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Active Listening and Thinking as a Skill (de Bono, et al) have served me well; as a student, as a teacher, and as a leader. Affording opportunities for Learners to be Teachers, and vice versa, is key.

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Teaching Animation Programs can be boring, if you let it. My Grade 7 Tech students collaborated with the ACS Junior School to bring their Grade 1 Gingerbread Man stories alive. The authors narrated them.

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We examined hard-hitting images and explored how messaging can reach people in the rapid-scrolling digital age we are in.

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I found, it behooved us to talk to students honestly about what we knew about Delayed Gratification and how it impacted them.

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If students were going to be asked to purchase devices, it followed that it could transform assignment artifacts (the lesson remained the lesson). I had good success with teaching language through content, such as Marketing & Advertising.

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The Socratic Method is having a renaissance, as we re-imagine work and learning spaces. There can be more than one correct answer.

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For students, faculty, and staff, the chance to see each other in a new light and a new environ helps to bring us together in new ways.

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This is a video I created to further highlight our concerns for student well-being, as it pertained to the lack of seatbelt usage in the UAE.

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Here, a Level 4 student interviews me in 2012, about Tolerance.

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In loco parentis applies in a tertiary setting too. Students likened me to their older brother (too polite to use "father"). Their betterment was the keystone to the curriculum I was creating, and to the Academic Advising that I spearheaded.

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From festivals to fishing, if my boys invited me to an event I would go. They accompanied me too, without complaint, to events where we were more like captive audiences.

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This is my first Vision Board. I have done them actually and virtually with students. Be careful what you wish for..

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.. and running the race. Annual 5 km Road Races, Terry Fox Runs, or the RAK Half-marathon, I have been intentional about setting a healthy example; alone or on teams.

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Student and faculty involvement in initiatives are laudable, so we must ensure they are. We used a variety of methods, but both physical and virtual badges (like in Scouts) were very successful.

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I like to use analogies about 100 years of re-imagining automobiles, to spark interest in STEM with my students.

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To address the hemorrhaging of our Foundations students, we took one whole cohort and did things differently; from Orientation to the introduction of Mental Toughness Coaching - we turned it around.

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Whether it was recognition awards, cultural celebrations, or funerals; community is family. Rejoicing, and mourning too, helps to bind us.

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This portrait generator is an early App that my students enjoyed, and I have used to decorate my house.

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My colleague Bjorn was going to leave our College for Dubai. I spied a Chairs' Committee Agenda Item that made him stay. Together, we became iPad Change Agents, and continued a paperless revolution.

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I was using this site for students to create short comics. I wrote to the developer and asked, 'Could they create a girl wearing a Sheila?'
He said, 'Of course!' During HCT's iPad Initiative, we often wrote App developers and they responded.

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We used a common free period to inspire each other and share what was working well in our lessons. We called it 'Appy Hour.'

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These were fun Engineering and Teamwork activities that were easy for other faculty to replicate in their classes. Popular and productive.

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With Level 2 students, we examined what the Country's Leaders wanted FOR them and FROM them. This is still a relevant, engaging project.

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Many of my students had fluency but not literacy. I am a proponent of community reading programs, book clubs, and libraries.

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I've long been interested in nature and hiking, but I wanted to create opportunities for my then-8 year-old daughter to become her best self.

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I began with an Explorers group at the Men's College, but word spread fast that it was fun and informative.

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After taking faculty families to a friend's Camel Farm, I formed a committee to explore starting a chapter of the Emirates Natural History Group (ENHG).

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I reached out to the Crown Prince of Fujairah to be our Patron, and I led the group until my departure in 2016. I also aided the fledgling RAK Chapter, and guided trips for ENHG Dubai.

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ENHG Fuj Berlin Sans w Arabic dash w Patron Arabic

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The living history provides the flesh on the bones; the pulse in the heart, of every land.

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For my efforts to promote Natural History in the UAE, I won ENHG - Abu Dhabi's Bish Brown Award. It was presented to me by H.E.S.N., who hadn't seen Manal in ages.

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A narrated Prezi I created for a Contemporary Issues Conference, USQ, Australia (details @ YouTube).

