We at TeachPitch are very excited to announce our partnership with the leading Chinese education company, OneWorld Education. Just like ourselves, OneWorld is a company that believes education can be improved through the global exchange and collaboration of teachers, students, ideas and (online) learning resources.

On Friday 28th October, Twitter will host the Digital Citizenship Summit launch event for US Media Literacy Week at their San Francisco headquarters. The Digital Citizenship Summit has a mission to unite people, organizations, and companies across the world committed to the safe, savvy, and ethical use of social media and tech. The all-day global event aims to work towards solutions, promote best practices, and empower citizens to “be the digital change”. The event is being livestreamed (or Periscoped) through Twitter’s @Safety account, and can also be watched directly at BeTheDigitalChange.com.

A UN-partnered Ugandan organisation is seeking teaching volunteers to join them for their education project. Founded in 1987, the Mmanze Centre for Rural Development and Training (MACERUDET) is a community-based organization working with the people of rural Uganda to improve their standards and conditions of living. This project sees British teachers working alongside their Ugandan peers, aiding with both Primary and Secondary pupils’ education in the process.

My dream of teaching abroad in some capacity started at the age of 17, if not earlier, as I sat in an assembly watching images of school pupils in Africa and seeing how little they had. The speaker showed children talking about how much they wanted to go to school, teachers talking about doing their best and enjoying teaching the children, but knowing that they hadn’t had sufficient training to be able to help their pupils more.

“You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so…get on your way!” – Dr Seuss

The opportunity to be immersed in the language and culture of another country provides a valuable opportunity for increasing cultural awareness first-hand, interacting with native speakers and developing new perspectives. A little over a year ago, I left Scotland to spend two full weeks in China with a group of Scottish teachers. Our group was composed of Primary and Secondary teachers. We were all heading to the Beijing Language and Culture University to learn Mandarin, enhance our understanding of Chinese culture and gain new ideas we could bring back to our own work contexts.

At Nottingham Girls’ High School we have a great reputation for presenting extraordinary opportunities which have the potential to take our students to a whole new level of confidence and achievement. As head of Outdoor Learning, it’s my job to inspire a love for the outdoors and a passion for exploring it in our girls and support them in that process, creating new and exciting opportunities for them.

We at Bower Park Academy in Collier Row, Romford, Essex continue to educate staff, students and the community through our amazing (and self-labelled) global vision. With connections around the globe, headteacher Mrs Morrison and I believe that the global vision programme will help take the school to good and outstanding. With knowledge, experience and British Council programmes, our latest venture is looking to impact how we teach Mathematics!

Teaching in Japan has given me a plethora of new experiences, but I didn’t expect to see such a fundamentally different style of education. Tokyo Drift lied about schools in Japan. The students don’t use laptops or phones in school. They use pencils and erasers, they grade their own assignments, and can be trusted to sit in an hour of study without adult supervision.

Plenty of pupils love to write - why wouldn’t they? However, many of the UK’s schoolchildren have what David Mitchell, deputy head of Heathfield Primary School, aren’t getting anywhere near the audience that they should be.

As published in the September 2013 edition of our magazine.

After a grueling week with your wonderful Year 6 class surpassing their non-chronological reports, you think you have aced it! They have chosen their topic of choice, and it’s 10:50am on a Friday – it’s BIG writing time! The candle is burning… or more realistically, the interactive whiteboard is displaying the faint flicker of a candle flame. If you silence the class, you can hear the calming tones of Mozart tickling away at thought processes. It’s then, just as the children pick up their Big Writing pens that you utter those important words: “Don’t forget... consider your audience!”