I will try to post more regularly here, and add some good educational links I have found.

    In the world of international education there are many teachers who are “on the circuit”. It is in fact a very small community and the chances are that you will know someone who has been to a specific school, once you have been in one or two schools overseas. Don’t be surprised after some years if you walk into a staffroom in a different school, and country, and you meet someone you worked with in another school.
School reputations are developed among the teachers through word of mouth, staff at a good school will be very positive and upbeat, staff at a school with issues will not be so positive. You have to learn to read between the lines – sometimes what is left unsaid is more important than what is said – in the similar way that recruiters are careful to give you the good side.
When you attend a job fair, one of the best things you can do is talk to other candidates in the recruiting lounge, over a coffee etc, and ask about the international schools in their country, and also their current school. For example you can find out if there is a stable staff or a regular high turnover – things that most recruiters are unlikely to pass on. In some cases there are one or two international schools in the country, so it is worth asking – in other countries there are numerous schools. Word of mouth and the reactions and knowledge of people “on the ground” is very important – as they are not only able to tell you about the school, but also the general lifestyle, cost of living, social opportunities, potential for saving etc etc.
Other teachers are your best resource, in my opinion, for honest information about schools. Of course there will be some teachers who will be unhappy in a school (not because of the school, but because of themselves) and will be negative, but these are easy to spot, so you can usually discount their vitriol against a school and its administration.
Most people will give you a balanced view of the school, point out some of the negatives and things that need to be addressed, but will also be honest about the positives in the school as well. One sign of a good school is one which will put current teachers in touch with you (after you sign the contract ) so that you can ask them direct questions about the school.
A recent development I have noticed in the last few years is that some teachers encourage colleagues from a previous school to come to a school where they are, this has many benefits, for the school and the people coming in -

* they do not have to recruit the teacher through Search or CIS,
* the school is trusting the staff they have to bring in tried and tested staff who they rate,
* the people being employed usually do not have to attend a job fair,
* and they have the safety of mind that their friends have checked out the country and school for them.

There are dangers however as there is no way of knowing how people will settle into a new school, style of teaching, and culture. The friends who encouraged the others to come to theat school, can then get the “blame” for bringing the other teacher, either from the teacher or from the admin if they do not settle in and perform well, as they did in a previous school where they knew their colleagues.

As always with a new school, there are the numerous questions and the remembering of hundreds of names, as well as who is “responsible” (a very popular word here) for what.

Going out in the evening in Dubai is something that most people dread.

Traffic here is a nightmare – the road system is undergoing major redevelopments and will be amazing when it is done, but the road to and from Sharjah is a standing joke here, as are the bridges. It is possible to spend up to 2 hours plus on the roads for what should be a 15-20 minute either way.

So check out carefully where you are housed by the school, as you can spend ages on the journey to and from school.

If you live in, or near, Sharjah :

In the morning, there is a basic equation, for every minute later you leave from home you will spend another 5 minutes on the road. So if you leave 10 minutes later than usual, you will spend another 50 minutes on the road, fact! That is not fun. Many people will leave for work before 5am to avoid the traffic, and then get back home after the rush – that makes for one very long day! Having a life is a bit difficult if you put in such long hours.  If you are used to traffic in central London and other large itie, then it should be no problem for you, but if you want some quality of life outside of your work then you might want to go elsewhere.

Most expats here manage to put up with the conditions for a few years as it is short term, and leave having saved some money, but then of course there are the others who are here long term (7-10+ years) and will not hear a bad word said about the place they live and call home – bless them. Enjoy!

Here I am going to post some of the mistakes I made, and what I would do differently from the beginning, as well as strategies used to deal with some of the problems that have arisen.

First of all I would run a session in the IT suite and get all the kids signed up at school as it took me a week or two of badgering to get the students to sign in. Eventually I had to get the last few stragglers to sign up on my computer in the classroom.

Secondly, I would draw up a list of rules for behaviour on the wiki (link here) In fact during the time we were working on it, we developed these rules. We had one or two episodes where people changed or deleted work (in a non malicious, helpful way) done by other people and the original poster got upset. So I assigned two people to be in charge of each page and only they were allowed to make changes. Anyone else could either post a message or a note on the discussions suggesting changes, but the physical changes were to be done by the people in charge of that page. If you look at some of the discussions they are quite interesting. This limitation to edit only certain pages may seem to be against the nature of a wiki, but it worked for us, at the stage we are at now.

Thirdly as the wiki is so massive, potentially, I find it is a good idea to assign responsibility for a page to one or two students as this gives them more ownership.

Possible problems :

Some students complain of inability to access the internet, the site, etc – then you need to have strategies for dealing with these students. If they are technically capable on computers, they could design their own buttons and banners for the website as this does not need access to the internet. If a student is artistic they can draw some characters from the book, landscapes etc, and these can then be scanned and incorporated into the wiki. Two students are also looking at creating a short podcast – they have drafted what they will say and are going to record that soon.

Another potential problem is students messaging each other and causing problems. I had one student who kept receiving messages for him to change something and he came to me upset as he was being bombarded with messages.

Suggestions :

• Run an IT session about wikis at the start.
• Set a timeframe – I told my class we had 5 weeks and then it was to become a static website and they have been removed as members.

Positive things :

Most of the students worked exceptionally well on the wiki, showing a lot of responsibility. They even got to the stage that they did not want to have flashy animations (similar to piczo). A few of them have crept in , but they liked them as they are not just flashy for the sake of it, rather the have a reason to be there, and serve a purpose. This meant, for me, that the students were enjoying the clean uncluttered, nature of the wiki which focuses on the content rather than the candy floss, bells and whistles of piczo.

conclusion:

Creating this wiki has been a real eye opener for both myself and the students – it was very simple to do and half of the class were very actively involved. I have got plans to create others with students – maybe at the start of year and develop it over the academic year instead of just a few weeks.

Several students have even created their own wikis and shown them to me – links can be found on the here and here. I will keep an eye on those to see how they develop. For the travel one, I have asked some ex-colleagues in other countries to get their students to post information about their country so that this one becomes more international.

It has been an amazing exercise and I would recommend to any teacher that you try it with your students, after a few lessons they will be helping you! That is not a bad thing, you can learn together.