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:  Dr. Chang is senior program manager in the National Science Foundation's Office of International Science and Engineering.

 

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Position: Ms. Cheng is the CEO of HK Education City Ltd,  a wholly-own subsidiary of HK Education and Manpower Bureau with its core business in running the largest online education platform in HK. Its objectives are to support HK’s education and curriculum reform, foster the use of technology in teaching and learning, provide a platform for education markets / businesses to develop online business opportunities so as to help HK moving to become a learning city. Education City also maintain close ties with the government, education, business and the community sector so as to improve the utilization of HK education resource and foster better knowledge sharing by providing  a one-stop, healthy and quality educational resource platform for the community in Hong Kong.

Website: http://www.hkedcity.net

Position:  Karen Eini has worked as an EFL educator ,teacher trainer and educational materials developer in Israel since 1990. 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's portfolio includes collaborative community building initiatives between youth specifically in USA and ISRAEL  as well as Technology Enhanced English Language Enrichment Programs for learners in Israel and Aboard.

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

Position:  Mary Jean Eisenhower was born in Washington, D.C. during her grandfather, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first term in office as President of the United States.  As the Executive Director of People to People International, Mary has traveled extensively throughout US, Africa, Europe and Asia.  She also traveled through the lands of the D-day invasion during the centennial anniversary of her grandfather’s birth.  There she had the privilege of traveling with and meeting many of the European veterans who served with her grandfather. Over the last 4 years she has left US soil 31 times and visited over 34 countries.  Missions have included everything from meeting first families to distributing food stuffs in developing countries to cultural and humanitarian exchanges.  .

In 1999 she started the People to People International Friendship Fund inspired by an orphanage she visited in Morocco.  The fund is designed as a way for people to help the friends and facilities they visit throughout the world and to help the PTPI Chapter network to assist each other.  To date the fund has been able to provide assistance to causes such as Children’s Mercy Hospital in London, England, Earthquake relief in India, disaster relief to victims of September 11, 2001 and their families, support of an underprivileged school in China, a home for leukemia victims and their families in Cuba, a library project in Viet Nam, among many others.  One hundred percent (100%) of all funds received through the International Friendship Fund go to the efforts and projects as specified by the donors.  Funds received for the IFF that are not donor designated serve as applied and matching grants for relief efforts throughout the globe.   All IFF funds are distributed by means of the People to People network, ensuring their distribution to the proper recipients. 

Website: http://www.ptpi.org/

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 IEARN.

Website: http://www.fahan.tas.edu.au

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.

Website: http://www.globalschoolnet.org/about/bio/donmitchell.htm

Position: Timothy Ngan is a Member of Professional Staff of Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI). He has extensive knowledge and solid experience in developing and delivering eLearning solutions for different sectors and target groups. His expertise is mainly in the areas of multimedia application, Internet technologies and system development. He was a Creative Production Officer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology where he managed a production team for online courseware development as part of the School's Web-based Teaching project. He then joined eEd Vision Ltd, a technology venture startup established under the University's Entrepreneurship Program, as the Director of Technology. Hem joined ASTRI in 2002 and is currently engaged in a R&D project to develop an Internet-based phonics learning software for primary school students. The software, titled "Sonic Ranger", is featured with voice recognition technology that allows children to record their pronunciation and get instant feedback from the computer on each phoneme of the recorded word.

Position:  Lukas Ritzel is a consultant for with his own global consulting company www.prasena.com. With Prasena, Lukas fulfilled his dream of building his own company covering academic, business, educational as well as social aspects of the new economy. He is involved in many eLearning, Creativity as well as Knowledge Management related projects and is consultant and active speaker at various Universities. Lukas is right now based in Thailand but will move within the year 2003 back to his home country of Switzerland.

Rather than seeing himself as a Swiss or Thailand based professional, Lukas sees himself as a virtual cyber-citizen. However Lukas has lectured and contributed to workshops in over 50 countries and has worked with people from more than 80 nationalities. Lukas has always been in education - for students at different schools as well as for the corporate world; physically as well as virtual using different virtual Internet collaboration tools. Lukas is famous for flamboyant presentation style and his on-the-edge presentations with lots of creativity and multiple usage of different media and inclusion of his 'students'.

Right now, Lukas is part of the core team of Global Learn Day initiative, is an active part of NiceNet, represents South East Asia on Creativity and Innovation Day as well as is working on various larger online proposals as a external consultant for various universities in Bangkok such as Assumption, Thammasat and Bangkok U.

His most recent larger teaching programs have been with Bangkok U on a semester assignment for under-graduates on "Organizational Behavior " and in collaboration with the Asian Institute of Technology was giving a ten days customized workshop on "Managing Organizational Change" for the National Family Planning Coordination Board of Indonesia. Much more on the more recent teaching projects Lukas was involved in can be visited on the Virtual U pages! Lukas' ultimate goal in life is to contribute to a Global Free university using multiple media to reach every single person in need of education and transfer passive students to active and critical investigators - read his latest white paper and visit his latest online presentation.

