Millennium Development Goals Progress
Back in 2004 I was a part of a series of workshops at the Commonwealth of Learning's Pan Pacific Forum in Dunedin where we focused our thoughts on the way education could contribute to achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goals. Saturday's auspcious date - 070707 - marked the halfway point to the 2015 deadline for achieving these goals, and a progress report by the United Nations to mark the occasion has found that while there has been clear progress, their overall success is still far from assured, and will depend in large part on whether developed countries make good on their aid commitments.
I was interested to read the summary of the report and thought of the dozens of teachers around the country who could be tapping into this very useful data as a part of their social sciences programmes. Of particular interest was the chart that summarises the state of play in each of the eight goals, and differentiated across the ten main regions of the world.
The Chart shows progress as of June 2007, based on data for selected indicators in each of the eight Goals. More detailed information relating to specific countries in each region can be found by visiting the UN's Millennium Development Goals Indicators website which presents the official data, definitions, methodologies and sources for the 48 indicators to measure progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.
I'm about to start teaching my Global Classroom course again from next week, and the availability of this level of data provides a really authentic reason for engaging in Global Classroom programmes on sites such as:
- The UN CyberSchoolBus
- I*EARN'
- SOF_web Global Classroom Projects
- Wide Angle Global Classroom Projects
- Global Classroom.net
- Global Classrooms.org
- TakingITglobal.org
If you have a good global project going I'd love to hear of it to share it with the students on my course!
Comments
Hi Derek
Can you tell me more about the Global Classroom course you are teaching? Would be interested to know more :-)
Posted by: Rachel | July 23, 2007 10:06 PM
Hi Rachel
The Global Classroom course is one of the GradDipITEd courses from the University of Canterbury
http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/postgrad/qualifications/education/graddipicted.shtml
It began as a "everything you need to know about online learning" sort of course back in 1994, but has evolved a lot since then.
It now focuses mostly on the theory, pedagogy and technology behind the use of online technologies to create virtual classroom experiences for our students.
Amazes me that it has remained popular - but each year there are a dozen or so students who take it up - it provides me with my one real opportunity to practice what I preach :-)
Posted by: Derek | July 24, 2007 8:26 AM
It is absolutely great to hear how people are starting to realize the importance of such goals. Here in Los Angeles, we have a group of Inner City Students coming up with real life solutions to the MDG's.
In fact, next week they are going to visit with the President of Honduras to show him how to implement this project in their schools.
These kids are an inspiration!! www.dreamprojectun.org
Posted by: Steve Allen Media | February 29, 2008 12:57 PM