User page expo
From WikiEducator
The User Page Expo ("UPE" to its friends) is an ongoing event recognising those WikiEducator user pages that are particularly informative, innovative, visually appealing, or otherwise just plain clever.
UPE isn't an official thing, it's just a small group of WikiEducators who got it in their heads to increase public appreciation for well done user pages. This ad hoc conspiracy was started by Minhaaj ur Rehman and Steve Foerster, and has been maintained by Nellie Deutsch, Patricia Schlicht and Peter Rawsthorne.
If you think that someone's user page is worthy of recognition by your fellow WikiEducators (even if it's your own!) the nomination process is simple -- just let Nellie, Patricia and Ramesh know. Unless we think you're dead wrong, we'll solemnly convene the award committee and announce that a new award has been made!
As of February 1, 2011, Patricia Schlicht has made her place available, and Ramesh has kindly accepted to step in.
So, what sort of criteria impress us?
- We're keen on infoboxes, especially when they're full of good information.
- Seeing that you're working on going up in WikiMaster levels is never a bad thing.
- If you're a WikiNeighbour or an Ambassador for WikiEducator, then you might either include a section that details how you've helped the community, or link to where that's detailed elsewhere.
But mostly we want to see something that's simply well done, and preferably clever. We know you have it in you!
The awardees will be provided with a Featured User Page template to their user pages.
Awardees
April 2013
Benjamin Stewart is an EFL teacher educator and researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes in Mexico. He has a great interest in action research for anyone teaching English to students of other languages (TESOL). He maintains an open and ongoing Distance English Language Training (DELT) workshop as well as TESOL Talk. In addition, he also contributes regularly to the Collaborative Understandings website, offers opencourseware, and is an author for Edukwest. He has also been contributing to the world of OERs by gifting his time and effort in assisting with eL4C online workshops, providing guidance to participants. He has delivered numerous talks and conducted many workshops for professional development of teachers. His WikiEducator User Page truly reflects his achievements!
Lets congratulate Benjamin, the WikiArtisan, for being the UPE winner for April 2013!!
March 2013
Ibrahim Kolawole Oyekanmi (popularly known as "Mallamibro" to friends) is the Principal IT Lecture in his own company, the Mallamibro ICT Academy in Kano, Nigeria. He has taught at different levels from Nursery and primary schools to Polytechnic. He is a member of IEEE and the Computer Science Teachers' Association. Currently he is teaching computer application packages ranging from the Microsoft Suite (2003 & 2007) in his Computer Training Academy in Kano, Nigeria. As an information technology educator, he dreams of to see as many people as possible become Computer literate. To achieve his dream, he puts his belief into practice through Wikieducator, which he re-affirms is one way of "training the trainers". As a contribution to community, he runs a local NGO "Youth Progressive Peace & Justice Forum" (YPPJF) to offer occupational skills to youths in his locality. This NGO organizes a quarterly Tuition-free training programme in which 25 participants are trained in basic computer appreciation skills like Word-processing, Desktop Publishing, Basic Data management and Graphic Design. Participants also participate in lectures on basic human rights, what they are and how to protect them. They have trained over 400 youths from various programmes of the YPPJF. There is yet another feather to his cap, being E-Mentor for "Teachers-Without-Border's Certificate of Teaching Mastery Program". Mallamibro feels that he is at his best when involved with a class that is actively involved in activities. He reflects, "...Knowledge acquisition and sharing is one big joy of life, who would wish for life without knowledge?..."
Please join us in congratulating the first UPE winner from Nigeria, the very talented Ibrahim Oyekanmi.
