'The Education Project Asia" is a consultancy designed to offer support to International Schools in S.E.Asia ... particularly in the area of integration of ICT across the curriculum.

Apart from maintaining the "Shambles" website I also provides on-site support to schools : for example Singapore (ICT School Review), Brunei (conference on elearning), Malaysia (general ICT support to staff), Thailand and Hong Kong. At the moment I'm also involved in the writing of an online course "ICT for Teachers" for UKeU which will be available from September.
 

The modifications on the Shambles website continues in response to feedback received ....the following sections have been completed for "Headteacher & Senior Managers", "School Counsellors/careers staff" and "School Nurses".

Try your own subject or interest area by clicking here :
| Headteacher or Senior Manager |
| Mathematics | English | Science | Information Technology | Geography | History | Religious Education |
| Art and Design | Design and Technology | Music | Modern Foreign Languages | Physical Education |
| SEN | ESL | The School Library | The ICT Technician Room | ... and (for primary / K-6) a 'Topics" area.
 

Recently I accepted invitations to be a judge in two different annual events which involve students working as teams with the end result being a website.

• International Schools Cyberfair 2004 : Now in its 9th year, CyberFair has been described as the largest educational event of its kind ever held on the Internet. This program has brought together more than one million students across 100 countries. (I suspect the term 'overseas schools' would be more accurate than 'International Schools in this context) .. the focus is on collaboration and teamwork. The websites produced are also useful as teaching resources for schools.
  Two of the submissions I judged have particular interest in this part of the world -
  • Sin-Hua Junior High School, Taiwan http://gsh.taiwanschoolnet.org/gsh2004/3271/index.htm The topic is the about the Siraya people whose culture is being lost in Taiwan.
  • Victoria School, Singapore www.gsh.org/CF/ViewNarrative.cfm?narr=773 They built a site about SARS in Singapore.
• Thinkquest : Competitions start every six months, in April and October and they have an online library of over 5,000 websites created by students, including award-winning entries.

Following on from one of the themes in the last newsletter ..... schools sharing with each other :

The SchoolNet Global project started in 1998 in the UK. Since then over half a million young people, aged 4 to 18 have been involved. Many have recorded their thoughts and feelings about life in the 21st Century, on over 54,000 web pages. They write about their own lives, homes, interests, wild ideas, hopes and dreams and how they will make the world a better place.

There are SchoolNet Global schools in 28 countries around the world, many of whom would like to link up with each other so that teachers and children can collaborate on their SchoolNet projects. The benefits can be enormous, particularly in foreign language learning and intercultural understanding .

"Our students and teachers created the world's biggest children's contributory website and it's still growing. From 2002, the project is available to children around the world."
 

In each newsletter I highlight a few of the webspaces from International Schools in S.E.Asia, this term shows a single 'College Counseling' webpage and a full secondary school website.

The 'College Counseling' webpage at The United Nations International School of Hanoi is designed "to help students seek the best tertiary educational experience based on their individual needs." The page is well laid out and easy to navigate and I suspect is an excellent resource to support the work of the College Counselor, Ms. Christina Powers.

From a single webpage to a complete site ... South Island School ( Hong Kong ) 1,000+ students age range 11-18. Webmaster (& Head of Faculty) is Nick Villeperieux .
This site is unique, it often breaks the rules for consistency in design ... but for some strange reason it all seems to work ... when you click on a link you just don't know what the next experience is going to be. The site is 'content rich', 'fun', 'interactive', 'functional' and focused very much on 'teaching and learning'.

" The Latin maxim, “exegi monumentum aere perennius” pretty well sums up the site as an extraordinary personal endeavour, and in keeping with the nature of the site you will have do some research to discover its meaning."
The school SMS system can be launched from the site as well as the school Knowledge Network (Cyclops), and other associated Web Parts (Cyclops is underpinned by some pretty powerful technology in the shape of MS SharePoint 2003) .
Statistically there are over 1,100 public pages with nearly 1,000,000 registered external hits.
 

Not many schools have taken up the advertising options on 'Shambles' which is a surprise as our pages do come up high in search engines.

'Shambles' is a free service because of sponsorship and advertising ... your support would be appreciated .. email me for more details if interested csmith@csmith.info
 

The pace of change in UK education is unrelenting; education and school improvement continue to be high on the agenda of the UK Government. If you have been away from the UK for a year or more, there is a real danger that you will have lost touch with your profession.

If you want to stay in touch, why not sign up for CEA's Staying in Touch courses, taking place in Cambridge in July and August 2004?
email: paul.andrews@cea.co.uk
 

Interactive Whiteboards are 'flavour of the year' for many schools ... visit the area on Shambles for details to help you decide which to but and also links to websites that have suitable content.
 

This may be the ultimate in forward planning .... but the start of the next school year is just a few months away. There is an area on Shambles which contains suggestions and ideas for the start of the new year or term ... "Back to School"