User:Rcsharma/test/UPEW2011

December 2011
Vincent Kizza is a Senior teacher trainer for SESEMAT (Secondary Science and Mathematics) program, Ministry of Education and Sports, Uganda, East Africa. He became interested in Free and Open online educational content when he found that in Uganda the teachers and students are facing the challenge of lack of access to quality educational material, particularly in sciences. This soon became his passion and his journey continued in the field of OER where he worked on prestigious projects like LugandaWiki (a Page for Luganda speakers especially in the diaspora to access Buganda culture resources); Uganda Schools OER portal page; Center for innovative physics teaching in Uganda   to build secondary school level physics content; Monitoring and evaluation course of environment programs in schools; and AfroPhysics. So motivated, he facilitated several face to face L4C workshops in his country and the online WikiEducator Gives Back eL4C41 workshop. In addition to this, Vincent is an elected member of the WikiEducator Community Council too. He also contributes as a freelance Database designer using open source tools. Reading science fiction and travelling are his interests.

Please join us in congratulating the very talented and WikiArtisan, Vincent Kizza! WE wish him all success towards his dream of contributing to science education in Uganda!!

November 2011
Rashmi Kathuria is a teacher working in Kulachi Hansraj Model School, Delhi, India. A highly talented Post Graduate Mathematics teacher, she was the recipient of National Best e-teacher award in 2007 by the then President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. There has been no stopping her. She has been continuously honoured for her skills and for spreading awareness for Mathematics education. She was awarded first prize for Best Teaching Practices in 2008 organized by NIIT (National Institute of Information Technology) to facilitate interaction between educational researchers and the teaching community and to demonstrate and share innovative teaching practices they have found to be highly effective. She is also the recipient of a special prize for creating best e-lesson for innovative and enriching teaching/learning at Kulachi Hansraj Model School, Delhi, India. She was honoured by CII (Confederation of India Industries) Shiksha on promoting the use of technology. She strongly supports open source software and keeps on exploring various possibilities of using offline and online tools in classroom. Way back in December 2006, she created her first blog MathematicsLearning. After that she created a very successful blog for her classroom Planet Infinity. Her success mantra lies in "Success lies in making efforts." She believes that Wikieducator is surely a brilliant concept. She reflects, “''I will add my drop of knowledge to this vast ocean of knowledge and spread the word. Wikieducator has become an addiction. While exploring, I am not only learning but getting so many ideas of using it in education. Great!''”

Let's congratulate Rashmi for being the UPE winner for November 2011!

October 2011
Alejandra Guajardo is from Lima, Perú, South America. She is studying a linguistics Master Degree at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. She has also been working as the co-ordinator of a Post Graduated Linguistics course focused on minority and endangered languages at Ricardo Palma University in Lima city. Her interests lie in languages, intercultural experiences, education of adults and web 2.0. She is a firm believer in sharing ideas and experiences and thus uses Moodle, Blogs, Podcasts and other tools for effective teaching. "Aula de Lingüística" is an online Moodle based course on Descriptive Linguistics and Phonetics.

She is committed to developing open educational content and resources as well as collaborate and help new Wiki-friends on their way to becoming Wiki-buddies.

Please join us in congratulating the WikiArtisan, Alejandra Guajardo as the UPE winner for October 2011!

September 2011
Dr. Indira Koneru holds Ph.D. degree in Open Distance Education; M.Phil. in Library & Information Science; PG degrees in Sociology and Library & Information Science; and an UG degree in Biology. Her Doctoral Research "A Study of Information Literacy Skills of BRAOU Learners: Designing an Integrated Information Portal” was fundamentally an endeavor to ascertain the information competency level of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University learners. Focus of her study was on investigating learners’ information seeking behavior, information evaluation skills and their fair use practices.

Currently she is involved in research in the field of ICT-enabled information and educational services. She is a speaker at conferences and volunteers as a facilitator of online workshops at |Integrating Technology for Active Lifelong Learning (IT4ALL), an informal volunteer network that offers free or low cost professional development workshops. To make a livelihood, she works as Library & Information Science Educator at ICFAI Flexible Education, ICFAI University, Hyderabad.

