Nominated by christophe gally
Teacher High School/Secondary (ages 14-18) at Lycée Pasteur
São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Nomination Mrs Barbara Dieu Lycée Pasteur, Brazil

I would like to nominate Barbara Dieu for the 2004 Global Schoolnet Award, veteran category, as I strongly believe she is a teacher who has made a difference and brought about change to our school community. She is a leader and has fought, at many moments, against all odds to make it happen.

I teach Physics and Chemistry at the Lycée Pasteur, São Paulo Brazil and have known Barbara Dieu as an EFL colleague for seven years now. Her teaching, emphasizing a French curriculum in a Brazilian environment, has always been highly appreciated by students, parents, and administration. Providing and combining the best of her local experience and the French system, she has designed her course introducing new technologies and international online projects way back in 1997. These have allowed students to reach their highest potential in the English language by strengthening their competence and collaborative skills and generating a good teaching atmosphere at school.

She has also planned, organized and led different projects such as "USA Connection" and "This is our Time" to get the students involved in international collaboration and make them acquainted with the new tools online. By sharing her knowledge in this area, always searching for new ways of improving her classes, giving useful advice and accurate evaluation, establishing and maintaining a good relationship with all involved in these projects, she has brought together a number of people to work together at our school.

To be more specific, I worked with her on USA Connection in 1998, a two- year project based on e-mail and data exchange between US students and ours and which also included a discovery and contact trip in the Southwest of the USA. Harnessing the skills of every teacher involved, she wanted to get and she got a live Internet connection during the trip in order to have students, parents, teachers and the whole school community online, something that had never been dreamt of at the Lycée Pasteur. We met teachers from other schools. The project did not stop there as she incited all to continue working together and to use computers to make homepages, a site and a cdrom. She was following closely French school pedagogy directions : interdisciplinarity. This is why a teacher like me in Physics and Chemistry worked with her together with several others from different areas such as History, Geography, Life and Earth Sciences, French, Portuguese and Mathematics.

In fact everything in this project was a premiere in 1997-98, and completely new for the team of teachers she worked with. Thanks to her to make it happen and open the road to the possibilities many followed later. Two years after Barbara brought us " This is our Time" project, in which many members of the community members participated. One of the several activities of this project was an international question quiz online teachers prepared with their students, and classroom twinning, when students participated in an intercultural dialogue and debated about peace, human rights, tolerance, environmental issues, stereotypes and cultural heritage. What a great means of communication among youngsters and teachers all over the world!

She is now planning a new intercultural exchange project connecting Brazilian, French and Italian students using blogs and a virtual environment around the theme "Garibaldi- Breaks, Exchanges and Continuities". I am looking forward to being a part of it.

Her relevant experience in this field has been recognized by several schools in Brazil and in France during workshops she has contributed to and I would like to mention that the new technologies of communication have just added a new dimension and more possibilities to what she considers vital in her teaching: intercultural dialogue. It has been a pleasure and a learning experience to work with her and I hope my nomination will bring her the recognition she well deserves and enable her to establish more contacts so that she can continue developing in the years to come, the work she started with us.

Sincerely, Christophe Gally Physics and Chemistry teacher, Lycée Pasteur, Sao Paulo, Brazil. uildoliv@yahoo.com

The section below lists the testimonials that have been reviewed and approved by the candidate.

1. Testimonial from André Harder Matielo (1)
College Student at Lycée Pasteur
Brazil

TESTIMONIAL – André Matielo

In all my years in yhis french scool, the Lycée Pasteur, I have never met a teacher like Mme. Dieu. I was her pupil for 4 consecutives years, from 2000 to 2003 and all this time together created a close relationship between us. Because of all these years, I can say that I know Mme. Dieu better than other students. I know how dedicated and reliable she is in her work, not only as a teacher but as a person. She tries to widen our horizons and make school a funny place, where we could learn not only what the books impose but also dicuss and work on actuals subjects, as terrorism, global communication and culture.

In 2001, our class participated in building VIVA, a virtual village where we met people from all around the world. This village is, in fact, a forum where we write about many different subjects and exchange with others our experiences and points of vue. After a while working on it, when yhe answers to the lines we wrote came, we could compare our positions to the views of these new people. In fact, we discovered many things that we ignored, many diferent opinions and a whole new world that came with these new people. We learnt about cultures that we ignored, as Dutch or Finnish culture and their reactions. We discovered that people’s reactions varied from one nationality to the other. VIVA made us see that we weren’t alone in the world and Mme. Dieu worked hard on it with this purpose (among others, of course). I found it very interesting and exciting : each new answer was a new step for my knowledge !