February 2013
Sarita Kumar is an Associate Professor of Zoology at Acharya Narendra Dev College, University of Delhi where she established the Department of Zoology. She has also taught at Maitreyi COllege, Shivaji College and Deen Dayal Upadhayay College, Delhi. In addition to teaching, she keeps herself busy in research activities, curriculum development, and training of post graduate teachers of State Council of Educational Research & Training. She has also developed e-content for higher education. She has been one of the coordinators for the first workshop "WikiEducator - WikiEd-08" conducted at her college (in 2008). A diploma holder in French, she loves music, attempting Sudoku, cross-words and word games. She found her passion in writing and has authored ten books. Due to her exemplary services, she was recognized as Distinguished Teacher by University of Delhi in 2009; conferred "Meritorious Teacher Award" by the Directorate of Higher Education, Government of NCT of Delhi in 2011; and was one of the ‘Open Access Competition Winners’ amongst the ten worldwide by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), United Kingdom.
Visit her colorful and informational Wikieducator user page and congratulate on being February 2013 UPE winner!
January 2013
Nedal Shatat is a teacher of Mathematics at Emad Al-Dean Zenky high school for boys located in Madaba. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in 1992 from University of Baghdad and soon thereafter he began his career as teacher of Mathematics. With the purpose of making teaching more interesting and less difficult, he has developed his professional teaching skills and qualifications. He undertook a high diploma (2004-06) from Department of Computer Science from Amman Arab University, Jordan. At the school, he had many other responsibilites, in addition to teaching Maths, like offering training to other teachers, developing and updating school website, member of Math's and Science committee, safety committee, school developing committee and parents-teachers committee. A winner of Queen Rania Prize (2008), he has certifications from ICDL, Intel, EMaths, and ThinkingTools. Furthermore, he is involved in community and volunteer activities like Madaba community developing association, training regional math's teachers on using Arabic Math typing and as a member of the Association for Youth and Students' Voluntary Activities. Do not forget to see his excellent work on Animated Maths on his WikiEDucator page.
Let's congratulate him on being the UPE winner for January 2013 and first from Jordan!
December 2012
Let's congratulate him on being the UPE winner for December 2012!
November 2012
Dr. Savithri Singh is the Principal of Acharya Narendra Dev College (ANDC). She is a multi-talented Educator, WikiEducator, Administrator, Traveler, Ornithologist, and a lot more! With over 30 years of teaching experience, she is a trained Botanist. In addition, she contributes to issues on women, environment, science education - curriculum, syllabus - and free and equal access to education. She has been using Wikieducator (WE) for collaborative development of materials in a project involving IGNOU, INBAR, COL, CIBART and ANDC. She encourages research by faculty and promotes workshops for and experiment-based research projects by undergraduate studentshttp://wikieducator.org/ANDC_DU CPURT]. Her vision is Acharya Narendra Dev College to be identified as a Centre for excellence in research in the sciences. She is a member of the National Focus Group on Teaching of Science, and National Knowledge Commission – Working group on Science and Maths. She was an elected member of the First Community Council and is an Ambassador of WE in India. At present, she is involved in Bamboo and Rattan project; developing resources for undergraduate courses on WE; Pilot Elearn project of Delhi University; and Elearn project of NCERT[1] etc. She has conducted f2f L4C workshops. Old Hindi film songs of great Indian Singer Mukesh are her favourite.
Pl join us in congratulating Dr. Savithri for being the UPE winner for November 2012!
October 2012
Please see Mahmudul's beautiful and colourful WikiEducator page and join us in congratulating him for being the UPE winner for October 2012!
September 2012
Brent Simpson is an experienced WikiEducator and a custodian at Wikiversity. In addition, he is also a member of the Advisory Board. He lives on Waiheke Island, New Zealand/Aotearoa. Brent is also a Sysop & Beauracrat for Wikieducator as well as currently on the Community Council. He works for the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, (NICAI). He has also worked on TILT, a resource for teaching Information Literacy that has been freely distributed under David Wileys original Open Publication License, since 2000 and is now the Information Literacy tutorial at hundreds of institutions worldwide. Brent has strong interest (/has worked on) in the following: WikiEducator Audacity Tutorial; Wikieducator Tutorials; The Learning Design Project on WikiEducator; and Main Page redesign.
