UPE

The User Page Expo ("UPE" to its friends) is an ongoing event recognising those WikiEducator user pages that are particularly informative, innovative, visually appealing, or otherwise just plain clever.

UPE isn't an official thing, it's just a small group of WikiEducators who got it in their heads to increase public appreciation for well done user pages. This ad hoc conspiracy was started by Minhaaj ur Rehman and Steve Foerster, and has been maintained by Nellie Deutsch, Patricia Schlicht and Peter Rawsthorne.

If you think that someone's user page is worthy of recognition by your fellow WikiEducators (even if it's your own!) the nomination process is simple -- just let Nellie, Patricia and Ramesh know. Unless we think you're dead wrong, we'll solemnly convene the award committee and announce that a new award has been made!

As of February 1, 2011, Patricia Schlicht has made her place available, and Ramesh has kindly accepted to step in.

So, what sort of criteria impress us?


 * We're keen on infoboxes, especially when they're full of good information.
 * Seeing that you're working on going up in WikiMaster levels is never a bad thing.
 * If you're a WikiNeighbour or an Ambassador for WikiEducator, then you might either include a section that details how you've helped the community, or link to where that's detailed elsewhere.

But mostly we want to see something that's simply well done, and preferably clever. We know you have it in you!

The awardees will be provided with a Featured User Page template to their user pages.

May 2014
It was Steve and Minhaaj ur Rehman who started User Page Expo (UPE) in July 2008 to honour an exemplary WikiEducator every month. UPE is a community award to honour WikiEducator editors. Currently Steve is the President, New World University at Dominica. He is also working as an Education Specialist with MicroStrategy Inc in writing and revising textbooks used for instructor-led and independent study technical training courses. He has performed other roles as well like E-Learning Consultant, IT Instructor, DIrector of Online Education at Virginia International University and Director, E-Learning Services at Marymount University, USA. He is deeply involved with WikiEducator and OERs. He has been fairly active with iCommons, the most publicly inclusive of the Creative Commons affiliated organizations. He was part of WikiEducator's interim International Advisory Board, and in 2008 was elected to the first Community Council. He does not leave any chance to promote WikiEducator through our Ambassadors program. Here's his personal record. A strong supporter of free culture movement, especially the Open Access/Access to Knowledge movement, he has waived all claim of copyright (economic and moral) for all content by him to WikiEducator and put into the public domain.

Pl join us in congratulating and thanking Steve for starting (an ad-hoc conspiracy...lol...) and ever going strong The UPE.

April 2014
Passionate about Science and Education, M Fabiana Kubke is a research scientist and university biology teacher at the University of Auckland. She graduated as a biologist at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Further she did her Masters and PhD at the University of Connecticut. After 7 years working as a post-doc at the University of Maryland she relocated to Auckland New Zealand to join the University of Auckland where she continues. She maintains a blog at Building Blogs of Science which also shows up in Sciblogs.co.nz and in Talking Teaching. She is one of the co-founders of the Citizen Science New Zealand project, and volunteers in the olpc project. Please join us in congratulating M Fabiana Kubke for being the UPE winner for April 2014!

March 2014
UPE is a community award to honour WikiEducator editors. In exceptional cases we may recognise visionary leaders who have contributed to the success of the community. Sir John Daniel, O.C. served as President and C.E.O. of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) from 2004 to 2012. The formative years of the WikiEducator project were nurtured by the COL. Sir John provided valuable advice and strategic direction at the inception meeting for the OER universitas (OERu) advising that the fledgling network should be “open but tough”. On November 1, 2013, he officiated at the launch of the OERu, an innovative education system to revolutionise tertiary learning. On 30 December 2013 the Governor-General of Canada named Sir John Daniel as an Officer of the Order of Canada in the New Year's List. Sir John received this prestigious award for his “advancement of open learning and distance education in Canada and around the world”. Sir John Daniel was educated at Christ’s Hospital and pursued his full-time university studies in Metallurgy at the universities of Oxford and Paris. Later he demonstrated his commitment to lifelong learning by taking 25 years to complete a part-time Master’s degree in Educational Technology at Concordia University. The internship for that programme, which took him to the UK Open University in 1972, was a life-changing experience. He saw the future of higher education and wanted to be part of it. This quest took him on an international odyssey with appointments at the École Polytechnique, Université de Montréal (professeur assistant/agrégé, 1969-73); Télé-université, Université du Québec (Directeur des Études, 1973-77); Athabasca University (Vice-President for Learning Services, 1978-80); Concordia University (Vice-Rector, Academic, 1980-84); Laurentian University (President/Recteur, 1984-90); The Open University (Vice-Chancellor, 1990-2001); UNESCO (Assistant Director-General for Education, 2001-04); and the Commonwealth of Learning (President, 2004-12). Let's express our thanks, regards and respects to him for guiding the WikiEducator community in opening educational opportunity.

