Global Information Networks in Education

The Ginie project creates on-line learning communities for education professionals working internationally on the front lines of civilization : Next Generation

Introduction

About GINIE: Introduction Problems of chronic educational and economic stress threaten basic education in many parts of the world. The good work that has been accomplished over the last few decades needs to be strengthened to build stable democracies, generate innovative market economies and prevent civil crises. Educational professionals within and across countries need rapid access to professional counterparts' knowledge and expertise. They need to be able to construct and maintain a professional 'community memory' through archives and dialogue.

The Global Information Networks in Education (GINIE) serve as a 'virtual learning community' for education innovation in nations in crisis and transition. They use Internet-based technology to build a capacity for rapid access to information and expertise for education professionals working internationally in nations in crisis and at risk to disruption. The GINIE networks help education policymakers, donor/investors, researchers and practitioners to work collaboratively, to learn from each other, and to inform the public about studio harry potter londres prix. They place particular emphasis on the development of long term professional networks within and across regions. These networks are intended to share locally created materials and expertise with counterparts for policy dialogue, professional development and classroom exchange.

About GINIE: What we do

GINIE has developed, in participation with professionals in the field, an Internet-based network with the following capacities:

GINIE uses these new and increasingly important capacities to support local professional decision-making by providing rapid access to high quality knowledge and expertise about 'what works out there in: a) policy; planning and evaluation; b) teaching and learning; c) access, equity and diversity; and d) workforce education and community economic development.

These new technological capacities, while still in their infancy, are of rapidly growing importance to the continuing successful contribution of international development education to democracy building and sustained economic innovation. They provide new opportunities for field professionals to collaborate on common educational problems and to learn from each other's experience.

Accessing GINIE Materials

Emphasis is on provision of a full description of materials available. Many of these materials can be downloaded as files over the Internet.

Information on where and how to obtain hard copy is available. As the system develops, we will give priority to materials that do not have copyright restrictions.

Contributing to GINIE

GINIE solicits high quality educational materials related to education in nations in crisis and/or in transition.

You can contribute to GINIE, (with full authorial/organizational credit) and share the good work done by you or your organization. Using past efforts to inform future initiatives saves time and precious resources in situations of crisis and rapid change, helping governments, donor and relief agencies and field practitioners to provide high quality educational services to adults and children caught in the midst of crisis and change.

Documents and materials are accepted in both electronic and hard copy format. Materials will be reviewed for relevance to GINIE areas of concern, and acknowledged. Original copies will be returned after materials are put on-line, if so requested. To contact the GINIE staff, send an e-mail to: ginie+@pitt.edu or using our comment form Or you can write or fax GINIE at:

Global Information Networks in Education Institute for International Studies in Education School of Education, University of Pittsburgh 5K01 Forbes Quadrangle Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA Fax: (412) 624-2609 Phone: (412) 648-7114

Inquiries should be addressed to: Professor Maureen McClure, GINIE Director.

GINIE Outreach

GINIE's outreach efforts support nonpolitical 'educational diplomacy.' Education diplomacy is based on the idea that teachers around the world are on the front lines of civilization: the next generation. Children inherit civilizations.

Teachers have a responsibility to help create opportunities for a successful inheritance. They and other members of this generation need to invest in their own professional quality, as a legacy for the next one. Teachers need a lot of help in this monumental task from parents, community members and each other.

GINIE focuses on the improvement of the quality of the education profession internationally. One way of achieving this long-term goal is through the development of longer-term professional networks of collegial teaching and learning, both within and across regions. These networks improve the quality of the education profession internationally by creating opportunities for education professionals to share their experiences, materials and policies with each other.

GINIE outreach efforts include Bosnia and Herzegovina, China and Egypt.

One simple way of participating in these networks is through an annual investment of a professional development book or a journal subscription for a professional library in one of these countries. Many bright, well-educated colleagues face terrible costs for their own professional renewal. A single professional development book or journal subscription can cost a week's salary. In many countries, the need for teachers is so great that almost no money is available for continuing education, not even books for the library, once small salaries have been paid.

Who we are

Harry Potter

harry potter

Clementina Acedo

Clementina Acedo has a Ph.D. in Comparative International Education from Stanford University. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of administrative and Policy Studies in the School of education of the University of Pittsburgh. She recently directed the secondary Education Reform Project funded by UNESCO/USAID conducted at the institute for International Studies in Education (IISE). She has been a researcher at the Institudo de Estudios Superiores de Administracion IESA in Caracas, Venezuela. Sch has worked for the Venezuelan Government and the UNDP. Most recently she served as Education Specialist for the World Bank in the Education Group of the Human Development Network and in the Education Group of the East Asia and Pacific Region. She has authored articles and book chapters on a variety of topics, such as education reform, teacher training, social policy and social security in various countries.

