GlobalSchoolNet.org -- Linking Kids Around the World!

Position: Bonnie Bracey is a teacher-agent of change, working on technology integration projects with classroom teachers and national organizations. She also works internationally with Global Information Infrastructure initiatives as a consultant.

A former Fulbright Exchange Teacher in India and an elementary school teacher in Virginia, Ms. Bracey was selected as a Christa McAuliffe Educator by the National Education Association. She is also a Challenge Center Fellow and an Earthwatch Fellow. She serves on the faculty of the Challenger Center and is a NEWEST Graduate, Langley, and NEW graduate of Goddard Space Center.

Ms. Bracey is currently involved with two MIT projects: the Games Project and Media, Education and the Marketplace. Ms. Bracey is a frequent speaker at educational technology conferences and those focusing on bridging the Digital Divide. Ms. Bracey serves on numerous advisory boards including: Technos, The National Urban League, E-School News, On the Horizon, African Schoolnet, CTCnet, the President's National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council, the White House Technology Initiative-Cyber Ed., and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education Task Force. She was the original network director of the 21st Century Teacher's Network and serves on the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Kinetic City Advisory Board. She was co founder of the Online Internet Institute, an NSF funded grant. She is a member of the ISTE Minority task force.

She is involved in a digital equity project and a technology resource project with the National Community Innovations projects which share content with resources with PT3 projects. The National Institute for Community Innovations offers a Digital Equity Portal full of on-line resources for educators to increase digital equity. Resources are organized by five dimensions of digital equity.

Nationally she also works with  with the Imagiverse Project,  and is a student of Ubiquitous Technology. She was selected  as one of the 25 most important women on the web, and is a webby judge this year in the educational section.

Internationally, she produced the high technology  and the indigenous project for the Third World Summit in Thessaloniki, Greece, and works with the Med Agora Project. Last year she worked in Africa in several countries, Italy, Tunisia, Germany, and with the ECIS.

Website: http://www.bracey-pearl.org/

Position:  Pat is currently regarded as one of Tasmania’s most experienced and most promising online educators, delivering courses to students across Grades and supporting colleagues to produce and deliver their own courses using WebCt technologies. She is a regular participant in professional discussions online as well as a facilitator of opportunities for both students and teachers to share experience and resources through forum boards and email exchanges.  Pat has mentored many students towards achieving success through her commitment to the use of ICT within classrooms.  Her work has been recognised for its flair and innovation within her own Educational Department as well as by researchers from SOCCI (Schools Online Curriculum Consultation Initiatives, Australia) and the ACER (Australian Council of Educational Research). Her project ‘The Virtual Bridge” assisting students smooth transition from primary to secondary school was chosen by ACER as an Australian exemplary project for inclusion in the Second International IT in Education Study.  Pat is a hands-on, energetic committed teacher - ICT is not an “add-on” to her. Rather it is a major new learning paradigm and she has been able to translate its opportunities into a range of effective classroom actions over the past five years.

Websites: http://www.gsnaward.org/nomineeinfo/narratives/corby.html

http://www.discover.tased.edu.au/  (Tasmanian Education Dept. Pat runs numerous courses through Discover using WebCt, these are password protected for students)

http://www.emagine.education.tas.gov.au/pages/aboutus.html (The Online School of which Pat is a member runs from E-magine)

Position:  Karen Eini works as an EFL educator ,teacher trainer and educational materials developer in Israel. Ms. Eini is a pioneer in telecollaborations and is actively involved in promoting the benefits of online shared learning projects . She has authored an Internet Guidebook for EFL teachers and lectures frequently in technology conferences both in Israel and abroad. Ms Eini has developed an international network of thousands of educators and students through her global multi-cultural project Friends and Flags.

Ms. Eini has recently been recognized for her significant contributions and was awarded the prestigious  Global SchoolNet Online Shared Learning Award.

Website: http://www.gsnaward.org/nomineeinfo/narratives/eini.html

Position:  Rob Fiola has been teaching for 14 years at the K – 8 level and is presently a grade 4 teacher at Niakwa Place School in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He has been involved with using the Internet as a tool in education since 1995 when he first collaborated with another school in Scotland. Since then he has been involved in a provincial Interdisciplinary Multimedia Project where a regular classroom gets converted into a multimedia classroom with full internet access. As a result, he has participated in over 100 Internet classroom projects over the last 7 years, and has a great deal of experience in the area of working with students in creating innovative, interactive online projects. One of the most interesting projects was a trip across the Canadian Prairies with 30 Elementary Students. Check it out at http://www.wsd1.org/pj2k