February 2014
Sanjaya Mishra has been associate with WikiEducator since its early days. He has been involved in lot of trainings on OER, Open Access, WikiEducator, Open and Distance Learning, E-Learning etc. Currently he is the Director of Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), New Delhi. Before joining CEMCA, he was working as Programme Specialist (ICT in Education, Science & Culture) at the Knowledge Societies Division, UNESCO, Paris. When at UNESCO, he facilitated the adoption of open access to scientific information and research. In addition, he has served the Indira Gandhi National Open University for over 17 years as an Associate Professor and Assistant Regional Director to promote democratisation of higher education. Very recently he received the second Professor G. Ram Reddy Social Scientist Award 2013 (in a function held on December 17, 2013) at Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University Campus, Hyderabad, India. Professor G. Ram Reddy Memorial Trust conferred the award in recognition of Dr. Mishra’s contributions to open and distance learning, particularly for promoting the use of technology in education. The Award is given in the memory of Professor Reddy, the father of distance education in India, first Vice President of COL and the first Vice Chancellor of Dr. BRAOU and Indira Gandhi National Open University.

With a blend of academic and professional qualifications in library and information science, distance education, television production and training and development, he has been promoting the use of educational multimedia, eLearning and use of open educational resources (OER)and open access to scientific information around the world and, in particular, Asia. During his service in different capacities at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), amongst many innovative activities and programmes, he developed the successful OER-based one-year Post-Graduate Diploma in eLearning. As a staff developer and trainer, Dr. Mishra has received the ISTD-Vivekanand National Award for Excellence in Human Resource Development and Training in 2007, and has facilitated over 100 training sessions in over 12 countries. He has contributed over 200 publications as books, chapters, journal papers, conference presentations, book reviews and distance learning materials.

Please join us in congratulating Dr Sanjaya Mishra, the WikiArtisan, for being the UPE winner for February 2014!

January 2014
It was in February 2006 the domain names for wikieducator.org, wikieducator.net and wikieductor.com were registered by Wayne Mackintosh, a WikiEducator mailing list was created by Brent Simpson in January 2007 and the WikiEducator launched the highly popular Learning4Content project in January 2008. WikiEducator's first online training session was conducted in February 2007, since then our WE is now a 67,882 registered user strong community having provided online training to many thousand teachers and professionals. As an evolving community, WE're turning the digital divide into digital dividends using free content and open networks.

Currently Wayne is the founding Director of the OER Foundation and the International Centre for Open Education based at Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. He also holds the UNESCO-COL Chair in OER at Otago Polytechnic. It was during his stint at the Commonwealth of Learning he founded the WikiEducator, we all are in agreement with him for it to be the most rewarding project for turning the digital divide into digital dividends for thousands of teachers, students and educators. He was also an Associate Professor and founding director of the Centre for Flexible and Distance Learning (CFDL) at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Truly a global figure, he has worked and lived in three different regions of the Commonwealth, namely Africa (South Africa), the Pacific (New Zealand) and North America (Canada).

We believe that its about time now that WE express our thanks to the founder of WikiEducator, Dr Wayne Mackintosh, he sure is a winner of our hearts!!

December 2013
Hanaa Khamis is an instructional technologist at The American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt. Her major is Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). She wrote her MA thesis on the use of communication strategies in online interactions. She has been using web 2.0 tools and researching their impact on learning and teaching. Professionally, she teaches university students English as a foreign language, and trains teachers on methodology and instructional technology. Her area of interest are cross-cultural communication and communities of practice, instructional technology, network-based language teaching, language acquisition, pragmatics, and action research. Furthermore she is interested in these professional development areas: Methods of Teaching, Computer/Internet Skills, Soft Skills, Research Methodology, Assessment Techniques.

As we say good bye to 2013, lets congratulate our first winner from Egypt, Ms. Hanaa Khamis for being UPE winner for December 2013!

November 2013
Luis Miguel Morillas is a computer science teacher at CPIFP Los Enlaces, Zaragoza, Spain. He has been writing codes in Python, HTML, C++, CSS, C#, Java, XML and C. He has contributed a lot to the Open Source software. In addition to acquiring skills in computer science from University of Zaragoza, he obtained degree in Theology from Theology University, Barcelona and Centro de Estudios de Teologia de Aragon (Theology Studies Center of Aragon). He has created lot of open educational resources on computer science. Please do visit his page to see his great work.

please join us in congratulating Luis for being the UPE winner for November 2013!

October 2013
Susan Dixon lives in Honolulu, USA. She has received her education from Lincoln Land Community College; American Academy of Nutrition; and Hawaii College of Health Sciences. She was a participant at eL4C54, a Learning4Content workshop to learn wiki skills and showed great progress in learning wiki skills! She is interested in Free Education for All and is a supporter of Global Peace. She is determined to become a Global Online Educator, achieve a National Teacher Certification and contribute a monthly lesson to WikiEducator. Wow!! Please join us in congratulating Susan for being the UPE winner for October 2013!!

September 2013
Dr Michael Verhaart is an Associate Professor in Information Technology at the Eastern Institute of Technology, in Hawke's Bay (EIT Hawke's Bay), New Zealand. In 2009 he completed his PhD in Information Systems with Massey University, New Zealand. In addition to his real self, he is VirtualMV which has links to his wiki and blog to manage his content. He has a strong interest in using Web based technology to support his teaching, particularly in the area of personal support - as he believes that ... "we share ourselves in our teaching - not just content, so what we deliver is peculiar to us". An expert WikiEducator - he has been a (Co-)Facilitator for various Learning4Content online Workshops like eL4C48, eL4C50; and EL4C51 - WikiEducator Learning4Content Workshops. Please join us in congratulating Michael for being the UPE winner for September 2013!!