Pilar Aguilar

Pilar Aguilar is at present an Education in Emergencies Officer for the Education Section in UNICEF, Geneva. She has worked in Eastern Africa as UNICEF Senior Education Officer in Rwanda between 1994 and 1997, and also as an education consultant in Djibouti, Jordan and Somalia. She had previously worked as a consultant evaluating the situation of Salvadorian refugees in Mexico; she was also an associate researcher of the Confederation of Central American Universities in San José, Costa Rica. Ms. Aguilar holds a Ph.D. in Educational Studies from the University of Hull, England. She has written several publications on teacher training and humanitarian education.

Mounzer Fatfat

Mounzer Fatfat is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at the UNESCO Institute for Education in Hamburg, Germany on a joint humanitarian education project with GINIE. Dr. Fatfat is in the process of developing a comprehensive website focusing on the demobilization of child and young adult soldiers from armed conflicts. He received his Ph.D. in 1998 in the Department of Administrative and Policy Studies at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education. His doctoral research focused on understanding the migration of professionals from Lebanon to the United States and was conducted using the world wide web as a data gathering tool. Dr. Fatfat also holds an M.B.A., M.Ed. in Policy Planning and Evaluation, and B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh. He previously worked as a computer Engineer for EDS, Electronic Data Systems.

Noreen Garman

Dr. Garman is Professor and Co-Director of the Institute for International Studies in Education in the School of Education. A former high school English teacher and recent Fulbright scholar, Dr. Garman has published journal articles and chapters in the fields of clinical supervision, curriculum studies and qualitative research. From 1994 to 1997, she directed programs for teacher education planning and development in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dr. Garman was also a part of the team that organized the Bosnian Children's Art Project "OBNOVA."

JK Rowling

J.K. Rowling

Mark Ginsburg

Dr. Ginsburg is a Professor in the Administrative and Policy Studies Department, a Co-Coordinator in the Social and Comparative Analysis in Education program and a Co-Director of the Institute for International Studies in Education (IISE) in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh. His scholarship in the field of comparative sociology of education focuses on social class, race/ethnicity, and gender in relation to the politics of education, teacher education, and educators' work and lives.
Current projects include: a longitudinal, ethnographic study of political socialization of educators in Mexico; the second phase of a 10-year, USAID-funded action-research project on "improving educational quality" in developing countries; an edited volume on "Cuban in the Special Period: Cuban Perspectives;" a comparative historical study of the "Construction of Citizen-Workers in/through Teacher Education in Canada, Mexico, and the United States;" and a book series for Garland Publishing on "Studies in Education/Politics."

Robert Gurevich

Dr. Robert Gurevich is an education and development specialist with extensive experience with PVO/NGO activities in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and the United States. An Educational Anthropologist by training, he recently completed a two year assignment as Executive Director of the Albania Education Development Project (AEDP) of the Soros Foundation Network. During the Kosovo crisis AEDP played an important role in linking PVOs and NGOs with the Albanian Ministry of Education and Science (MOES) and assisted the MOES in developing a strategy for its response to the refugee crisis in the education sector. He has also undertaken long-term assignments in Somalia, Thailand and Indonesia. Dr. Gurevich is currently Director of International Programs and Services at Western Carolina University and serves as Executive Secretary of the Center for PVO/University Collaboration in Development. He also holds an appointment as Associate Professor of Anthropology at Western Carolina University.

Linda Hawkin Israel

Linda Hawkin Israel is founder and director of MAMAS Project: "e-recovery: new tools for community survival and transformation" www.mamasnet.org, now in partnership with GINIE. With a background as maternal-child nurse in Africa, Linda has spent two decades developing conduits for "voice" of women and children in crisis zones.

She designed multimedia productions for multi-channel distribution--shortwave radio, internet, cable television, interactive curricula, and as informational elements for partnership-building at each level of crisis and rehabilitation. Background efforts included "Women in Conflict" documentation of women in Bosnia, a video roundtable at the UN during the Commission on Status of Women, with women from six African sub-regional wars. "Witness for Justice" series with UNIFEM on violence against women, and "In Our Own Voices: Women's Rights as Human Rights" featuring Afghan women on the telephone, standing outside ICRC tents on the Pakistan border, veiled Afghan escapees reporting from a basement Paris studio, EU participants from Geneva, and supportive friends gathered at the UN and within US universities.

Linda received the 1996 Washington Times National Peace Award for contributions to international communications supporting peacemaking and women’s leadership, in preparation for the UN Fourth World Conference on Women.

John E.S. Lawrence MFR

Dr. John E.S. Lawrence is a research psychologist with over 30 years experience in human development policy. Currently he consults with several international agencies on using electronic communication systems as instruments of public policy. He was Principal Technical Adviser in Human Resources Development(HRD), and then Deputy Director of the Social Developmant Division in UNDP's Policy Bureau. His substantive specialty is in organizational use of information, specifically in the context of HRD, socioeconomic development and livelihoods.

