Happy TAMK graduates in the United Arab Emirates

Graduation ceremony at HCT.

There were twenty three very satisfied and happy TAMK graduates at the ceremony held at Sharjah Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) in April. The graduates of the 21st Century Educators program had just completed three modules of online teacher education and were awarded a Post Graduate Certificate by the Finnish Ambassador to the UAE, Mr. Ilkka-Pekka Similä.

The graduates all work as teachers in the United Arab Emirates and although they all have good knowledge of their subject area content, most had never undertaken any formal teacher education. The TAMK 21st Century Educators program filled that gap with modules in pedagogy for the 21st century, appropriate use of educational technology and authentic assessment for learning.

The participants were all enthusiastic and positive about their experiences while studying. As Ms. Manal Eman, a business teacher said, “Taking the course was one of the most challenging and fulfilling experience I have ever had. I devoted loads of time to complete all the tasks, projects and blogs required for each module. I came to work with great people in team work. Personally I have benefited a lot from the well-combined program for both my postgraduate studies and professional work.”

Ms. Manal Eman receiving her diploma from Mr. Ilkka-Pekka Sipilä.

After the ceremony, the participants took part in the concurrent ELearning conference where they presented and showcased the projects they had completed during the program.

Dr. Dean Sheetz, the MBA Program Coordinator for the HCT had this to say: “Many people entering a classroom for the first time as teachers underestimate the challenges inherent in teaching well. The experience is difficult enough for those who have gone through teacher training but is doubly so for those with nothing to guide them but their own past experiences as students. The combination of teaching theory with teaching practice in this course was a real help to our content teachers; making them more comfortable in their role as teachers and opening up a whole new world of possibilities for them in helping students to learn.”

Mark Curcher, the director of the program was delighted at how well the program had been received and the amazing enthusiasm and development of the graduates.

Participants of the first 21st Century Educators program.

The ceremony also stimulated a lot of interest for the program among participants in the concurrent Elearning conference and several have already signed up for the second cohort of the 21st Century Educators program, which will start in September 2013.

Article by Mark Curcher

Pictures by Sean Dowling 

Greetings from Wales!

Greetings from rainy but beautiful Wales! I’m in the University of Glamorgan, in the Pontypridd campus!

I’ve been here for over 3 weeks now (time certainly flies!), doing research about e-learning and group work, both in e-learning environments as well as in more “traditional” learning contexts. I’ve interviewed several local teachers who use group work in their teaching, both on-line and in classroom situations. I’ve also given a questionnaire for a group of students, and the aim is to have the same questionnaire completed by a group of TAMK students next year as well, so we can see if there are any cultural differences in the way students do group work. In addition, I’ve shared my own experiences in e-learning with the local staff, and have learned a lot from their experiences.

So, I’ve spent my time here writing research and just getting to know the life in Wales and living in the campus. Although it has rained quite a bit, there have been several beautiful days here as well! The month has gone by really quickly, so it’s really hard to imagine I’ll be coming back home in about a week or so! I really need to come here again, in order to continue my research and to meet the wonderful people again!

Trainees from France!

During summer/autumn 2009, the e-learning centre eEDU had two French trainees!

Hello, my name is Aurélien Cas; I come from France. My internship in TAMK university was between the 3rd of August 2009 and the 18th of September 2009. I do this internship to finalize my bachelor degree. I study international chief project management in IT. My internship in Tamk consists on working on 2 totally different projects...

- The 1st one is a social project; I have to report and describe how I use social media tools (like Facebook, MSN...) to keep in touch with my family, friends in France and also new people that I meet here, in Finland.
- The 2nd project is a about Moodle. I have to make Moodle users lives easier by catching updated courses informations for them and create a specific link that displays those updated informations. In that way users don't have to login every days to know if something new happened or not.

I'm really pleased to be working here as you can see on my picture :D

I'm Guillaume Gagnerot, 23, from west of France (Nantes). I went in TAMK at the beginning of August for a 7weeks training period. I'm doing two projects here. One of them is a survey, it's about how do the trainee communicate by using the social media (Like Facebook, Msn, Skype..).

And the second one, the main project, is about MOODLE platform, I've to generate RSS feeds from MOODLE to an on-line agregator (gRSShopper). The goal is to create a better web personal environment for the MOODLE users. So, it's about programming stuff.

EU SBRM MSc teaching kicks off at TAMK

TAMK had the honour of hosting the first teaching sessions for EU Sustainable Business Risk Management MSc. Teaching sessions will also be held in other partner locations: Angers, France; Glamorgan, Wales. While our esteemed colleagues were visiting we also had time to have meetings, have a visit to Nokia Hervanta premises and shoot some video, in which eEDU got to show off our expertise. At Nokia our team got to hear about the the precent and future of multimedia which was enormously interesting.

Dawn Story (Associate Dean for Glamorgan University) gets teaching under way at TAMK

From the left: Marianna Leikomaa, Steve Lloyd , Trevor Price, Vincent Short ready for their visit at Nokia Hervanta

Cooperation in Tanzania with University of Dar-Es-Salaam

During this year TAMK and PITKY (Information Processing Association of Tampere Region) have prepared a joint development cooperation project with the University of Dar-Es-Salaam (UDSM) and Institution of Engineers Tanzania (IET). The aim of this project is to provide technical support in demanding ICT projects for the UDSM and IET and to help in building ICT capacities and skills in the country by training, education and consulting.

Key subprojects is this larger project are to support both creation of an eLearning system for rural secondary schools and ICT mediated distant learning on the university level and in teacher training. Project also aims to support development of a software incubator on UDSM campus and mobile software development. This is because mobile applications and computer software are booming in Africa but there's a lot of untapped local potential.

Funding for this project has been applied via the Finnish Foreign Ministry's NGO Development cooperation program with PITKY as the coordinator and main applicant. If the project is accepted, TAMK staff and students will have many chances in the following three years to take part in these projects. However, TAMK and University of Dar-Es-Salaam have already signed a partnership agreement this week making it possible to students and staff to cooperate in non-ICT-related areas via our exchange programs.

University of Dar-Es-Salaam main building

We have also had visitors from UDSM already here at TAMK. Last August we had a delegation of eLearning developers for rural secondary schools project for two weeks of training and workshops on the structure, tools and pedagogy of the eLearning system. Ellen and Suzan from this delegation will be working here in Tampere also next Spring.

Last May I took part in a preparatory trip to Dar-Es-Salaam to meet all the parties with a representative of PITKY so we could write the application for the Foreign Ministry. The friendship and hospitality of the people who we met was really wonderful and Tanzania was an amazing country although I only had a chance to see Dar-Es-Salaam. We stayed at a Finnish development worker compound called Onnela where I of course had a chance to have a sauna in the cooling night. Words can't describe that experience...

Below are some pictures from the preparatory trip and from the delegation who visited TAMK in August.

Our workshop at TAMK in August 2008

Streets of Dar-Es-Salaam

Center of Dar-Es-Salaam from the PPF Tower

Jukka Siltanen