To begin with, a bit of history: the first ever Early Childhood Education Curriculum (2002) for Pakistan, was the result of a public-private partnership between the Ministry of Education (Curriculum Wing) and the Teachers’ Resource Centre. To view this curriculum, scroll down a bit.

“I am delighted to be provided with an opportunity to express my views on the launch of the National Early Childhood Education (ECE) Curriculum. This is a major achievement in the field of education in Pakistan. Now, for the first time, Pakistan can boast a curriculum for early childhood education. I would like to extend my appreciation to both the Federal Ministry of Education and the Teachers’ Resource Centre (TRC) who have collaborated on this historic enterprise in the field of public education.”

Federal Minister of Education, Ms. Zobaida Jalal

August 22, 2002. National ECE Curriculum Launch, Islamabad.

And then in 2006: the Ministry of Education got in touch with TRC, to revise the ECE curriculum and rewrite it in a different format in order to make it consistent with the new curricula from Grades 1 to 12. You can view/download the revised curriculum here.

Download The National Curriculum for Early Childhood Education (2007) (18 MB)

The National ECE Curriculum is the result of a public-private partnership between the Ministry of Education (Curriculum Wing) and the Teachers’ Resource Centre, under the umbrella of the Education Sector Reforms (ESR) Action Plan 2001-2005. The curriculum focuses on the holistic development of children in the 3-5 year age group, with special emphasis on active learning.

Download The National Early Childhood Education Curriculum (2002) (544 KB)

As part of a UNESCO commissioned project, designed to raise awareness of the importance of ECE, among local level decision-makers in the public sector in Sindh, TRC developed ECE Advocacy Resource Books in Sindhi, Urdu and English.
The major objectives of the Resource Book are to highlight the need and significance of ECE, and to share information about innovative practices in the field of ECE. The project included workshops in two districts for district level decision makers for which TRC worked in partnership with the Directorate of Literacy and Non-formal Education.
Download the Resource Books here:

ECE Advocacy Resource Book – English (12.9 MB)
ECE Advocacy Resource Book – Urdu (25.8 MB)
ECE Advocacy Resource Book – Sindhi (19.1 MB)

Ilm o Amal, our bi-annual educational resource was published from 2005 to 2008, after the TRC Newsletter ceased to be in 2004. The title Ilm o Amal reflects TRC’s belief in moving from Knowledge to Action or Practice. The editorial staff of Ilm o Amal was composed of school heads and TRC staff. Each edition had a theme, with a lead article, opinions and ideas for pre-primary, primary and secondary teachers to try out in their classrooms. If you are interested in looking at the Ilm o Amal Archive, click here.

For current issues of Ilm o Amal click here.

We have come a long way since our very first publication, the Teachers’ Resource Centre Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 1, which was only seven pages long, photocopied on yellow A-4 paper! With time, we learnt more about design and layout and very early on, invested in the Apple Mac for our in-house, desktop publishing needs. We have become much more design savvy over the years, trying out various reader-friendly page layouts with illustrations, graphics and photographs.

The TRC Newsletter gradually evolved from yellow, to black and white, to two colours and then in 2001, we introduced a four colour cover. The TRC Newsletter was published on a quarterly basis from 1987 to 2003. It was discontinued for the period July 2003 – June 2004 for multiple reasons. We were short on funds and a qualified team, specially for the Urdu section and we wanted to be more eco-friendly, save paper and give members an on-line version. It was not to be! At the Annual General Body meeting in December 2003, members urged us to revert to the printed copy. Some even volunteered their time to assist with translations and Urdu typing. A five member editorial team began planning, researching, writing, translating and editing, and in 2005, the bi-annual educational resource Ilm o Amal was born.

The 24 page TRC Newsletter carried articles written by teachers and other professionals working with children. Different articles were carried in the Urdu and English sections … bi-lingual readers certainly had an advantage! Distribution was free for members and other interested organisations and individuals. Some issues are here for you to download.

You can download some of the TRC Newsletters here:

2003
Newsletter: January – March (1.2 MB)
Newsletter: April – June (2 MB)

2002
Newsletter: January – March (2.7 MB)
Newsletter: April – June (1.2 MB)
Newsletter: July – September (724 KB)
Newsletter: October – December (968 KB)

From 1987 to 1989 we restricted our publications to the TRC Newsletter. It was in 1990, that we began another publication, this time for children. Alif Ujala was supported by UNICEF. You will find a list and brief description of publications from 1990 to 1999 here:

Some of you may be familiar with YouTube.com – a website that has a zillion videos on all sorts of topics. Everyone can watch or even upload whatever they want without cost. However, finding education-related videos, specially the more useful ones, is difficult at best.

