Global Citizenship

Global citizenship is a project of the British Council under the program of Connected Classrooms. The project is aimed at  fostering the thinking and facilitating the transformation of citizen in school systems in different prats of the world to Global Citizen.

Though the concept of Global Citizenship has been there for long time, such kind of organised and purposeful practice of facilitating the change in the education system of schools in some selected countries involved in the project.

The major contents of the training include:

• Exploring Global Citizenship 
• Intercultural practice 
• International Learning
• Partnership Journey

The first step I involved myself was in securing certificates in all the online courses managed by University of London, College of Education.



The second step in the procedure that I involved myself in this project was in taking part in the validation training that took place in Addis Ababa.

The last three stages of Balanced Scorecard System are:

Automation
Cascading and
Evaluation of the system

The the case of automation, organizations need to consider the relevance of using softwares that enable registration and monitoring results. This serves two important purposes.
1. Identify problems and help to design strategies to bring them into the right truck
2. Provide information for evaluation of performance at the end of a given period.

An importnat point to conder here is that the software we choose needs to be easy to handle and should provide relelvant information.

Cascading is all about bringing the strategic objectives of organizations to the levels of departments and individuals. It is a very esssential step where departmental and individual roles are clearly identified and responsibilites are provided. Results to be acheived at all levels need to be made crystal clear to everyone at every level at this stage so as to issure success.

Evalaution of a Balanced Scorecard implemented in an organization needs to be given a great attention. Sources confirm that the first year of implementation of BSC is a very critical period to put the system in place and make sure that relevant pitfalls are properly addressed. For this, strategies need to be disigned to conduct the evalaution of the BSC system all along for development purpose.

So, what are you thinking about improving the performance of your organization?
Give it a try and make the most out of BSC.

Good Luck
Getachew Melaku
Consultant in Perforamnce Management and Planning

What is Job Performance?

What is Performance Management these days in Businesses and Public Sectors.

Is it all about going to work everyday, accomplishing your daily duties, and reporting that you performed what is given to you through your JD?

I think this definition of Performance Management has now expired. One need to consider the RESULT from the activities one is performing and relate it to the strategic objectives of the department that he is working and later to the organizational strategic objectives. For this we need to learn more about how to do things.

Balanced Scorecard is one of the performance management tools that help us achieve what we aspire in our daily life and job responsibilities as mentioned above.

Balance Scorecard is Management, Measurement and Communication tool.

1. Strategic review of organizational capacity and customer objectives
2. Design strategic themes
3. Design strategic Objectives
4. Map your objectives
5. Identify the measures and place targets of your objectives
6. Design strategic Initiatives to facilitate implementation of your Objectives 

learn more about it form me.

Thank You

What happened to facebook page?

Can Somebody tell me what happened to my facebook account?

Is there anyone experiencing difficulty in opening his/her facebook account? I have started seeing a message as showing in the screen case image below since 8:00 pm last night in UK time.

 Hope things will be in place soon.

Speaker Proposal for 47th AITEFL Workshop Liverpool.

1.       Ama-English: Mobile language made in Ethiopia:  A bless or disguise?

Technology is fostering the use of some languages such as English all over the world. One attribute to this is the use of technology in message exchange using computers and Mobile phones. In my presentation I would like to share the findings of my study on why some people use Ama-English rather than pure Amharic (Ethiopic) or English to communicate.

2.     New experience in using technology: Classrooms in Ethiopian

Using technological as a tool of instruction in Ethiopian classrooms is rare. The purpose of my presentation is to evaluate the perception of students towards their experience in using Web-based lessons (WebQuest). Analysis of the type and level of concern in using the tool will be evaluated and lessons learned will shared.

Summary

Understanding students’ perception towards the technological tools that are used in classrooms is a very important issue so as to guide the teaching learning process effectively. In my presentation, I will try to show the perception of students towards the use of WebQuest as a tool of instruction for the first time in their context. The presentation has the following important steps that are based on the implementation and documentation of the experience. The first steps will be to show the background experience of students in using Web-based lessons, specifically WebQuest lessons. Baseline survey data will be used for this purpose. On the second step, I will review the experience of students towards the WebQuest lesson that they will work on. The WebQuest lessons for this purpose will be designed based on the contents in the syllabus of their English language subject. The result of the analysis of the data collected based on the students experience in the WebQuest lesson will be presented on the third stage. This mainly focuses on identifying the concerns of students towards using WebQuest as a tool of instruction. Finally, lessons derived from using WebQuest as a tool of instruction will be identified and communicated. The contribution of the tool towards helping learners to achieve their educational objectives will be given greater attention in this part.

The first draft of my dissertation is completed. Thank God!!!

Title: Affordances of WebQuest: The perception of students in the case of the Ethiopian Civil Service University.

The major finding was that WebQuest is found to be a potential instructional tool for the course study skills. it is found out that WebQuest can facilitate inquiry based learning, that is often missing in the education system I experienced. Students however are skeptical about the physical situation in relation to resources supply and skills of managing the tool in their specific context.

full copy to be released soon.

Thank you 

Please read articles form the following links to learn more about WebQuest.

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtpe20

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utef20

http://questgarden.com/

Training days of the week

It seems that I missed class once more. I have attended two training sessions organised by student career center of the university of worwick this week. The first training on speed reading was on Tuesday June 12, 2012. The second training was on working with team on today, June 13 , 2012.

Speed reading

The training has made me understand two issues. the frist issue is about the perception of speed reading. It seems clear that speed reading and skills of reading overlap. However, this training clarified the extent of the overlap. Speed reading is both context based and relative to other important eading goals such as level of comprehension and success in reading at a given stage. The second point is about the techniquies to improve speed reading. Five points were discussed as techniques and some of them were practiced in th training session. I need to deal with them in detail in my next post.

Working with team

The training was focusing on identifying characteristics of individuals based on their role in group work. First, we discussed the characterisitcs of successful teams based on our experiences of team work. Following that we were handed back with the Belbin team role report result and made a lively discussion on our dominant charactersitics as team roles based on the belbin report and potential to develop othe roles. It was an interesting opportunity where I realised that recognising team roals can be an essential step towards facilitating success in team work.

See you soon in further detail.

getachew

June  13, 2012