Ibrahim Shabbir. Co-Author
In the glittering world of Dubai, GESS Dubai (Global Educational Supplies and Solutions Exhibitions and Conferences) is being held for a duration of 3 days for the past 11 years. GESS Dubai is an educational conference and exhibition with a difference, bringing together engaging industry leaders from around the world and influential local practitioners to present a combination of inspirational talks and dynamic, hands-on workshops. Collaborative and innovative sessions are held to allow the visitors take home practical teaching methods, to use in their classroom immediately.
Last year, I had the opportunity to visit Gess Dubai 2017 with the Principal of Badri High School, Janab Sh Hashim bhai and Head of the Montessori Section, Mrs. Tasneem Hashim. As I visited the different stalls and attended various workshops, I had the opportunity to witness the progress in the field of education throughout the world. Through the course of three days, I was fascinated to know where exactly the world is going in the field of education and technology as well as the online resource and educational supplies used. The hands-on workshops I attended there helped me as well as my students to move towards a new pedagogy “Creative Thinking” and Asking the “How” questions rather than the “W” questions.
This year GESS Dubai 2018 will always remain special for me because I was chosen to attend it on behalf of BHS along with Sir Ibrahim Shabbir. This year, the theme for the conference was “Lifelong Inspiration”. Through the course of three days we were once again fascinated but more over satisfied because when we heard the presenters talking about collaboration of school with parents through Cloud base App, We smiled inside as we knew that in one year we at Badri High School had come far ahead as we have already begun using the Ilmversity app.
When we attended the hands on Robotics session, we were proud that students of class 5, 6 and 7 at BHS are engrossed and enthusiastic about their Robotics classes where they are using their Science, Math and English skills to make and program their Mind storm EVE 3 bot and have become so skilled at Robotics that they are now on the verge of hosting an Inter school Competition.
But we are not going to stop here. This year we have attended workshops to learn about Raspberry-Pi and scratch programming as well as how to collaborate with International schools to Learn English Language and Online Reading Program.
We also attended the workshop for children’s fitness training and came to learn how to use small timed exercise to energise the students again. We also got some new ideas of how science can be made more interesting in classrooms.
Our heartiest gratitude to Janab Naeem Bhaisaheb whose far-sighted vision enabled us to undertake this valuable experience. BHS is also grateful to the Trustees who supported us whole heartedly in making this journey possible.
At start of the journey we were told that we are visiting Dubai not with the vision to implement and get everything in school, but to broaden our vision to where the world is in the field of education and what we can learn from it. But this two year experience of GESS Dubai has shown me that if we put our heart and soul into learning as teachers we can create an amazing vision for our future generation.