Enter TeacherTube – a special website that shares videos that teachers have uploaded and teaches you how to upload and share your own favourite education videos. Don’t have any to share? Hmmm. Has your school considered a small cheap video-camera – or even a small digital still camera with limited video abilities – as a wonderful resource? Think about it. It is the digital age.

Blogs – abbreviated from WEBLOGS – are IN! They are everywhere. Should you care? Well, yes, if they are relevant. Students’ blogs can be one way to get them to write in ways that are meaningful to them, about any topic of their interest. They can cover subjet areas, too … which could become a resource by students for students.

What may be a good starting point for you is a visit to some Education Blogs, many by teachers, and a few good E-Newsletters that are delivered to you as e-mail. Blogs are more like articles on a wide variety of subjects; the ones below focus on education.

The following info is provided by the Jordan School District’s T4 Program.
Administrator?s Desk Newsletter

http://www.educationworld.com/maillist.shtml#admin

Join this mailing list to receive Education World’s weekly Administrator’s Desk Newsletter. Written for superintendents, principals, and other school administrators, this newsletter includes articles on leadership, setting goals, funding, parental involvement, technology, the current education news, interviews with senior-ranking education officials, and much more.

ASCD?s Smart Brief

http://www.smartbrief.com/ascd/

This free and highly recommended e-newsletter is delivered to your e-mail Monday through Friday. Articles dealing with curriculum, professional leadership, technology solutions, policy, association news, and stories from the field are summarized with links to the full text provided. Simply skimming the SmartBrief digest keeps you up to speed on education headlines. When an article catches your eye, click on the link to read the full text.

Blogs in Education

http://awd.cl.uh.edu/blog/

Articles and information for student blogging.
The Committed Sardine Blog

http://homepage.mac.com/iajukes/blogwavestudio/

The Doyle Report

http://www.thedoylereport.com/

This free, weekly publication focuses on the intersection of school reform and technology in education. It takes just a few minutes to skim the start of each article. Click on the Full Story link to read the rest.

eSN Alert

http://www.eschoolnews.com/emailprofile/

eSN Alert is a free, weekly e-newsletter focusing on breaking news in educational technology and how the use of technology affects schools. It will help you keep up with the ever-changing world of educational technology.

PEN Weekly NewsBlast

http://www.publiceducation.org/

Sponsored by the Public Education Network, PEN Weekly NewsBlast is a free e-newsletter with articles about school improvement, grants, and funding.
The Teacher List
http://www.resco.ca/ttl/
http://www.theteacherlist.ca
This is a daily e-mail with one Internet site per day. Just look at it, forward it, or trash it.

Teachers@Work

http://www.treadwell.co.nz/

Teachers@work has been writing on the impact of the web on education for 8 years as well as reviewing web sites for educators. Send an e-mail and they will sign you up and send you a monthly reminder.

A podcast is a multimedia file distributed over the Internet, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. The term is a portmanteau of “broadcasting” and “iPod”. Although the simplicity of Apple’s iPod (coupled with iTunes on a Macintosh or even a Windows machine) has made it popular among educators and the smaller and cheaper iPod Nano will suffice for most uses, all mp3 players and personal computers can play podcasts, so the investment in a new gadget may not be necessary at all.

While Podcasts can feature Audio, Images, and Video, it would be best to progress slowly up the path. A good starting point would be to just take a look at the numerous ways in which podcasts are being employed in the K-12 sector.

If what you see excites you, and you’d like to take the plunge, run through a series of fairly simple and comprehensive tutorials on Podcasting. Many tutorials are available on the Internet, but our favourites are from are the ones that are broken into digestible little visual morsels that allow one to digest each – even try bits out where needed – before proceeding further.

This video-clip methodology is the speciality of Atomic Learning … a web-based service that contains a great deal of material available after you take out a $80 annual subscription (that’s only Rs. 400 per month!) … and is one of the best investments schools can make for their resource room or teachers’ common room (one hopes that at least one if not both spots now offer a computer with an internet broadband connection in some schools).

Here’s what you get with a subscription to Atomic Learning:
* Access to over 20,000 software training movies for a calendar year.
* Access to all additional tutorials added throughout the year.
* 500 or more new tutorials are added every 45 days.
* Just-in-time software training.
* Online Newsletter and Tech Tips.
* Valuable educational resources (including Lesson Accelerators & Teacher2Teacher).