Dr. Z Presents on New Ideas in Vocational and Technical Training in Amman, Jordan

Believe it or not, I was invited to visit Amman, Jordan this week to give some presentations and workshops at the Conference of Vocational Training: Advanced Models on Training, Business, and Governance for the Vocational Training Corporation. This is a conference that is supported by Jordan's Ministry of Labor as well as the Malaysian UTHM consultants. There should be about 100 attendees from many countries from the Middle East and south-east Asia. The goal of this meeting is to work with Jordan (and other countries) to re-envision their Technical and Vocational Education Training programs in their high schools. 

This will be a two-day conference where we will have keynote speakers and then breakout sessions where 4 panelists will speak for 30 minutes each and then have 60 minutes of Q&A. The tricky part is that English is not the basic language for the conference. Arabic is the language of choice. This means that my presentations will be translated into Arabic and distributed to those who would like them. Only the keynote presenters will have simultaneous translation while the panelists' presentations will not.  This should be interesting to see how many of attendees will understand what I will be saying in English.  The REAL challenge will be to see if my jokes transfer.  Well, people don't understand most of my humor in English anyway so at least this time there will be a reason for them not laughing.   =-)

My presentation which I will give on Monday, Feb 20 is called "Technology-Powered Learning."  I will be talking about creating engaging and enabling learning environments for today's vocational students. This will include a discussion of the Millennial generation and how to best address their learning needs. While most of the research on the Millennial generation has been done in the Western world, it appears (both in the research and in casual observation) that the 12-30 year old generation is quite similar in how they are "plugged into" their environment. I will also be sharing ways that vocational education might be made more relevant to the 21st century workplace by implementing collaborative problem-based learning curriculum.

I will be providing 3 workshops. They involve Trends in ICT in the USA, Creating and Using  Problem-Based Learning in the TVET (Technology and Vocational Education Training) Classroom, and Exploring New Opportunities in Technology-Based Learning,  I will post these in English and Arabic as they come available.

The trip over here and the wonderful assortment of new colleagues from around the world have been quite exciting. I will try to blog the events as they transpire or soon afterwards so that you may enjoy them with me.  I will begin this travelogue in my next post.

I will have to warn you that I tend to be a terrible blogger when traveling because I am usually too involved in the experience to take time to write about it.

I will be Skyping with my Classroom Computer Applications class on Tuesday at 2:00 CST (10 PM Jordan Time).

Keep in touch and leave comments if there are specific things you want to know or see through me.

Z