It's always nice to see great practice recognised so I thought I'd share this. The UNESCO primary education research team visited GEMS Royal Dubai School earlier this year and the school received some lovely and very encouraging feedback:
"Today I had visitors from OECD whom I took to visit one of our excellent kindergartens (most of our UNESCO team members visited that institution last April while we had a project meeting here in Bratislava). This morning, while we were observing and discussing the process of integrating digital technologies into ordinary ‘play and learn‘ activities of children, strong memories from my visit to your school came back to my mind and I want to do what I should have done long time ago – I want to say that you are doing fantastic job, a leap into appropriate 21st C learning. Your and our approaches trying to harness the potential of technologies for the complex benefit of children and students have the same vision and principal values: (1) integrating technology into usual everyday learning goals and activities – always in favour of children, not as a goal but as a means, (2) caring for teachers and supporting them so that they feel safe and confident when using technologies and helping them understand the values of doing so, and (3) getting the parents involved, engaged and supporting our goals – without that no innovation would be possible at all.
Indeed, I was deeply impressed by what we have seen in your school and in spite of the fact that we are right now conducting the IITE project on ICT in Primary education, I want to comment one issue of the whole process which is the most important for me: It must start in pre-primary education already. And this is exactly what you are doing. I was excited to see your kindergarten teachers and children using digital technologies to become better learners and observers and creators... I wish we may find new ways how to continue the cooperation between the IITE UNESCO and your school in the area of harnessing digital technologies in favour of children!
Thank you very much for what you are doing and kindly pass my greetings and deep appreciation to all of your marvellous colleagues – I have already told the story of visiting your school, meeting your teachers and visiting your classrooms to hundreds of Slovak teachers, I am trying to spread what I have seen and learned from you and your staff in my country, and our teachers are impressed as much as I was!
My very best wishes!"
Ivan Kalas
team leader
Comenius University
Bratislava
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