Getting to know my international Contacts–Part 1

When I started out with this assignment I had to try a couple of avenues.  I sent out two emails and got back three responses from professionals who work in parts of Canada.  One of my contacts is a ECE preschool and daycare manager who works in British Columbia.  Another woman who responded to me is an Early Childhood Educator/Manager at Lakeview Christian Preschool/Daycare in Victoria, B.C. Canada.  The third person who responded to me is the principal at Grandview Adventist Academy.  She teaches 3-5 year olds in a pre-kindergarten and kindergarten program.  The school that she teaches at is located in Ontario, Canada.  

These three ladies all expressed an interest in helping me with this assignment.  I have sent emails to all three of them wanting to be able to have conversations with them.  While I am very grateful for getting the responses from them saying that they are willing to help me out, I have yet to hear back from them in order to have conversations with them regarding the issues that we are studying.  I am optimistic that they will respond to me at some point, I am not sure what steps I should take right now.  It is really hard to learn more information when you don’t have a response.  

Sharing Web Resources

The website that I chose was NIEER (http://nieer.org)   This website’s focus is on early childhood.  It talks about all different topics and how it effects the early childhood field.  As I was looking at the website, there was a lot of different articles regarding preschool.  It was focusing on preschools and issues that are effecting it from different states.

When I read the newsletter, the issue that I could tell the article was about was funding for preschools.  The article talks about how the economic downturn has effected the funding for preschools.  It also discusses how there has also be a lower number of children that are entering preschools in certain areas.  Even though in some places there is an increase in enrollment, the point that NIEER  makes in the newsletter is that the primary focus should be about children.  

I was looking through the website and I was incredibly amazed at just how many of the articles there were about preschool.  I know that preschool is a valuable part of Early Childhood education, I just did not realize just how important it is.  Funding for preschools is really important as are the standards that need to be met.  I am looking forward to learning more from the website and other newsletters that I receive via email.

 

Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

When it came to trying to establish contacts for this week, I first looked at the two sites to figure out what would be the easiest way to go about choosing who to establish contact with.  Once I established which way to go I sent emails to two different email addresses for the two countries that I wanted to find someone from.  I chose to do UNICEF because I figured that there would be a chance that I would get the best chance at contacting someone.  So far, I haven’t heard anything from them and I have not received any error messages saying that I am unsuccessful.  If I don’t hear something over the weekend, I may have to employ a different strategy and use a sight that is not part of the resource list provided.  If that doesn’t work, I will go with the alternative part 1.  

In order to pick the website that I am going to review, I quickly scanned the list of sights and looked at two-three of them.  I settled on the NIEER site (http:/nieer.org/) because it spoke to me the most.  The site I selected gave me quite a few different areas to look at and I think that I will get a lot of really good information from this site.  

The main tip that I would say is sometimes there will be a site that you look at that makes you think.  Instead of just trying to find a site that will just help you get the information, it is good to go to a site that may help you question what you already know.