August 2013
Dr Pankaj Khare is Registrar, Student Registration Division of Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, India. He holds a doctorate in Distance Education on "Datamining applications in Distance education" from a open University in India. in addition to being an expert Geologist and a seasoned Wikieducator, he is a pioneer in the field of open learning! He has more than 23 years of experience in formal and distance education. He also served at the Commonwealth of Learning as Programme Officer. He has conducted many Learning4Content workshops in face-to-face mode (like at IGNOU, School of Learning at Delhi University; Vardhman Mahaveer Open University, Kota, Rajasthan etc) and very recently successfully facilitated L4C54 workshop Learn Wiki Skills for leveraging the potential of Open Educational Resources from June 26 - July 10, 2013. Some of his ongoing projects are Commonwealth Computer Navigator's Certificate; Handbook of Open Universities; Bangladesh Open School Project; Scenerio Based eLearning Project; Learning4Content-EoI;  Application of WikiEducator in ODL; Tutorials on Tables;  Photo Geology - Aerial Photographs etc. He is an elected member of the WikiEducator Community Council and Interim Advisory Board of WikiEducator India. Please join us in congratulating very talented and a stalwart WikiPankaj for being the UPE winner for August 2013!

July 2013
Kamani Samarasinghe is a lecturer teaching Information Technology at the University of the Visual & Performing Arts in Sri Lanka. In addition, she is a research student at the University of Peradeniya. She joined the Faculty of Music at the University of the Visual & Performing Arts in May 2006. Later on she did her Masters at Post-Graduate Institute of Science University of Peradeniya Sri Lanka in 2009. She is a dedicated WikiEducator because she believes it can be used for developing open education courses, as training resources.

Please join us in congratulating the very talented, young and first from Sri Lanka, Kamani Samarasinghe for being the UPE winner for July 2013!

June 2013
Kim Tucker is a researcher, writer, facilitator and catalyst interested in the global impact of technology and connected collaborative learning, and knowledge transfer across disciplines and divides. He is a promoter of free software and "libre knowledge." He is deeply involved in activities of Wikieducator and is an appointed member of the WikiEducator Community Council. He facilitates and catalyses individual, team and organisational transformation. He also provides coaching for knowledge management. His area of specialisation are strategic foresight; migration to free/libre and open source software; open innovation and knowledge management; and Free/Libre and Open Education.

Lets congratulate Kim for being the UPE winner for June 2013!

May 2013
Dr. Laxmi Narayan Yadav is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Govt. P.G. College Mahendergarh, India. He has vast experience working in Media and has been quite active in the use of ICT for delivery of learning modules and in the development of script for Educational Television. He further enhanced his media skills by attending workshops on the script writing for the Television and Mass Media. Sharing his experiences, he has participated in many national and international seminars and conferences. Additionally, he has presented his academic papers, there. With a Doctorate degree in Economics from Gorakhpur University, India, he further obtained his Masters of Business Administration with specialisation in Finance. He is a big supporter of Open Educational Resources and wishes to create and contribute to this field. He believes, "Nothing is too difficult, it's only our inhibitions which makes everything difficult."

Lets congratulate Laxmi Narayan for being the UPE winner for May 2013!

April 2013
Benjamin Stewart is an EFL teacher educator and researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes in Mexico. He has a great interest in action research for anyone teaching English to students of other languages (TESOL). He maintains an open and ongoing Distance English Language Training (DELT) workshop as well as TESOL Talk. In addition, he also contributes regularly to the Collaborative Understandings website, offers opencourseware, and is an author for Edukwest. He has also been contributing to the world of OERs by gifting his time and effort in assisting with eL4C online workshops, providing guidance to participants. He has delivered numerous talks and conducted many workshops for professional development of teachers. His WikiEducator User Page truly reflects his achievements!

Lets congratulate Benjamin, the WikiArtisan, for being the UPE winner for April 2013!!

March 2013
Ibrahim Kolawole Oyekanmi (popularly known as "Mallamibro" to friends) is the Principal IT Lecture in his own company, the Mallamibro ICT Academy in Kano, Nigeria. He has taught at different levels from Nursery and primary schools to Polytechnic. He is a member of IEEE and the Computer Science Teachers' Association. Currently he is teaching computer application packages ranging from the Microsoft Suite (2003 & 2007) in his Computer Training Academy in Kano, Nigeria. As an information technology educator, he dreams of to see as many people as possible become Computer literate. To achieve his dream, he puts his belief into practice through Wikieducator, which he re-affirms is one way of "training the trainers". As a contribution to community, he runs a local NGO "Youth Progressive Peace & Justice Forum" (YPPJF) to offer occupational skills to youths in his locality. This NGO organizes a quarterly Tuition-free training programme in which 25 participants are trained in basic computer appreciation skills like Word-processing, Desktop Publishing, Basic Data management and Graphic Design. Participants also participate in lectures on basic human rights, what they are and how to protect them. They have trained over 400 youths from various programmes of the YPPJF. There is yet another feather to his cap, being E-Mentor for "Teachers-Without-Border's Certificate of Teaching Mastery Program". Mallamibro feels that he is at his best when involved with a class that is actively involved in activities. He reflects, "...Knowledge acquisition and sharing is one big joy of life, who would wish for life without knowledge?..."