The same year, our class worked on the Unite the Nations Game, another way to establish contact with foreign people, not directly as we did in the forum, but disputing with students from other countries. This was a group work and it was innovative. We weren’t racing only against other students, but with the clock too. It was the first time I had to work under pressure and I saw that my limits weren’t as strong as I thought they were. I also learnt how to work in groups, cooperate and respect others rythm. Doing that, Mme. Dieu enlarged, again, our vision of what could be the real life after middle scool and helped us prepare for hight school.

In 2002, we worked on VIVA village again but not only in the forums. Mme. Dieu had an ambicious idea : build a brazilian restaurant, the Copa restaurant. She did it like she done VIVA village, with enthusiasm. In this restaurant we could expose our Brazilian point of vue and in the same time we discovered the fascinating world of food. As we were in a restaurant, we began to study all related to restaurants and we went further. For most of us it was the first contact we had with this world and it awakened a great interest in most of us, because Mme. Dieu transformed our daily work into a delicious feast ! This motivated me more than anything, because I had never had any contact with this vocabulary amd way of working before.

In the same year and in the following we worked in This is Our Time Project, writing in a global forum. It is again an innovative way to enable communication from people of different cultures and countries, on issues like human rights, stereotypes, terrorism and peace. In this project, we discussed the same topics with many new points of vue. This project was made by the UNESCO, so there were many people, more than in VIVA village... I worked on it for 2 years, during which I expressed and defend my opinions on many subjects. I enjoyed it very much and I tried to assimilate all the new information, improving my knowledge and becoming more conscient of my acts and opinions.

I was very happy when I learnt that Mme. Dieu was nominated for this award, and I am very confident that she will win it, because it willl be, I think, for her, a great reward for all her hard work and her help. She isn’t just a good teacher, she is more than that. With all her work, in these 4 years together, I learn not only what the books teach, but life lessons. She prepares her students to the real life, life in society, with all the ups and downs that we may face. Through blending this way of teaching with school work, she has bent many of the barriers of a conservative school.

2. Testimonial from Kajetan Rodak (2)
Teacher High School/Secondary (ages 14-18) at Mediagymnasiet in Stockholm
Sweden

It is my pleasure to write a testimonial for Barbara Dieu. Last year I had the opportunity to participate in a web based project “Class twinning” on intercultural issues. I was looking for a long time for partners to co-operate via internet on such issues as national stereotypes and preconceived ideas and the way to deconstruct them.

I had only a vague idea how to go about it and no partners. When I happened to get to know Barbara everything became clear and manageable. She had a functioning model, experience, network of participating schools and a web site where she was the webmaster. I was impressed by the quality of her pedagogical groundwork and the process oriented approach in the long run.

Her pedagogical model was clear enough to embark on right away and participate. However, she served as well with very specific methodological advice for those who need it. The whole project serves really as an educational model for pedagogues and could be used for teacher training.

The web site that she built was updated swiftly and easy to navigate. At the end of the project it was filled with hundreds of entries and files! A true gold mine of information and teaching material. The idea is so good that I am still working on it in my EU related projects.

I have experienced that all my students learned a lot by participating in this project and their knowledge of many other countries and their culture increased dramatically.

In addition, Barbara was always ready to help and support me with any queries I had, for instance, when I asked her to send me addresses of schools or any documents from the project that I was missing.

Finally, I just want to express my wish to join end enjoy her inspiring didactic activities in the cyberspace for many years to come.

3. Testimonial from Vanna Carella (3)
Teacher High School/Secondary (ages 14-18) at Liceo Scientifico B. Russell,Garbagnate
Italy

"I have known Barbara Dieu for three years now through the Classroom Twinning project of Unesco and thanks to her work and face Brazil is no longer the country of Carnival, footballers or street children! In fact the lesson plan on stereotypes she prepared for this year's Time project helped us to think over these clichés we all have about ourselves and other nationalities and to see how we are similar and different at the same time. Her work was the first on the site so that I could take hers as a model for my own way of organising the students' groups. She seems she's very capable of class and group management as well. She has always shown her expertise and creativity in organising activities for the students in the classroom or at home such as the clusters in the 2002-03 project which lead to e-mail exchanges on specific topics and to videoconferences between schools. She has put lesson plan on the Community site for everyone to try and implement She has organised virtual meeting at her office at Tappedin org. inviting the teachers involved in the Unesco project to discuss about the aims to achieve through the twinning and new teachers to spread the project of this year.It is so that two years ago I learnt about Tappedin and I could involve other colleagues in using this tool. She has been able to support us as teachers using new technologies and in tuition itself. She has always been able to check on the students'behaviour with firm but friendly words. She has rewarded my students for their good work as well and that sensitivity meant a lot to them."