Let's congratulate Brent for being the UPE winner for September 2012!
August 2012
Dr Sujata Dhopte teaches Economics at M K Sanghvi College of Commerce & Economics, Mumbai. A talented multilingual (speaks Marathi, Sanskrit, Hindi and English fluently) she is a Doctorate in Management. Serving Learning4Content Community on WikiEducator, she is the Technical Coordinator for OER project of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL)/ CEMCA and Mumbai University. Contributing to the society, she started a Social Awareness Programme ‘Samvedana’ for students through field visits to the places like Orphanages, Handicapping Schools, Remand Home, Hospitals, Old Age Homes as a part of Extension programme. She is also involved in Population Education Project and Adult Education Programme for R ward, Mumbai division. Her another achievement is being the Field Coordinator for extending training and evaluation for Six Colleges by Department of Life Long Learning & Extension, University of Mumbai. Recognising her services to the community, Mumbai University awarded her ‘Guest of Honour’ as Editor for ‘Samvedana’ Magazine for Students Life Long Learning & Extension Activity. She was also awarded First Position among 172 Colleges of Mumbai University's UDAN Festival for the Skit' Computer Ki Palkhi', which she wrote and directed.
Please join us in congratulating Dr Sujata Dhopte for being the UPE winner for August 2012!
July 2012
Sean Rogers, a Trinidadian, is the Managing Director and owner of Genesis Innovative Solutions Ltd, located in Trinidad and Tobago. He is a trained and Certified engineer in the installation fiber optical cables, Category 5 and Category 6 for the commercial and residential application. His firm looks after the designing, deploying reliable and durable networks to enhance organisations communication capacity. Sean targets to increase the productivity, boost the firm's presence in industry and training of the companies' IT staff so that such staff efficiently administers the company’s network to maintain a 99.99% up time. Although he has an experience of over a decade of working in telecommunications and ICT industry, his quest of learning more and more has not stopped, so he is Currently pursuing a foreign language - Spanish at the Venezuelan Embassy in Trinidad and an Associate Degree in Project Manager at the cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies in Trinidad.
Let's congratulate Sean for being the July 2012 UPE winner!
Felicidades, Sean, por ser el ganador de la UPE y desearle todo el éxito en tu carrera!
June 2012
Professor Betty Hurley-Dasgupta, a doctorate in Mathematics Education from the University of Rochester, is an Area Coordinator for primarily mathematics courses at the Center for Distance Learning of SUNY Empire State College where she has been working since 1982. Before that, she worked for a number of years at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in physics and math learning centers.
She has co-facilitated a MOOC with Carol Yeager which focused on Creativity and Multicultural Communication.
She is a member of the OERu team and is currently working in creating OERs to help learners develop stronger quantitative skills. You may like to know more about her Project Studying Math At Empire State College.
Another area of interest is the Personal Learning Environments (PLE) where she currently coordinates a pilot project (Digication) with faculty and students. Furthermore, she is implementing Mahara and Moodle for her classes.
Please join us in congratulating Betty for being the UPE winner for June 2012!
May 2012
Pramod Kumar T.K. is Assistant Director (Academic) at National Institure of Open Schooling. He obtained his Masters in Physics from University of Pune and Master of Arts in Distance Eduation from IGNOU. He is now pursuing MPhil (Distance Education) from Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University. He is an expert programmer in FORTRAN, C, C++ etc {hope Microsoft Corp. is getting attentive!}.