Please join us in congratulating the first UPE winner from Nigeria, the very talented Ibrahim Oyekanmi.

February 2013
Sarita Kumar is an Associate Professor of Zoology at Acharya Narendra Dev College, University of Delhi where she established the Department of Zoology. She has also taught at Maitreyi COllege, Shivaji College and Deen Dayal Upadhayay College, Delhi. In addition to teaching, she keeps herself busy in research activities, curriculum development, and training of post graduate teachers of State Council of Educational Research & Training. She has also developed e-content for higher education. She has been one of the coordinators for the first workshop "WikiEducator - WikiEd-08" conducted at her college (in 2008). A diploma holder in French, she loves music, attempting Sudoku, cross-words and word games. She found her passion in writing and has authored ten books. Due to her exemplary services, she was recognized as Distinguished Teacher by University of Delhi in 2009; conferred "Meritorious Teacher Award" by the Directorate of Higher Education, Government of NCT of Delhi in 2011; and was one of the ‘Open Access Competition Winners’ amongst the ten worldwide by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), United Kingdom.

Visit her colorful and informational Wikieducator user page and congratulate on being February 2013 UPE winner!

January 2013
Nedal Shatat is a teacher of Mathematics at Emad Al-Dean Zenky high school for boys located in Madaba. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in 1992 from University of Baghdad and soon thereafter he began his career as teacher of Mathematics. With the purpose of making teaching more interesting and less difficult, he has developed his professional teaching skills and qualifications. He undertook a high diploma (2004-06) from Department of Computer Science from Amman Arab University, Jordan. At the school, he had many other responsibilites, in addition to teaching Maths, like offering training to other teachers, developing and updating school website, member of Math's and Science committee, safety committee, school developing committee and parents-teachers committee. A winner of Queen Rania Prize (2008), he has certifications from ICDL, Intel, EMaths, and ThinkingTools. Furthermore, he is involved in community and volunteer activities like Madaba community developing association, training regional math's teachers on using Arabic Math typing and as a member of the Association for Youth and Students' Voluntary Activities. Do not forget to see his excellent work on Animated Maths on his WikiEDucator page. Let's congratulate him on being the UPE winner for January 2013 and first from Jordan!

December 2012
Vukasin B. Vasic (Вукашин Б Васић) is a Teacher at Nada Dimic School of Economics, Zemun at Belgrade in Serbia. He teaches ICT. He obtained his Master of Science in Economics. Basketball Club Partizan Belgrade (Кошаркашки клуб Партизан) and Football Club Partizan (Фудбалски клуб Партизан) are his favourite. See him in action at his FaceBook page. He believes in, “If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that”. Let's congratulate him on being the UPE winner for December 2012!

November 2012
Dr. Savithri Singh is the Principal of Acharya Narendra Dev College (ANDC). She is a multi-talented Educator, WikiEducator, Administrator, Traveler, Ornithologist, and a lot more! With over 30 years of teaching experience, she is a trained Botanist. In addition, she contributes to issues on women, environment, science education - curriculum, syllabus - and free and equal access to education. She has been using Wikieducator (WE) for collaborative development of materials in a project involving IGNOU, INBAR, COL, CIBART and ANDC. She encourages research by faculty and promotes workshops for and experiment-based research projects by undergraduate studentshttp://wikieducator.org/ANDC_DU CPURT]. Her vision is Acharya Narendra Dev College to be identified as a Centre for excellence in research in the sciences. She is a member of the National Focus Group on Teaching of Science, and National Knowledge Commission – Working group on Science and Maths. She was an elected member of the First Community Council and is an Ambassador of WE in India. At present, she is involved in Bamboo and Rattan project; developing resources for undergraduate courses on WE; Pilot Elearn project of Delhi University; and Elearn project of NCERT|NCERT etc. She has conducted f2f L4C workshops. Old Hindi film songs of great Indian Singer Mukesh are her favourite.

Pl join us in congratulating Dr. Savithri for being the UPE winner for November 2012!

October 2012
Mahmudul Huq Foez is a freelance journalist and researcher. He lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh.He has great plans for promoting WikiEducator and is working on developing WikiEducator community in Bangla. He is involved in projects which serve grassroot journalism, local governance, and all educational sectors in Bangladesh. He has a beautiful blog (in Bangla). He proudly says, "Now I am a Wiki Educator . I want to COLOUR        <font color="Blue">my work with <font color="Orange">WIKI.         ".

Please see Mahmudul's beautiful and colourful WikiEducator page and join us in congratulating him for being the UPE winner for October 2012!