Being an Instructional Designer with over 10 years of experience in Academia & Research and 6 years in Instructional Design, she has been designing, developing and evaluating Courseware for UG/PG Courses offered through Distance Mode. In addition, she is a skilled Instructional Designer with sound knowledge of Learning Theories; an experienced Moodler; a successful teaching and learning facilitator; a technophile who works well with ICTs; a team player with collaborative and multitasking skills…Wow..!!

Please join us in congratulation the WikiArtisan, Dr. Indira Koneru!

August 2011


Álvaro Ricárdez Scherenberg, Mexican, is a retired Civil Engineer, and now working as a TEFL teacher in a private junior high school in Oaxaca City, Oaxaca State, Mexico. He loves technology because to him the Internet is that wonderful tool which allows us to share our knowledge, doubts, problems, triumphs and discoveries with the whole world!

He has a wonderful WikiEducator page. He strongly believes that Wikis are a magnificent tool to do collaborative work. Therefore he recommends "...learning to use them (Wikis)is the first step to open and share the treasures that we can develop and create as a community for the benefit of all our human species. I'm sure about it! it could seem a dream at first sight, but I'm sure it is perfectly feasible as long as we all work with our hearts and faith on this magnificent dream!..."

Please join us in congratulating Álvaro for this achievement to be UPE winner for August 2011 and wish him all the best for sharing his magnificent dream!

July 2011


Vilimaka Foliaki (popularly called as Vili) is currently working at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, as a teacher educator. From a humble beginning of doing some odd jobs, he has achieved greater heights as a teacher educator. He has earned his BSc degree with a double major in Biology and Chemistry from the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and a Graduate Diploma and MSc in Science Education both from Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. He has a dream of doing doctoral studies preferably in science learning design using multimedia. He is working on wiki projects like [| Transparent Rings Atomic Model]; [|The Periodic Kingdom: 3D-Periodic Trends]; and [|Climate change and the Pacific Islands]. Strongly bonded to his family, he loves gardening, playing with his dogs Lassie and Buddy, and cat, Pus. Please join us in congratulating Vili for this achievement and wishing him best for his doctoral studies!!

May 2011


DR K S Ramakrishnan is working as an Assistant Professor, School of Education, Tamil Nadu Open University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. He is a firm believer of lifelong learning and inspires his students. His philosophy reflects in what Rabindranath Tagore said, "A teacher is a constant learner; A burning candle alone can ignite another candle". He has shown great progress in just a month in his first ever WikiEducator workshop EL4C50. He was the most active participant of our workshop, as indicated by the maximum edits during the workshop. The meaningful content added by him is exemplary. Use of templates and many types of formats are unique to his page. Please join us in congratulating Dr Ramakrishnan for this achievement!!

April 2011


Dr. Joyce McKnight is very active on WikiEducator and on OER University. Dr. KcKnight is assistant professor at the State University of New York/Empire State College. Dr. McKnight has contributed a great deal of time to leading the OER movement around the world. She is open to sharing her ideas and inspiring educators to get involved in the OER movement and OER university. Let's congratulate Dr. Mcknight with the April 2011 UPE user award.

March 2011
Dr Kalpana S Gupte has been actively involved in civic issues and has played a leadership role in a citizen initiative. She also supports Aastha Breast Cancer Support Group, Pune, Maharastra (India). She has been involved in the National Literacy Mission and has implemented several innovative projects with the objective of helping the neo-literates retain the newly acquired literacy skills. This included women's camp, reading and listening centres at the village level and also a year-long programme was designed and implemented for out of school adolescent girls in the age group of 18 to 25 years. She has developed a Guide for newly enrolled Distance Learners as one of her wiki projects and also spreads awareness about Breast Cancer and the risk factors. She is a good source of inspiration to wikieducator participants, too. She works as Deputy Director at Indira Gandhi National Open University, Regional Centre, Pune. Congratulations to Kalpana!

February 2011
Valerie Taylor has been working with community college educators building personal learning networks. Advocating universal access to science and engineering education. Valerie is a WikiEducator Community Council member. She is passionate about learning and sharing. Valerie contributes a great deal of her time to collaborating with educators on WikiEducator and on the Moodle on WikiEducator. Let's congratulate Valerie for the amazing work she has been doing for educators around the world through WikiEducator.