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Cultivating a Culture of Curiosity: Colligation and Its Rewards

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Incorporating Research, Writing, and Technology, we brought static local museum displays to life.

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A researched description brings the origins of this early kitchen utensil to life, in this project exemplar.

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Humor is important. A professor left marking on our work table for weeks. I began with a couple of leaves; then vines; and, finally, eggplants.  :^)

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While readying a group of students to be Oil Operator Trainees in the growing Oil Bunkering Sector, it became clear that there was still a big chasm between Employer and Employee Expectations.

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Students used Social Media feeds to promote their interests, and they kept our communities informed.

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The reporter here misidentified me as a Doctor, though I am hopeful that I will pursue my Doctorate of Education. I am grateful to be back in the UAE, my second home.

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ABU DHABI // Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development, honoured two academics on Wednesday for their contribution to natural history and heritage as part of the Emirates Natural History Group.

"Your efforts," Sheikh Nahyan told award winners Dr Sabah Jasim and Dr David Edwards, "are of value not just for us, but for our young people in the years ahead. We are grateful for your dedicated efforts and for your achievements".

Dr Jasim, director of the Sharjah Directorate of Archaeology, received the Sheikh Mubarak bin Mohammed Annual Award for Natural History and Heritage, which recognises significant contributors to the knowledge and conservation of the UAE's heritage.

"There have been quite significant finds in the field of archaeology in recent years and I am honoured and thrilled to receive this recognition by the sheikh," Dr Jasim said.

During his 20 years working with the Department of Culture and Information, Dr Jasim, an Iraqi British citizen, has excavated numerous sites as head of the Sharjah local team. He has made several impressive findings in the UAE, including a discovery that was published in Scientific American showing that human beings inhabited the UAE about 125,000 years ago. The dig took place in 2010.

"Nobody would have expected to find traces of the first migrants who came from Africa and settled in the emirate of Sharjah. This had never been known before," he said. "It was surprising to us."

According to Dr Jasim, more has been found and discovered than he ever imagined..

"Understanding the past is exploring the roots of the people who originated here, and the more we discover about our ancestors the more we can appreciate and cherish our history," he said.

Dr Edwards, from Canada, was given the Bish Brown Award for his efforts to popularise and promote wider recognition of the natural history and heritage of Fujairah.

"When I think of the living legacy of Bish Brown, and when I read the names of past recipients on the award's base, they silently say to me, 'I dare you. I dare you to contribute as much as we have'," Dr Edwards said.

He was honoured for his role in spearheading the establishment of the Fujairah chapter of the Emirates Natural History Group.

The chapter provides residents of the east coast of the UAE with a way of learning about the natural history and heritage of the country, through lectures and field visits.

Dr Edwards has been instrumental in securing the patronage of Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad, Crown Prince of Fujairah, for the chapter, and in persuading Sheikh Abdullah bin Suhail Al Sharqi to act as the chapter's honorary chairman.

Dr Edwards' interest in the UAE begain in 2001, when he read The Oasis by Gertrude Dyck, a midwife who helped to deliver countless babies in the country.

Her book "opened my eyes to the conditions that long-serving expatriate pioneers discovered when they first came to the Trucial States in the 1950s and 1960s, and made me eager to learn more about the country's storied past", he said.

Dr Edwards' "day job" is teaching English to students bound for the Higher Colleges of Technology in Fujairah, and he said the warmness and hospitality of the Emirati people make him love living and working here.

During the awards ceremony, held at Sheikh Nahyan's majlis in Al Bateen, the sheikh updated the guests with news of legislation meant to unify heritage laws in the UAE.

According to Dr Jasim, the existing law of antiquities was either emirate-specific or non-existent. The new law will unify and regulate the work and terms of archeological digs across the country.

nalwasmi@thenational.ae

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Men honoured for contributions to UAE natural history and heritage

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ABU DHABI // Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development, honoured two academics on Wednesday for their contribution to natural history and heritage as part of the Emirates Natural History Group. "Your efforts," Sheikh Nahyan told award winners Dr Sabah Jasim and Dr David Edwards, "are of value not just for us, but for our young people in the years ahead.