covid-19 can be found on the NHS website.
Keep safe! Keep hand-washing!
The WE Team
The Peace Room
Arising from a visit to South Africa by MirandaNetter Andrée Jordan, the Peace Room was created as a different kind of space where students could propose candidates for the ‘Peace Room’ and vote on each others’ suggestions. Although this space is situated in the original World Ecitizens site, it is still in use by students all over the world.
World Ecitizens Peace Room (Original Site)
We have created a new section on this site (EDUSummIT 2019) to post aspects of interest to World Ecitizens, with links to the EDUSummIT web site itself, and associated educational materials.
The WE Team will also be reporting direct from Québec City throughout the Conference, using a range of information technologies – blogs, educational web sites, Twitter, and Périscope.
We promised to dig out and share with you some of the excellent past projects from the World Ecitizens Archives.
Here is one from back in 2003, where two schools raised money for UNICEF, but with a difference: through a Christmas Carol Concert performed simultaneously in London, UK, and Osaka, Japan – by ISDN video-conferencing.
What a lovely way:
- to celebrate Christmas in two countries;
- to share cultural differences;
- to raise money for good causes.
Find out more by clicking here.
As part of the on-going World Ecitizens (WE) collaboration with SUZA, WE are delighted to announce the publication of the Springer book of the IFIP SUZA 2019 ICT Conference in Zanzibar. Click here for book details, including the titles of the selected SUZA conference papers.
World Ecitizens are honoured to have been invited to join the EDUsummIT in Quebec for their 2019 (biennial) conference. The group is an international collaboration of practitioners, researchers, and political leaders, all working to promote the effective use of ICT/Computing in education. This year’s topic is:
Learners and learning contexts:
New alignments for the digital age
We (at WE) will be posting some of the EDUsummIT conference outcomes at the end of October.
The new Scratch 3 version of the Lambeth College “Keeping Safe” project has now been completed. The first half of the project was presented at IFIP SUZA, Zanzibar, in April, and the additional musical aspects, and final learning outcomes, were presented at the inaugural TPEA Conference at the University of Winchester in July. To see the joint presentation given, remarkably, by three generations of the same family, click here.
The WE Literacy from Python school programming project has been updated. See a new Maisy and Malika short story, Chapter 5 with teaching suggestions, at:
https://sites.google.com/view/literacyfrompython/chapter-5
As well as posting new teaching materials, we plan to feature some of the brilliant WE and MirandaNet archived projects, over the coming months.
An international computing conference, organised with the support of our university colleagues in Finland, has resulted in an exciting new educational collaboration between the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) and World Ecitizens (WE). Click here for details.
The new
Our next step, below, is to present a journey through the series of story-telling projects which have evolved over several years. Click on the links.
Story-telling has been used as a means to support pupil learning in a number of curriculum areas:
Scientific understanding, through the international STAR project (Science Through ARts, developed with NASA scientists in Cleveland, Ohio)
Bi-lingual international story writing, through Stories for Children supported by teachers and pupils in Taiwan, and China
Computer coding concepts, through Stories for Children 2 a teaching model which developed from this
Scratch computer coding skills, through Literacy from Scratch co-developed with schools in London and Prague (through Charles University), and with Torino University, Italy
Python coding through Literacy from Python, which began life on the WE site, but now has its own website
The thread that unites these projects is a fundamental belief in creativity, collaborative working, and cross-curricular teaching and learning. And learning as fun!
News from this page that has become old has been archived.