He is an achiever. An awardee of Maha Mahopadhya Datto Waman Potdar Prize for excellence in B.Ed, he also received a Certificate of appreciation from D.A.V .Regional Directorate, Western Region in 2005. He secured first Place in Pune District Zone Chess championship in 1990 and has won prizes at different levels in Teaching Aids Competitions. An innovator by nature, he got listed an innovative Geometrical Instrument for patent by Mumbai Patent Office. In addition, the design of Vector Addition toy; Ohm’s Law apparatus; Model to demonstrate SHM as projection of UCM; and all in one magnetism apparatus are to his credit! Further to his achievements are his publications. He has co-ordinated and edited Four Volumes of Revised School Health Manuals of Central Board of Secondary Education; and Teachers’ Manual on Life Skills for classes IX-X, India.
Please join us in congratulating Pramod for being the UPE winner for May 2012! And those who are planning to challenge him for a Chess competition...visit his page and fix time and venue!!
April 2012
Vasi Doncheva is working as Flexible Learning Manager with NorthTec, New Zealand which is one of the Founding OERTen anchor partner for OER University. She is passionate about integrating Web 2.0 tools and social media to engage learners and creating learning opportunites for diverse and widely dispersed communities. Developing core competencies in technological literacies is her top agenda. She is also interested in Communities of Practice for professional development in higher education sector. Getting involved with WikiEducator is the step bringing her closer to becoming OER Champion! She has successfully facilitated the EL4C52 - WikiEducator Learning4Content Workshop held from 15 to 27 February 2012.
Lets congratulate Vasi for being the April 2012 UPE winner!
(
: Thank you. I'm really honored to receive this award for my first contribution to Wikieducator OER4Ed. Hope to be able to contribute more in the future.--Vasi Doncheva 04:20, 17 April 2012 (UTC))
Congrats Vasi - well deserved! --Irwin DeVries 04:49, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
March 2012
Ravi Limaye is a multi-talented WikiEducator, who by profession is an Engineer and has worked in different sectors like Defence (Indian Air Force), Telecommunications, and Software and IT Applications Development. His current interests are in Education sector where he is engaged in institution building and capacity enhancement in higher education, accreditation of courses in higher education, community radio, and institution portal development and its upkeep. After completing his M.Tech. he wishes to pursue a Doctorate in open learning in higher education.
A die-hard WikiEducator, he plans to develop content collaboratively via this wonderful platform. With an "Open Mindset" he is set on "Mission Wikieducator" and he says, "I will be there where I can contribute..."
Lets congratulate him for being the UPE March 2012 winner and wish him all the best for his mission 'possible' of creating local level workshops via WikiEducator.
February 2012
J. Randolph Radney, earned his baccalaureate and masters degrees from Colorado Christian University (1976) and The University of Texas at Arlington (1982), respectively, in linguistics. His doctorate (also from UTA) is in humanities, with special focus on study in linguistics. In the beginning of his career, he taught guitar at the Jefferson County School District (Colorado). Later on he started teaching academic writing courses to non-native speakers of English at The University of Texas at Arlington before moving to British Columbia (Canada) in 1984. In 1994 he started teaching at Dallas, TX to help students learn a newly-developed software data management application (LinguaLinks). He joined UTA once again in 1995 as a graduate teaching assistant, this time teaching introductory linguistics courses. After completing his doctoral coursework in 1997 (which he restarted in 1995, initiated in 1984), returned to Canada, and began teaching data management and linguistics at the Canada Institute of Linguistics (CanIL), located on the campus of Trinity Western University (TWU). There in 2002 he designed and offered the introductions, critical thinking, and ethics in an online format for multiple semesters. Since 2006 he has settled in the interiors of British Columbia and taught blended learning courses for TWU/CanIL, and then, occasional courses for Thompson Rivers University. He is passionate about integrated linguistics, phenomenology, philosophical hermeneutics, and the use of Moodle and Web 2.0 technologies in education. His other passions reside in playing guitar, singing, watching sports, reading, gardening and to keep fit, he regularly exercises.
He is deeply involved with WikiEducator and facilitated WikiEducator eL4C41 workshop.
Please join us in congratulating Randolph for being the UPE winner for February 2012!