September 2012
Brent Simpson is an experienced WikiEducator and a custodian at Wikiversity. In addition, he is also a member of the Advisory Board. He lives on Waiheke Island, New Zealand/Aotearoa. Brent is also a Sysop & Beauracrat for Wikieducator as well as currently on the Community Council. He works for the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, (NICAI). He has also worked on TILT, a resource for teaching Information Literacy that has been freely distributed under David Wileys original Open Publication License, since 2000 and is now the Information Literacy tutorial at hundreds of institutions worldwide. Brent has strong interest (/has worked on) in the following: WikiEducator Audacity Tutorial; Wikieducator Tutorials; The Learning Design Project on WikiEducator; and Main Page redesign.

Let's congratulate Brent for being the UPE winner for September 2012!

August 2012
Dr Sujata Dhopte teaches Economics at M K Sanghvi College of Commerce & Economics, Mumbai. A talented multilingual (speaks Marathi, Sanskrit, Hindi and English fluently) she is a Doctorate in Management. Serving Learning4Content Community on WikiEducator, she is the Technical Coordinator for OER project of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL)/ CEMCA and Mumbai University. Contributing to the society, she started a Social Awareness Programme ‘Samvedana’ for students through field visits to the places like Orphanages, Handicapping Schools, Remand Home, Hospitals, Old Age Homes as a part of Extension programme. She is also involved in Population Education Project and Adult Education Programme for R ward, Mumbai division. Her another achievement is being the Field Coordinator for extending training and evaluation for Six Colleges by Department of Life Long Learning & Extension, University of Mumbai. Recognising her services to the community, Mumbai University awarded her ‘Guest of Honour’ as Editor for ‘Samvedana’ Magazine for Students Life Long Learning & Extension Activity. She was also awarded First Position among 172 Colleges of Mumbai University's UDAN Festival for the Skit' Computer Ki Palkhi', which she wrote and directed.

Please join us in congratulating Dr Sujata Dhopte for being the UPE winner for August 2012!

July 2012
Sean Rogers, a Trinidadian, is the Managing Director and owner of Genesis Innovative Solutions Ltd, located in Trinidad and Tobago. He is a trained and Certified engineer in the installation fiber optical cables, Category 5 and Category 6 for the commercial and residential application. His firm looks after the designing, deploying reliable and durable networks to enhance organisations communication capacity. Sean targets to increase the productivity, boost the firm's presence in industry and training of the companies' IT staff so that such staff efficiently administers the company’s network to maintain a 99.99% up time. Although he has an experience of over a decade of working in telecommunications and ICT industry, his quest of learning more and more has not stopped, so he is Currently pursuing a foreign language - Spanish at the Venezuelan Embassy in Trinidad and an Associate Degree in Project Manager at the cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies in Trinidad.

Let's congratulate Sean for being the July 2012 UPE winner!

Felicidades, Sean, por ser el ganador de la UPE y desearle todo el éxito en tu carrera!

June 2012
Professor Betty Hurley-Dasgupta, a doctorate in Mathematics Education from the University of Rochester, is an Area Coordinator for primarily mathematics courses at the Center for Distance Learning of SUNY Empire State College where she has been working since 1982. Before that, she worked for a number of years at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in physics and math learning centers. She has co-facilitated a MOOC with Carol Yeager which focused on Creativity and Multicultural Communication. She is a member of the OERu team and is currently working in creating OERs to help learners develop stronger quantitative skills. You may like to know more about her Project Studying Math At Empire State College.

Another area of interest is the Personal Learning Environments (PLE) where she currently coordinates a pilot project (Digication) with faculty and students. Furthermore, she is implementing Mahara and Moodle for her classes.

Please join us in congratulating Betty for being the UPE winner for June 2012!

May 2012
Pramod Kumar T.K. is Assistant Director (Academic) at National Institure of Open Schooling. He obtained his Masters in Physics from University of Pune and Master of Arts in Distance Eduation from IGNOU. He is now pursuing MPhil (Distance Education) from Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University. He is an expert programmer in FORTRAN, C, C++ etc {hope Microsoft Corp. is getting attentive!}.

He is an achiever. An awardee of Maha Mahopadhya Datto Waman Potdar Prize for excellence in B.Ed, he also received a Certificate of appreciation from D.A.V .Regional Directorate, Western Region in 2005. He secured first Place in Pune District Zone Chess championship in 1990 and has won prizes at different levels in Teaching Aids Competitions. An innovator by nature, he got listed an innovative Geometrical Instrument for patent by Mumbai Patent Office. In addition, the design of Vector Addition toy; Ohm’s Law apparatus; Model to demonstrate SHM as projection of UCM; and all in one magnetism apparatus are to his credit! Further to his achievements are his publications. He has co-ordinated and edited Four Volumes of Revised School Health Manuals of Central Board of Secondary Education; and Teachers’ Manual on Life Skills for classes IX-X, India.

Please join us in congratulating Pramod for being the UPE winner for May 2012! And those who are planning to challenge him for a Chess competition...visit his page and fix time and venue!!

April 2012
Vasi Doncheva is working as Flexible Learning Manager with NorthTec, New Zealand which is one of the Founding OERTen anchor partner for OER University. She is passionate about integrating Web 2.0 tools and social media to engage learners and creating learning opportunites for diverse and widely dispersed communities. Developing core competencies in technological literacies is her top agenda. She is also interested in Communities of Practice for professional development in higher education sector. Getting involved with WikiEducator is the step bringing her closer to becoming OER Champion! She has successfully facilitated the EL4C52 - WikiEducator Learning4Content Workshop held from 15 to 27 February 2012.

