Europe

When Tatjana was selected as a representative of her school to a training course in Innovative Use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into the Curriculum, she thought it would be a great opportunity for her to bring her skills of MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint to perfection.

Tatjana Zafirovska is a physics teacher in the Vocational School "Zlate Malakoski" in Gostivar. Together with another colleague from her school, they were selected by the school Principal to attend the training on use of technology in education organized by the e-Schools Project. She was very eager to attend that training, hoping that she would learn more about using computers as tools for lesson planning, school statistics, and using PowerPoint and overhead projectors in order to give presentations of classes.

"My expectations were so wrong! There's so much more to Computers and the Internet than just preparing and delivering classes. It was like I discovered a whole new world! Using Computers and the Internet as a tool for Project Based Learning is a gold mine, believe me"

As soon as she came back from the training round in February 2005, Tatjana started working with a small group of students on a project concerning rules of Bon ton.

Students were introduced to and guided through the principles of Project Based Learning and Internet Based Research. "They loved it"says Tatjana, "I'd never seen them so interested in learning" – he adds laughing.

In October 2005, Tatjana, assisted by the IT teacher from her school, as well as the support of e-Schools, started to pass on her knowledge and skills to the rest of her colleagues.

This was quite a challenge in the beginning, for many of the teachers were not familiar at all with these new methods. However, their motivation kept them going and now many of them have successfully completed the training and are using new methods and technology in their teaching.

Tatjana kept applying Project Based Learning using ICT in her physics classes the whole year through, and now she is working on a new physics project with her students, her "dangerous minds" as she calls them, but she refuses to reveal the details.

Suzana Zarovska is a talented biology teacher who lives and works in the small town of Probishtip in southern Macedonia. Married to a doctor, she’s kept busy by her two daughters and her career. Somehow she’s never managed to learn to use computers and information communication technology (ICT) even though she’s always been interested.

Suzana is one of the 2.900 high school professors who have been invited to participate in USAID’s e-school project. The project was established following the donation of the Chinese government of over 3000 computers for use in Macedonia’s primary and high schools. Once the computers were installed, the project moved on to focus on providing training aimed at improving the quality and relevance of teaching, using ICT applications that facilitate communication, networking and  interaction among the teachers and the students.

“I was always looking for possibilities to acquire computer skills because my profession, young people that I work with, perspectives of Macedonian Educational system was demanding it from me. The e-school project gave me this opportunity through their training. I can now use what I have learned at this training and am enjoying preparing Power Point presentations, school newsletters and other sorts of visual support which are helping my teaching to be more interesting and keeps my students interested” says Suzana.

Slavica is an English language professor, that teaches, naturally, the English language at the high school “Car Samoil” in Resen.       

She is a very prepared professor, because she has been attending a lot of other projects that train teachers how to implement new methods in their teaching, so as to avoid the traditional tuition, and aims at enabling students to work actively during the lessons and in the course of their everyday life.

This professor welcomed this project open-handedly since she is very interested in involving new methods in her teaching during the lessons.

Being very open-minded and eager to implement the information and communication technology (ICT) into her subject, she started working with her students using the new technique.

Slavica has tried to integrate the new methods that she was trained for during the E-school’s ICT training, which she has been attending regularly, and has succeeded in motivating the students to embrace this new technique. She has succeeded in both preparing the lessons and in motivating her students in working actively during this kind of lessons.

Slavica has had a lot of success using the computers in her lessons, and she says “ students are exalted not just by the fact that they are

working with something that is a part of their life and future i.e. the computers but also by the fact that the education is being more and more updated”. That gives them a lot of other opportunities in the course of their education; they are not just passive listeners during the lessons-as they used to be-but they participate actively and give their contribution to a more successful and qualitative education inside the classroom.

Mrs. Roza Stamenkovska is Math teacher but she gladly works and gives extra IT classes in her school. She was selected to be one of the E-School Trainers, regarding Innovative Use of Technology in Schools.

Roza is a teacher in the high school of "Metodija Mitevski Brico" in Delcevo. She was very eager to help her school colleagues to learn new methods of using the IT in the modern educational process. She wanted to show her colleagues how to be used computers as tools for lesson planning, school statistics, and even making nice presentations at classes.

Last year she noticed one group of students being interested to learn and to create interesting computer products. Mrs. Stamenkovska was more than interested to meet those students, to talk about their ideas and to try and initiate even deeper creative thinking by them. 

Using the E-School Computer Lab and their regular contacts with their cyber friends all over the world, they have find out about one important Internet Link – World Competition “Doors to Diplomacy”.

The period followed was full of researching for these young students. They had to dig very deep to find out about the peace, the democracy and the social questions even more than regular. They knew this could be their door to the heaven. In fact it turned that hey did quite a good job.

The real challenge for them was to create a team that could function cohesive and with one mind. So they did one team of four students: Ana Gjorgievska, Elena Gjorgievska, Zoran Dimitrovski and Zikica Popovski. Finally, they have applied to the State Department with their own web page for the contest, enough on time.

At the end the Team of students from M.M.Brico from Delcevo and their teacher Roza Stamenkovska couldn’t belive that they Won the First Price at the Contest from 305 schools from 46 different Countries all around the world, with their Web Page for the Poverty. The www.fightpoverty.mmbrico.com is page you can see for yourself and be surprise how deep the poverty can touches the hearts of our youth. They especially want to thanks to the E-School and their Computer Lab facilities.