I am driven to explore, to uncover, to discover, to represent and to re-present. I live to describe and to de-scribe, to un-write, to rewrite and to right. Mine is the passion to ignite fire within my students, to evoke laughter, to share knowledge, to learn and to teach. My zest is indelibly intertwined with ludic actions, reflective reasonings and with practical advice. My name is Michelle Stewart-McKoy and iLearn…..iTeach…..iEducate!
The iEducate Jamaica is a project in which project-based learning approaches are applied to select modules in the Foreign Language (FL) option of the Masters of Arts in Teaching programme at UWI, Mona. Conceptualised by Michelle Stewart-McKoy as “killing two birds with one stone”, the project has two major aspects to it:
iLearn: The students (teachers currently teaching French and Spanish in private and public schools in Jamaica) engage in a series of practical workshops in which they develop the skill-set needed to prepare learning materials appropriate for their students. These MAT students are graded on the quantity and quality of the materials produced for academic consumption.
iTeach: This is the “teaching and dissemination” component of the project. There is still a paucity of locally created FL materials, guidelines and templates. We believe that this project will attempt to address the dearth of teaching and learning materials for the Jamaican classroom and beyond. Training sessions, templates and FL materials which can be used for a wide variety of groups are made available for academic consumption.
The iEducate Jamaica project participants have agreed to make the products of the course available publicly. Therefore anyone who is interested in capitalising on FL materials which are locally appropriate are free to do so. The FL materials can be used electronically or otherwise.
Images used on this site are from vectorcharacter.net, animationfactory.com, graphicsfactory.com
Michelle Stewart-McKoy
The iEducate Project
iEducate (Jamaica) 