January 2012
Balqis Thaahaveettil, a Post graduate Degree holder in Education from the University of Calicut, India, is a teacher educator /trainer at teacher training college. She teaches educational psychology. She is further interested in teaching school children science and math subjects; and life sciences, basics of Educational philosophy and of course English to graduate students. She has a unique style of teaching in an interactive, learner centered way helping students to overcome and tackle with problems of their varied learning styles. Currently she is keeping herself busy in giving online classes on Communicative English and Psychology (especially Educational Psychology).
she is very involved in the OER university initiative. She is also working on developing a resource for prospective teachers on microteaching which empowers them to acquire the right pedagogical skills before they start real classroom macro teaching. Another project of her is related to lesson plans and resource classes on Moral Education among children. She's also involved in taking workshops at Integrating Technology for Active Lifelong Learning (IT4ALL). Her hobbies include painting, gardening, reading, telling stories, writing poems, blogging, cooking, making things, thinking about the ultimate reality, painting and sharing knowledge.
Let's congratulate Balqis for being the UPE winner for January 2012!
December 2011
Vincent Kizza is a Senior teacher trainer for SESEMAT (Secondary Science and Mathematics) program, Ministry of Education and Sports, Uganda, East Africa. He became interested in Free and Open online educational content when he found that in Uganda the teachers and students are facing the challenge of lack of access to quality educational material, particularly in sciences. This soon became his passion and his journey continued in the field of OER where he worked on prestigious projects like LugandaWiki (a Page for Luganda speakers especially in the diaspora to access Buganda culture resources); Uganda Schools OER portal page; Center for innovative physics teaching in Uganda to build secondary school level physics content; Monitoring and evaluation course of environment programs in schools; and AfroPhysics. So motivated, he facilitated several face to face L4C workshops in his country and the online WikiEducator Gives Back eL4C41 workshop. In addition to this, Vincent is an elected member of the WikiEducator Community Council too. He also contributes as a freelance Database designer using open source tools. Reading science fiction and travelling are his interests.
Please join us in congratulating the very talented and WikiArtisan, Vincent Kizza!
WE wish him all success towards his dream of contributing to science education in Uganda!!
November 2011
Rashmi Kathuria is a teacher working in Kulachi Hansraj Model School, Delhi, India. A highly talented Post Graduate Mathematics teacher, she was the recipient of National Best e-teacher award in 2007 by the then President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. There has been no stopping her. She has been continuously honoured for her skills and for spreading awareness for Mathematics education. She was awarded first prize for Best Teaching Practices in 2008 organized by NIIT (National Institute of Information Technology) to facilitate interaction between educational researchers and the teaching community and to demonstrate and share innovative teaching practices they have found to be highly effective. She is also the recipient of a special prize for creating best e-lesson for innovative and enriching teaching/learning at Kulachi Hansraj Model School, Delhi, India. She was honoured by CII (Confederation of India Industries) Shiksha on promoting the use of technology.
She strongly supports open source software and keeps on exploring various possibilities of using offline and online tools in classroom. Way back in December 2006, she created her first blog MathematicsLearning. After that she created a very successful blog for her classroom Planet Infinity. Her success mantra lies in "Success lies in making efforts." She believes that Wikieducator is surely a brilliant concept. She reflects, “I will add my drop of knowledge to this vast ocean of knowledge and spread the word. Wikieducator has become an addiction. While exploring , I am not only learning but getting so many ideas of using it in education. Great!”
Let's congratulate Rashmi for being the UPE winner for November 2011!
October 2011
Alejandra Guajardo is from Lima, Perú, South America. She is studying a linguistics Master Degree at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. She has also been working as the co-ordinator of a Post Graduated Linguistics course focused on minority and endangered languages at Ricardo Palma University in Lima city.