Lets congratulate Vasi for being the April 2012 UPE winner!

Congrats Vasi - well deserved! --Irwin DeVries 04:49, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

March 2012
Ravi Limaye is a multi-talented WikiEducator, who by profession is an Engineer and has worked in different sectors like Defence (Indian Air Force), Telecommunications, and Software and IT Applications Development. His current interests are in Education sector where he is engaged in institution building and capacity enhancement in higher education, accreditation of courses in higher education, community radio, and institution portal development and its upkeep. After completing his M.Tech. he wishes to pursue a Doctorate in open learning in higher education. A die-hard WikiEducator, he plans to develop content collaboratively via this wonderful platform. With an "Open Mindset" he is set on "Mission Wikieducator" and he says, "I will be there where I can contribute..." Lets congratulate him for being the UPE March 2012 winner and wish him all the best for his mission 'possible' of creating local level workshops via WikiEducator.

February 2012
J. Randolph Radney, earned his baccalaureate and masters degrees from Colorado Christian University (1976) and The University of Texas at Arlington (1982), respectively, in linguistics. His doctorate (also from UTA) is in humanities, with special focus on study in linguistics. In the beginning of his career, he taught guitar at the Jefferson County School District (Colorado). Later on he started teaching academic writing courses to non-native speakers of English at The University of Texas at Arlington before moving to British Columbia (Canada) in 1984. In 1994 he started teaching at Dallas, TX to help students learn a newly-developed software data management application (LinguaLinks). He joined UTA once again in 1995 as a graduate teaching assistant, this time teaching introductory linguistics courses. After completing his doctoral coursework in 1997 (which he restarted in 1995, initiated in 1984), returned to Canada, and began teaching data management and linguistics at the Canada Institute of Linguistics (CanIL), located on the campus of Trinity Western University (TWU). There in 2002 he designed and offered the introductions, critical thinking, and ethics in an online format for multiple semesters. Since 2006 he has settled in the interiors of British Columbia and taught blended learning courses for TWU/CanIL, and then, occasional courses for Thompson Rivers University. He is passionate about integrated linguistics, phenomenology, philosophical hermeneutics, and the use of Moodle and Web 2.0 technologies in education. His other passions reside in playing guitar, singing, watching sports, reading, gardening and to keep fit, he regularly exercises.

He is deeply involved with WikiEducator and facilitated WikiEducator eL4C41 workshop. Please join us in congratulating Randolph for being the UPE winner for February 2012!

January 2012
Balqis Thaahaveettil, a Post graduate Degree holder in Education from the University of Calicut, India, is a teacher educator /trainer at teacher training college. She teaches educational psychology. She is further interested in teaching school children science and math subjects; and life sciences, basics of Educational philosophy and of course English to graduate students. She has a unique style of teaching in an interactive, learner centered way helping students to overcome and tackle with problems of their varied learning styles. Currently she is keeping herself busy in giving online classes on Communicative English and Psychology (especially Educational Psychology).

she is very involved in the OER university initiative. She is also working on developing a resource for prospective teachers on microteaching which empowers them to acquire the right pedagogical skills before they start real classroom macro teaching. Another project of her is related to lesson plans and resource classes on Moral Education among children. She's also involved in taking workshops at Integrating Technology for Active Lifelong Learning (IT4ALL). Her hobbies include painting, gardening, reading, telling stories, writing poems, blogging, cooking, making things, thinking about the ultimate reality, painting and sharing knowledge.

Let's congratulate Balqis for being the UPE winner for January 2012!

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.

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.

September 2010
Dr. Cynthia D’Costa is an Indian citizen interested in e-content creation. The Yeshwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University has launched a programme entitled Bachelor in e-education. The Course aims at nurturing teaching skills, both on-line and off-line. Dr. D'Costa was part of the team that created a course 'Teacher as an e-learning specialist'. She came to Wikieducator in May 2010 as participant of one of the Learning4Content online trainings, and has since then been actively contributing content to WikiEducator. Her view of WikiEducator is described here:

W here the learner is without fear I mmediate help is quite near K nowledge runs free I nherent creativity on the spree E nrichment for empowerment - the only goal D eeply committed facilitators play their role U and I work in tow C aring to help one another grow A world sans a digital divide T hrough wikieducator we can provide O pen Education Resources for all to use R ejoice, Wikieducator brings you good news A big thank you to William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for supporting the cause of WE.

Please help us congratulate Dr. D'Costa to this wonderful achievement.

August 2010
Jenni Parker lives in Perth, Australia and came to WikiEducator in November of 2008. Since then, she has grown to become an active member of our community and recently joined our wonderful pool of Learning4Content facilitators on WikiEducator. Jenni has been semi re-tired for the past 3 years and has spent her time studying, playing in my garden and renovating her home. However, her work is never too far. In 2008 she accepted an offer from Edith Cowan University (ECU) to re-write an online course about Workplace Learning. She delivered this unit fully online in the second semester 2009, and in first semester 2010. She delivered it also face-to-face. She is currently coordinating this unit for ECU International for students in Zambia. In addition, she has also been employed by Murdoch University to tutor an online unit for pre-service teachers - ICT in the classroom, which commences 2 August, 2010. Jenni’s last assignment on WikiEducator as one in a pool of facilitators was assisting to help facilitate WikiEducator’s largest Learning4Content workshop in July/August of 2010 with over 420 participants. Please help me congratulate Jenni to this wonderful achievement!