He speaks French, English, German, Thai and some Laotian

Website: http://www.prasena.com/public/cvlor.htm

Position:  Arun Kumar Tripathi (network educator, philosopher and facilitator) is a Director for the World Association for Online Education (WAOE), holding the Chair of Multilingual Project. His research interests include e-learning, ubiquitous learning, bodies in cyberspace & Virtual Reality, phenomenological concepts of (bodies) embodiment in computer games, embodiment and its relation to the world, phenomenological implications of e-learning, AI in learning and education, and cognitive aspects of human-computer interactions. Since August, he has been working in the Technical Philosophy department, Institute of Philosophy, Dresden University of Technology.

Websites: http://waoe.org/president/WAOE-founding.html

Position:  Janette Toral is the site owner of DigitalFilipino.com, an e-commerce, outsourcing, and wireless research site that started in September 1999. The site was a launch pad of her book, The DigitalFilipino: An E-Commerce Guide for the eFilipino. She pushed for e-commerce development in the Philippines as she founded the Philippine Internet Commerce Society last September 1997. She lead the organization as president from 1997 to 2002.

In 2002, she is the chairman of the 1st Philippine E-Government Awards. A recognition given to Philippine government agencies who came up with projects in compliance with Republic Act 8792 or the E-Commerce Law.  She currently heads the initiative of coming up with the Philippine E-Commerce Skills Standards Project using the APEC Tel E-Commerce Skills Standards as a kernel. She's a recipient of the CyberFair Ambassador Award, given by the Global SchoolHouse last June 1, 2002 in Taiwan, recognizing the effort of bringing CyberFair in the Philippines. CyberFair is an annual competition among students of primary and secondary schools around the world.

As an IT practitioner, she has more than 13 years of combined experience in the areas of training, management, sales, technical support, web development, event management, media relations, and project management. She's also a freelance writer since 1995 writing about e-commerce and IT developments in the Philippines. She has written articles for international publications such as Business Online, asia.internet.com, and World Executive Digest. Since September 1997 to the present, she has been frequently invited to various IT conferences in the country to talk about e-commerce developments in the Philippines. She is currently engaged in research, consulting, and working on a book project documenting 10 years of the Internet in the Philippines to be launched on March 2004.

Website: http://www.digitalfilipino.com

Position:  Helen Wong is one of the Unit Heads of the Center for Enhanced Learning and Teaching (CELT) of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). CELT is an academic support unit dedicated to advancing the quality of learning and teaching by fostering a continuous quality improvement culture within HKUST and the wider education community. Internally, CELT strives to nurture a collaborative and creative learning environment through partnerships with departments, faculty, other teaching staff and students at the University. Externally, the center strengthens interactions with other education sectors through partnerships in innovative teaching and learning projects.

Headed by Ms Wong, the Programs Unit is responsible for planning, developing and organizing institutional learning enhancement and teaching development programs for the University and the wider education community.  In the area of learning enhancement, the Unit focuses its effort in programs concerning creativity and life-long learning skills. For example, in addition to offering General Education Courses to university students, the Unit has been running projects for both schools and university students. Currently, the Unit leads a University Grants Committee (UGC) funded project named “Interactive Media Art Gallery” which aims to enhance students’ creativity through media arts creation and involves over 1,400 school and university students. In 2000-2002, the Unit led an online Mathematics learning project named “MathVenture” which is funded by the Quality Education Fund. The Unit also runs self-financed programs for school students in “Creative Thinking and Expression”. It also manages a "Professional Certificate in eLearning for Schools" program with the objective to provide the latest knowledge and skills in the application of eLearning strategies and technologies in school settings.

Prior to joining CELT, Ms Wong was involved in commercial businesses in senior management level in manufacturing, finance and education. In 1997, she co-founded a private consulting company dedicated to promoting Internet learning to parents, teachers and students. In 1998, she initiated National Partnership with the International ThinkQuest Program and led promotional effort in Hong Kong with endorsement by the then Education Department resulting in participation growth of 95% within a year of launching.

Website: http://celt.ust.hk

Position:  Whether it is the role of Student Leader, Ambassador or Technopreneur, Goh Beng Yeow has fitted into these roles with ease and fulfilled his responsibilities beyond the call of duty. At the age of 17, Beng Yeow was appointed student ambassador of the International Schools CyberFair, an International Webpage Design Competition with official entries from more than 550,000 students from 3,500 schools in 85 countries around the world.

Website: http://www.xindesign.com

Website: http://alice.gec.nthu.edu.tw/Shelley/