Her interests lie in languages, intercultural experiences, education of adults and web 2.0. She is a firm believer in sharing ideas and experiences and thus uses Moodle, Blogs, Podcasts and other tools for effective teaching. "Aula de Lingüística" is an online Moodle based course on Descriptive Linguistics and Phonetics.
She is committed to developing open educational content and resources as well as collaborate and help new Wiki-friends on their way to becoming Wiki-buddies.
Please join us in congratulating the WikiArtisan, Alejandra Guajardo as the UPE winner for October 2011!
September 2011
Dr. Indira Koneru holds Ph.D. degree in Open Distance Education; M.Phil. in Library & Information Science; PG degrees in Sociology and Library & Information Science; and an UG degree in Biology. Her Doctoral Research "A Study of Information Literacy Skills of BRAOU Learners: Designing an Integrated Information Portal” was fundamentally an endeavor to ascertain the information competency level of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University learners. Focus of her study was on investigating learners’ information seeking behavior, information evaluation skills and their fair use practices.
Currently she is involved in research in the field of ICT-enabled information and educational services. She is a speaker at conferences and volunteers as a facilitator of online workshops at Technology for Active Lifelong Learning (IT4ALL), an informal volunteer network that offers free or low cost professional development workshops. To make a livelihood, she works as Library & Information Science Educator at ICFAI Flexible Education, ICFAI University, Hyderabad.
Being an Instructional Designer with over 10 years of experience in Academia & Research and 6 years in Instructional Design, she has been designing, developing and evaluating Courseware for UG/PG Courses offered through Distance Mode. In addition, she is a skilled Instructional Designer with sound knowledge of Learning Theories; an experienced Moodler; a successful teaching and learning facilitator; a technophile who works well with ICTs; a team player with collaborative and multitasking skills…Wow..!!
Please join us in congratulation the WikiArtisan, Dr. Indira Koneru!
August 2011
Álvaro Ricárdez Scherenberg, Mexican, is a retired Civil Engineer, and now working as a TEFL teacher in a private junior high school in Oaxaca City, Oaxaca State, Mexico. He loves technology because to him the Internet is that wonderful tool which allows us to share our knowledge, doubts, problems, triumphs and discoveries with the whole world!
He has a wonderful WikiEducator page. He strongly believes that Wikis are a magnificent tool to do collaborative work. Therefore he recommends "...learning to use them (Wikis)is the first step to open and share the treasures that we can develop and create as a community for the benefit of all our human species. I'm sure about it! it could seem a dream at first sight, but I'm sure it is perfectly feasible as long as we all work with our hearts and faith on this magnificent dream!..."
Please join us in congratulating Álvaro for this achievement to be UPE winner for August 2011 and wish him all the best for sharing his magnificent dream!
July 2011
Vilimaka Foliaki (popularly called as Vili) is currently working at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, as a teacher educator. From a humble beginning of doing some odd jobs, he has achieved greater heights as a teacher educator. He has earned his BSc degree with a double major in Biology and Chemistry from the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and a Graduate Diploma and MSc in Science Education both from Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. He has a dream of doing doctoral studies preferably in science learning design using multimedia. He is working on wiki projects like [Transparent Rings Atomic Model]; [Periodic Kingdom: 3D-Periodic Trends]; and [change and the Pacific Islands]. Strongly bonded to his family, he loves gardening, playing with his dogs Lassie and Buddy, and cat, Pus. Please join us in congratulating Vili for this achievement and wishing him best for his doctoral studies!!
May 2011
DR K S Ramakrishnan is working as an Assistant Professor, School of Education, Tamil Nadu Open University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. He is a firm believer of lifelong learning and inspires his students. His philosophy reflects in what Rabindranath Tagore said, "A teacher is a constant learner; A burning candle alone can ignite another candle". He has shown great progress in just a month in his first ever WikiEducator workshop EL4C50. He was the most active participant of our workshop, as indicated by the maximum edits during the workshop. The meaningful content added by him is exemplary. Use of templates and m
