Year: 2011

posted by Bereket Aweke
On March 11, 2011 I visited Falcon Academy, a school with two Branches in Addis Ababa and more than 2500 students from Pre K – College Preparatory. The school is one of the many schools who took part in the October, 2010 professional development training. The following video clips are of students using Thinking Maps and talking about thinking. See the post a couple of days ago for a teacher’s reflections on the Thinking Schools training and the use of Thinking Maps.

A Student Demonstrating A Thinking Map

 

A Student Commenting #1

 

A Student Commenting #2

posted by Bereket Aweke
On March 11, 2011 I (Bereket Aweke) visited Falcon Academy, a school with two Branches in Addis Ababa and more than 2500 students from Pre K – College Preparatory. The school is one of the many schools who took part in the October, 2010 professional development training. The training was part of the ongoing effort to familiarize Ethiopian schools to Thinking Schools Approach by Thinking Schools Ethiopia.  After the brief moment I had with the school CEO Mr. Dereje, he decided to bring his all staff to the one day professional training organized at Children’s Home Academy. The intent of my visit this time was to see how much is acquired from that one day training on Introduction to Thinking Schools Approach.

Mr. Dereje was very welcome to give me a tour of his school and facilitate a discussion with administrators and team leaders. I was very fascinated by the depth of our discussion on how to improve our schools, further trainings and other bilateral assistants. Watch below the interview with Mr. Addis English teacher, demonstration by a student as well as student’s comments.

“…I have started up using Thinking Maps…managing my own classrooms…now every single individual in my classroom is very much engaged in what we try to do…this has become a two way communication…” Mr. Addis – English Teacher

“…need to come up with a better teaching learning process [for students and adults a learner centered approach]…”

From the Sennheiser Press Release: Making it count with Sennheiser
…The workshops took place in a theatre-in-the-round type setting. About 50 of the attendees were asked to participate in a mock classroom while the remaining 350 audience members observed [Robert] Price leading the “students.” A videographer was on the scene, recording footage that would be used as part of a forthcoming DVD/CD Rom educational training series. “To say that the Sennheiser equipment was important is an understatement,” Price observes. “Without our EW 100 ENG microphones, there would have been no way to reproduce the sound and actively engage 400 people. The equipment was also fundamental in capturing high-quality audio for our DVD series.” The video recordings and subsequent DVD production is important to The Thinking Schools Ethiopia efforts for a number of reasons: First, a filmed documentation helps attract funding and broaden exposure for the project overall. Second, teachers in Ethiopia — and beyond — can leverage high-quality training materials to learn about and adapt the Thinking Schools methodology for their own purposes. “These materials are vital because they empower the viewers to become trained leaders themselves,” Price says. “The Thinking Schools project has put Ethiopia on the cutting edge of educational reforms,” Price concludes. “Change can happen very fast, and technology can accelerate that change to make it even faster. When a company like Sennheiser gets involved, it helps us realize the kind of fundamental support that is really needed to make the project a success.”

read the complete press release (pdf file)
read more about Sennhesier personal and professional audio microphones & headphones

Schools in Norway and Northern Ireland are engaged in a Regio Comenius project exploring and creating Thinking Schools. Some of the key partners engage in a discussion on NEELB TV sharing their views. The dialogue provides an excellent overview of Thinking Schools.
watch the discussion