July 2010
Sanjay Kumar Pandagale Sanjay Kumar Pandagale's first edit was made in early June of 2009. His page is exemplary and shows his creative talents and joy in the task. He is an Assistant Professor at NCERT in India, currently situated at Regional Institute of Education in Bhopal, which is a constituent unit of National Council of Educational Research and Training, New Delhi. In the last 9 years he has been working in different capacities like, State Coordinator of Maharashtra and Goa, Incharge of ICT Center, Incharge of Educational Technology Cell, Coordinator of Working With Community programme, Member of SSA monitoring team for Chattisgarh and Coordinator of EDUSAT programme. He has co-facilitated Learning4Content workshops on WikiEducator in collaboration with our team. Congratulations Sanjay. This is well deserved.

June 2010
Robert Kruhlak is our June UPE winner. Rob is not only an appointed member of the WikiEducator Community Council, he has also been with WikiEducator from the beginning stages and his contributions to WikiEducator unbeknown to many have been invaluable. He is a technical wizzard and recently converted the new WikiEducator Rich Text editing tutorials, so many of our Newbies enjoy. Rob's user page demonstrates the many WikiEducator projects he had his hands in. He is creative and innovative thinker who applies himself to the task at hand with dedication and commitment. Congratulations, Rob. This is long overdue.

May 2010
Mary Ziller joined WikiEducator through one of our Learning4Content online training workshops and has demonstrated a natural talent for using basic wiki editing skills which her user page clearly demonstrates. It is with pleasure that she was chosen as May's winner of the User page Expo Awards. This is well deserved. Her page shows the versatility of her skills and creative talents. Congratulations, Mary.

April 2010
With Ludmilla Smirnova, Ph.D being the April UPE we have swung back to recognizing an exemplary user page. Dr. Smirnova first created her user page in August of last year and has used many of the WE styles, templates and screen widgets to build a very readable user page. Her linking of the WE profile page to external OER shows how Wikis can be a part of the whole OER "ecosystem". WE can look forward to Dr. Smirnova's continued contribution to WikiEducator. With great pleasure I introduce Ludmilla Smirnova, Ph.D as the April UPE. Congratulations, Ludmilla!

March 2010
Jim Tittsler is one of WikiEducators exemplary technical people. Jim, with a handful of other people, keeps the WikiEducator technology up and running. For the longest time I have been in awe of Jim's commitment to the care and feeding of WikiEducator. I believe his belief in this project goes beyond any professional commitment, the number of hours he has committed and his dedication to innovation and making WikiEducator meet the needs of the educators who use this platform is outstanding. Jim's knowledge of the technical platform which WikiEductor is built allows the contributors to focus upon building content, rather than wonder about the technology. With awe and great admiration I announce Jim Tittsler as the March UPE. Congratulations, Jim! And thanks for working so hard in the background.

January 2010
Dr. El Borai is another exemplary WikiEducator. What stands out with Dr. Nadia El Borai is how her candidacy for the WikiEducator UPE is both with her exemplary work and with her user page. Take the time to review Dr. El Borai's user page and you will find good use of a navigation template which provides access to much of her profile information and important subjects. Upon review of Nadia's profile page you will also see the extensive contribution she has made to the WikiEducator community. With great honour I announce Dr. Nadia El Borai as the January UPE. Congratulations, Nadia!!! And the best for the next decade to you and your Family.

December 2009
Nellie is an exemplary WikiEducator. I believe that compliment doesn't go far enough in describing Nellies international works in many different capacities. I know her to facilitate many L4C workshops, be very active in the WE council, to add tremendous energy to high school education, online curriculum development and English as a second language. I know what I have described here only touches the surface of Nellies work as an educator. I often wonder if Nellie every sleeps. It has been a pleasure to work with Nellie on a number of initiatives. With great honour I announce Nellie Deutsch as the December UPE. Congratulations, Nellie!!! And the best of the season to you and your Family.

November 2009
During a recent discussion (six weeks back) the UPE team was reviewing candidates for the coming award. Abdul Halim was suggested as one of the candidates for the November UPE. I took the time to review his user page and was most impressed. I greatly appreciate his use of colors, fonts and graphics, I found myself drawn into who Abdul Halim is and all the wonderful work he does. I found his interest in community radio inspiring as I know how effective a medium it can be at a community level. It is with great pleasure that I announce Abdul Halim as the November UPE. Congratulations, Abdul Halim!!!

September 2009
A few months back it was suggested Randy Fisher be the September UPE. Randy is one of the most deserving (and hard working) members of our community. He has a very comprehensive user page with considerable information about his skills, knowledge and abilities. In the last few months, Randy has taken over as the most active WikiEducator in terms of wiki edits (http://wikieducator.org/stats/reports/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#wikipedians). Randy is an exemplary WikiEducator! Congratulations, Randy!!!

