Pakistani Teachers Win at Education Forum in Jordan

Two Pakistani teachers, out of 200 educational professionals from over 25 regional countries, have won the regional competition at Microsoft’s “Middle East & Africa Regional Innovative Education Forum” held recently in Aqaba, Jordan.

Microsoft Innovative education forum focuses on implementing innovative approaches that will ultimately improve the learning outcome of education systems across the globe.

Teachers are initially selected from different countries based on their innovations in teachings to compete in regional events. Upon winning regional competition, these teachers then qualify for global competition.

At Middle East & Africa Regional Innovative Education Forum teachers competed to receive one of twelve innovative teaching awards in four key categories at regional level. The winning group representing Pakistan consisted of Tahmeena Raees, Huma Islam and Kiran Imran from Roots School System.

Earlier in August, Pakistan announced the results for the country-level competition from which the winners participated in the regional level round for Middle East and Africa.

Talking about this event Kamal Ahmed, Country General Manager, Microsoft said, “Microsoft strives to create educational experiences that remove boundaries and bring students, teachers, educational policy makers and employers closer. I congratulate the winners from Pakistan. They have proved that technology is an important enabler in education and have supported students to gain the necessary skills to thrive in the 21st century.”

Delighted with this achievement Tehmeena Raees said, “We need to think out of the box to cater to the requirements of Information Technology and education in Pakistan. I am sure all the successful projects will go a long way in helping students take advantage of information and communication technology for the benefit of society. Microsoft has done an amazing job by providing us this platform.”

In addition event included workshops and an exhibition of all the participating schools and educator’s projects. A number of different awards for outstanding projects in various categories were also rewarded to the participants by an international jury of education experts. The winners of this round are selected to attend the Partners in Learning Global Forum that will be held in Washington DC on 07^th November 2011 – 10^th November, 2011.

As part of the Innovative Education Forum (IEF), Microsoft holds two competitions every year: Innovative Schools Program and Innovative Teachers Forum. Local offices of Microsoft all over the world organize such forums in their respective countries and then the winners compete at regional level.

The winners from regional level then go to participate in World Wide Innovative Education Forum where winning teachers from regional forums and innovative schools selected from all over the world show case their projects. The projects are then assessed on the basis of teacher-student engagement, innovation and contents and three top projects for each of these categories are declared.