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David Patti and Hannah in Brasil |
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David Lloyd from Israel has now joined our discussion
Adri:
Hello, David!!!
Our partnership is something special, but I would like a lot to hear from
people from so different and distant cultures...
Education is something in common, but the ways things go, the problems and
conquests are probably different...
Hey, people, from our tropical country (and this extremely hot summer...
uffff!!!) I would be happy on hearing your "tales"...
David:
Hi all,
I'd like to thank Patti for adding me to this group and thought I'd take
this
opportunity to introduce myself.
I have known Patti "virtually" since my early days on the Internet -
quite a
number of years ago. After commmunicating through the net for a number of
years,
we finally had a chance to meet in Brazil at the KIDLINK conference there.
I teach English as a Foreign Language at the High School for
Environmental
Studies in the Negev desert in Israel and am also now the director of the
computer communications center here on our educational settlement
(Midreshet Ben
Gurion). For the first few years our school was connected to the Internet
only
through one modem. Patti and I still remember the years when everything
was "text
based" until one day someone mentioned something about the "World Wide
Web" and
the ability to see pictures through the Internet. Since that moment the
Internet
has undergone an amazing number of generations of technology. Today our
school is
"spoiled" in being connected by frame relay to the Internet with our own
Internet
server and the ability to open email accounts for all of our students. I
am in
charge of running this system.
We have been involved in a quite a number of Internet initiatives. Our
favourite program is the "21st Century Schoolhouse" program in which our
students
work together with students in Japan, Australia, Brazil, South Africa and
the
United States on researching and trying to offer solutions for
environmental
issues. In addition to the Internet communication, this program has
biennial
international youth summits. The first summit was in Salem, Oregon last
year and
the next summit is in Perth Australia next year. The wonders of the
Internet are
such that, although the web site for the schoolhouse is on a server in
Salem
Oregon, I run and develop it from here in Israel -
I have also founded and run the "Israeli English Teachers" network on
the
Internet which is very active. It consists of a website -
http://www.boker.org.il/eng/etni
- and a mailing list.
One of the new programs I am working with is - "Mutual Assistance for
the Deaf
& Hard of Hearing". We received funding from an Israeli institution to
begin and
run this project with the goal of showing the Hearing Impaired population
in
Israel how to utilize the Internet to help themselves and each other. We
have set
up a website in both Hebrew and English for this -
http://www.boker.org.il/deaf/eng
and also give courses to the Hearing Impaired community as to how to work
with
the Internet.
As in many other countries, we are working with the difficulties of
using our
own mother language on the Internet (Hebrew) in addition to using English.
English is used basically for international communication and Hebrew for
local
communication. We have been developing a "Negev database" in Hebrew, with
an
emphasis on environmental issues. Hebrew on the net is difficult because
we write
from right to left and use completely different characters.
Hannah Sivan (who is also new to this group and will most likely
introduce
herself soon) and I have been working a lot in giving in-service courses
to
teachers as to how to use the Internet. We have also been working with the
educational division of the Foreign Ministry in giving Internet courses to
groups
who come to Israel for a two to three week seminar, mostly from third
world
countries.
I look forward in working with you all through this group and hearing
more from
the others.
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