August 2009
I have the honor of announcing this month's UPE award winner. August UPE award goes to Ben Stewart, a very active member of our community. Ben is an EFL teacher educator and foreign language coordinator at a Mexican university who has been actively involved in learning and teaching on WikiEducator.

Congratulations, Ben!!!

July 2009
Anubha has been an active contributor to WikiEducator since February 2009. After being directed to Anubhas' profile page I was struck by its comprehensiveness and couldn't help but commenting to myself how it is as exemplary as a UPE could be. After reading through all the contents of Anubhas' profile page I feel I now know this WE community member, even though we have never met in a workshop or a discussion I know we could share many stories and enjoy a walk through a heavily forested trail. It is with great pleasure to award Anubha Das the July 2009 featured user page. Congratulations, Anubha Das.

June 2009
When I first came across Phil's work I couldn't help but have a big smile on my face. I like his tag line of "No rest for the wikied". I know of a saying "No rest for the wicked." I wonder how these two relate ;) As I further explored Phil's work I was encouraged by his efforts to make WikiEducator available in four languages (English, Spanish, Portugese & French). He may not be doing the translation himself, yet he is making things happen. Also, take a look around all of Phil's profile sub-pages - so much great work in bringing references and resources together. It is gives me great pleasure to award Phil Bartle the June 2009 featured user page. Congratulations, Phil.

May 2009
I've been a follower of Declan for as long as he has been a member of WikiEducator. His exemplary work in creating K12 curriculum and using WE as a platform to facilitate his work sets a fantastic example. Look around WE at the middle school biology OER materials, in particular the St. Michael's College and you will see Declan's work, mentorship and influence. It is an honor to award Declan McCabe as the May 2009 featured user page. Check out his user page, and follow all the St. Michael's College biology projects. Congratulations, Declan.

April 2009
When first directed to the User page of Rima Al Eryani you will be taken by her exemplary use of colors and multimedia. As you view her different educational activities it becomes apparent that her passion for literacy, particularly in her home country of Yemen, is one of her strengths. It is an honor to award Rima Al Eryani as the April 2009 featured user page. Check out her user page, and celebrate the number of WikiEducator projects she has become involved. Congratulations, Rima.

March 2009
Having a wealth of experience and exemplary credentials Dilip P. Barad, Ph.D has steadily increased his participation in WikiEducator since July 2008. Dr. Barad is also an excellent ambassador for WikiEducator as he frequently speaks of the benefits of accessing and in contributing to WikiEducator. Dr. Barad has an excellent user page that showcases how text, photos and rich media can be used to portray information and ideas. It is an honor to award Dr. Dilip P. Barad as the March 2009 featured user page recipient.

February 2009
For someone whose first edit was November 06, 2008 and has quickly climbed to be one of the top 20 active contributors, it's an honor to award Gladys Gahona as the February 2009 featured user page. Check out her user page, it's colorful and comprehensive and includes many examples of ways to include graphics, rich media and formatting for mathematics.

December 2008
For December 2008 the featured user page is that of Gita Mathur. The reason can be summed up in a single word, and that word is colours! Or, as she puts it: <FONT COLOR="Green">c<FONT COLOR="Red">o<FONT COLOR="Blue">l<FONT COLOR="Orange">o<FONT COLOR="Green">u<FONT COLOR="Black">r<FONT COLOR="Brown">s<FONT COLOR="Black">! There more to it than that, of course, like her excellent use of imagery and how she gives good information about her research interests and background. But those colours are really nice!

November 2008
This month's award goes to Leigh Blackall, one of the brightest WikiEducators in our community. We have no doubt about his abilities and his unwavering determination to make this community an exemplary lot of talented people. His work in forums and wikis requires neither proof nor corroboration. That said, we didn't award him a UPE just because he's a stand up guy, but because his user page was the first one to experiment with blip.tv videos, and because he's one of the few people who have addressed the RSS issue and incorporated it in his user page. Please congratulate Leigh for being this month's User Page Expo Award Winner. Godspeed Leigh!

October 2008
This month award goes to Barbara Dieu for innovative use of audio introduction on her user page. Incorporation of media player in a wiki is a novel thing that we have come across on WikiEducator. She speaks different languages and adds to our community's diversity. Congratulations to her on this achievement. You can have a look on her page at Barbara Dieu.

September 2008
This month our featured UPE award goes to probably one of favorites of most WikiEducators. Her user page is as sweet and beautiful as herself as a person. Color scheme, usage of wiki syntax, proper classification of topics, video incorporation and content is what got her this month's featured user page award. There is a general expectation that people from COL are supposed to be at the top of WE because it's their project, and most of the time they don't get thanked for that. Let's break the tradition and congratulate Patricia Schlicht for this achievement!

August 2008
Second Award goes to Victor Mensah. Creation, intuitive design and clarity are what got him this month's award. I love the tables. It's lovely you can steal markup on WE :D

July 2008
The first award goes to Dennis Doe, whose page is truly a synthesis of form and function. Sometimes animated images can be distracting, but Dennis's seems to be enough without being too much -- it's friendly and inviting. The templates he uses for links are a good idea worth emulating, and he makes good use of different visual separations of different content. And we love those rounded corners. Smooooth.