Website: http://www.sbsd.org/fiola

Position: Ms. Yue-Chane has been devoting herself to Children's education for fifteen years. She has been an active author in Chinese children's literature and has published eight books for kids. She was chief editor of science section for the Chinese Children's Encyclopedia and for Kid's Monthly magazine. She was chief editor of information page for the only children's newspaper in Taiwan, Mandarin Daily News. She is currently the president of the Dragon Book Co. Ltd., as well as the producer of Digital New Education program, for the Educational Broadcasting System in Taiwan. She is also in charge of several internet based projects namely, the Taiwan Schools Cyberexchange program, the 2000 Taiwan Schools CyberFair program, the Kids Care for Kids program, and the Bancroft and Arnesen Expedition curriculum in Taiwan. She is currently a country coordinator in Taiwan for the I*EARN

Website: http://www.jinglu.idv.tw/

Position: Don Mitchell entered civilian federal service in 1970 as a management intern at the Department of Agriculture. In 1972, he moved to NSF, and began a career in contracting. In the mid-70s, he developed a system for motion picture production which was adopted in 1977 for government-wide use, pioneered the use of support contracting (before) and cooperative agreements (after) the inception of the Grant and Cooperative Agreement Act and managed the first civilian agency SBIR solicitation, as well as the first procurement which put a microcomputer on the desk of every employee in a federal agency. In 1987, he left NSF's Division of Grants and Contracts to join the newly formed division of Networking and Communications Research and Infrastructure (NCRI) shortly before the beginning of the NSFNET Program. In addition to his role in NSFs major infrastructure activities, he was personally responsible for the Global Schoolhouse Project, Cornell University's (CU-SeeMe) Conferencing Software development and Cells-in-Frames projects, the InterNIC, the Internet Scout Project, Dave Hughes Wireless Field tests, the National Laboratory for Applied Networking Research (http://www.nlanr.net), the Internet Caching Project, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis, the National Center for Data Mining, the very high performance Backbone Network Service and the High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network.

Don is currently on an IPA assignment to the National Computational Science Alliance as Visiting Associate Director for Strategic Collaborations. Located at ACCESS, in Arlington, Virginia, his role is to identify and develop opportunities for collaboration with commercial (and other) organizations involved in networking and related technology development.

Website: http://coracle.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~ghb/misc/cv_mitchell.html

Position:  Bob Pearlman has been a key leader of educational reform efforts nationally in a unique 30-year career as a teacher, Co-Director of Computer Education, teacher union leader and negotiator, Foundation President, and Director of Education and Workforce Development. Currently Pearlman is a Strategy Consultant for education reform, assisting key reform initiatives around the country. Among these are the national replication of new high school designs and the launch of LINC 2 the Future, Boston’s new 5-year technology plan for the schools and the community. He is the former President of the Autodesk Foundation and former Director of Education and Workforce Development at Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network.

Pearlman has been a leader in building coalition organizations that bring together educators, business, labor, and community leaders to support education reform. Key coalition organizations have included the Bay Area School-to-Career Action Network (BaySCAN), the California School-to-Career Action Network (CalSCAN), Business and Education for Schools and Technology (B.E.S.T.), and the Boston Compact. The National Alliance of Business named BaySCAN its 1998 Local Coalition of the Year.

Website: http://www.bobpearlman.org

Position:  Mika Vanhanen has been involved in children’s education for 14 years. He started as a class teacher (K-12) specialized in teaching music. He has been doing the pioneer work in the field of ICT and international education. His school started GLOBE Program in 1995 and because of his activity all the schools joined GLOBE in his school district. In addition to teaching, Mr Vanhanen has done a remarkable job in creating learning material in the web. He and his class has won many prizes ( Microsoft RoadAhead ’97, Web Site Awards in NetD@ys 2000 ). His school was chosen as one of the ENIS schools ( European Network of Innovative Schools ) in 1999. Mika Vanhanen has been the coordinator in two web schools, both supported by Finnish National Board of Education. The first one called “Yhessä Rysässä” was a local web school where schools studied themes linked to GLOBE Program on a weekly basis. The second web school is called ENO-Environment Online. Mika Vanhanen is the founder and coordinator of this program. ENO is a real challenge . It’s a global virtual school for environmental awareness. One special goal for this program is to get schools from developing countries as active participants. ENO started in August 2000 and has received many international recognitions and awards. From August 2002 there will be 100 schools from 50 different countries involved. ENO will also be a school for the Children State Of World.

Mr. Vanhanen has recently been recognized for his significant contributions and was a finalist for the prestigious  Global SchoolNet Online Shared Learning Award.

Websites: http://www.enoschool.org

http://www.gsnaward.org/nomineeinfo/narratives/vanhanen.html

Position: Chief Executive Officer of PDALive.com Pte Ltd, a Technopreneurship Startup in Singapore. International Ambassador of International Schools CyberFair (Singapore) for the past five years. Actively involved in High School IT Programmes in Singapore, Beng Yeow has done virtually everything from School level to International level in the process of promoting IT in Education, comprising mainly of CyberFair related Programmes and Programmes jointly organised by Nanyang Polytechnic, his institute of studies where he is President of the Internet Club. Have received encouraging comments on his successful CyberFair Programme for Singapore.

Website: http://www.pdalive.com