Tatjana Zafirovska Physics Teacher, Zlate Malakoski School, Gostivar

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.