He received his Ph. D. in Psychology from North Carolina State University in 1977. He also has an M. Sc. in Psychology from NCSU, and the M.A. degree from Exeter College, Oxford, England. Prior to coming to the U.S. in 1967 to help design and build the North Carolina Outward Bound School, he was an instructor with Outward Bound Schools in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Dr. Lawrence has consulted with the World Bank, regional banks, governments, and UN agencies, with practical development experience in more than eighty countries worldwide, in all world regions. He has published regularly and widely, with authorship of over 100 publications in his field.

Frank Method

Frank Method is a leading international advocate on education and social policy, with a reputation both for rigorous analysis and for independent thinking on strategic possibilities. Beginning in 1964 as a Peace Corps teacher in Nigeria, Method has sector experience in over 20 countries, senior staff roles with the Ford Foundation, USAID and UNESCO, a term as visiting professor at Stanford, and a variety of consulting assignments with the World Bank, UNESCO, NGOs and private sector firms.

Method’s interests range from early childhood education through the new challenges for higher education, and from the technical issues of education systems and pedagogy to the broader issues of how education choices relate to economic and political development, demographic trends and technologic change. Frank's current Focus: conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction; the contributions of education to national identity and cohesion, social capital and resilience.

Maureen Porter

Dr. Porter is an Assistant Professor in the Social and Comparative Analysis of Education Program in the Administrative and Policy Studies Department. She holds joint appointments in Anthropology and Women's Studies. Her scholarship in the area of educational anthropology centers on situated learning within culturally-relevant communities of practice. She has lived, researched, and served extensively in Germany and western Europe and in the Andean areas of Peru and Bolivia. She has particular interests in the use of ritual, celebration, and festival as means of cultural transmission. Much of her published work has also emphasized the explicit and/or literary use of metaphors as a means of constructing knowledge and worldviews. Gender equity and access remain central concerns. She holds a standing visiting scholar appointment at the University of Augsburg and is sponsoring the Women Education Leader's Forum, a multi-national exchange. She also has received recognition for her work and research in international service-learning, particularly the LINCS program, as a means of creating reciprocal partnerships for sustainable development.

Seth Spaulding

Dr. Spaulding is the founder of the GINIE project and Director Emeritus of the Institute for International Studies in Education (IISE). He is an Emeritus Professor in the Administrative and Policy Studies department in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh where he was the founding Director of the International and development Education Program. Int eh mid0eighties, he was Director of the International Bureau of Education in Geneva, and in the early seventies, Director of the Department of School and Higher Education in UNESCO, Paris. He currently manages a private consulting firm, Spaulding associates. His most recently consulting activities have included a) the planning of a decentralized educational monitoring and evaluation system in Ghana (November, 2001), and b) planning and coordination of a series of impact sutdies of EDUCATODOS, an interactive radio distance education program for basic education in Honduras (first of study series being published in february, 2002). Consulting in the 1990's included projects in Bosnia, Mongolia, Tanzania, Thailand, Kyrgistan and Argentina.

Louise T. Su

Dr. Louise T. Su is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her Ph.D. degree from the School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies of the Rutgers University. She had a Master's degree in library science from Emory University and a B. A. from the National Taiwan University, Republic of China. She published on evaluation of information retrieval systems, user - librarian interaction, and Web search engines. She teaches in the areas of information storage and retrieval, information technologies, and behavioral perspectives in information systems and services. Her current research is on the evaluation of Web search engines from the end-user's perspective. She was previously Assistant-Librarian at Public Health Research Institute in New York City, Network Project Supervisor for Minmax Systems, and Research Project Manager for the User-Librarian Interaction Project at Rutgers University.

John C. Weidman

Dr. John C. Weidman’s work focuses on comparative education management and policy analysis. He has consulted for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on projects in Mongolia (Team Co-Leader and Higher Education Academic Program Management Expert), and Laos (Team Leader); the Academy for Educational Development (Higher Education Expert, 1993 ADB); and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) as a Higher Education Accreditation Expert. In 2000, he worked on strategic planning and needs assessment with the University of the North and the University of Durban-Westville in South Africa, both projects funded under the USAID Tertiary Education Linkages Project (TELP). His visiting professorships include the UNESCO Chair of Higher Education Research at Maseno University College in Kenya and Fulbright Professor of the Sociology of Education at Augsburg University in Germany.

GINIE Crisis Site

• Child and Young Adult Soldiers
• Education and Democracy
• Education and Psychological Distress in Countries in Crisis
• Education for Peace and Reconciliation
• Land Mine Awareness Education
• Programme for Education for Emergencies and Reconstruction • Rapid Education for Victims of War, Force Migrants and Displaced Populations
• Earthquake Alert

Crises Links

• Crisis Issues
• Organizations
• Basic Education: Children, Youth, & Women around the World

Teaching Materials in Education and Emergencies

• Teaching Resources

Crisis Reading Room

• Reading Room

Development Reference Desk

• Search Development Databases
• Search Education Databases
• How to Use the Internet
• Internet in the Classroom
• World Newsdesk
• Newsletters