4. Testimonial from Laurence Bernard (4)
Teacher High School/Secondary (ages 14-18) at Lycée la Jetée
Martinique (French)

I am honoured to write this testimonial and recommend Mrs Barbara Dieu for the 2004 GNS Teacher Award for Veterans. Barbara Dieu is an English language colleague in Brazil who has been involved for several years in a variety of web-based projects which enhanced active participation and communication among students and teachers from all over the world. The communities and projects that she has started and developed in these past years have aimed at bringing teachers and students together fostering international exchange of information, teamwork and ICT practice. Her commitment to others and steady dedication to the development of web-based learning strategies have contributed to bring about new conceptions and visions to what teaching and learning English means today.

Although we have never physically met, I have known Barbara for about 2 years now. During this time, we have been in contact on a regular basis through e-teach, a French EFL discussion list with about 600 members and in which she plays a very important role promoting and advertising all sorts of web-based projects and activities.

Our virtual collaboration started in the first semester of 2002 after a Euro language forum she moderated at Tappedin and during which a new project entitled “Slavery: from Past to Present” emerged amongst teachers from various horizons: Metropolitan France, Martinique, Brazil, the USA. It involved ESL as well as History and Geography teachers so it was not only multicultural but also pluridisciplinary. It aimed to develop knowledge on slavery from a language and historical viewpoint, question the problem of slavery today and develop students' skills in ICT. This gave us the opportunity to share ideas, links and lesson plans on topics and issues related to the theme. A collaborative community was created and moderated by Barbara at European Schoolnet to help all participants in the project to share teaching/learning material. My students and I were particularly motivated since slavery is unfortunately engraved in the history of our island and people. However, we would not have been able to manage such a project without Barbara’s technical support and pedagogical advice. The result was astounding. In a few months, the students profited from this opportunity to develop their own content and produced more writing and material than I could have expected.

Being a web-based project, their work can be seen at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/absolutenglish-972/slavery%20project/students_web/home.htm . The students also used the communication features of the online environment in the virtual VIVA village, whose Copabacana area was designed by Barbara and her students. They exchanged views on what they had done and how they reacted to this. This was a most authentic experience of foreign language usage.

‘Our project, entitled the “Slavery Project” consisted in making you discover our past. Slavery was a sad period for our ancestors. Thanks to this project, slavery won't be unknown to you.” 2de E students, Lycée Jetée, 2002-2003.

More recently, in the fall of 2003, I participated for the first time in Barbara’s “This is our Time” project, more precisely in the “Classroom Twinning” activities. These activities made it possible for hundreds of students and teachers to develop relationships that go beyond the “meet and greet” stage. They have raised appreciation and curiosity for other people and cultures. Thanks to the links, worksheets and lesson plans that Barbara posted both in the collaborative community she opened for this purpose at European Schoolnet and in her English Department Website, all the teachers involved were able to work around common objectives with their classes.

This gave the students a common ground to work on and think about in class and discuss on the forums. The students first had to introduce themselves and present their school. The second step was to write about celebrations in their country. Finally, the students were invited to share their views by answering thematic questions on stereotypes and other intercultural issues such as the movies and sports. More than 300 students from all over the world (Brazil, France, Italy, Greece, Australia, The Netherlands, The Czech Republic, Russia, Canada, Kuwait, Croatia, Indonesia, Nigeria…) participated and posted messages in the online forums.

The impact this project had on my students is considerable: it not only helped them overcome the barrier of the language and culture but also that of technology. It was a real chance for them to get to meet people that they would probably never have been able to meet otherwise and express their ideas comparing them to others. Last but not least, the project allowed young people to become more aware and sensitive to unfounded stereotypes that they might have of other cultures and therefore to develop more personal views on specific intercultural issues.

“ In this first year of high-school, our English class participated in the “Time Project”. It was really a great project. Indeed, chatting and exchanging ideas and views with other teenagers using the English language not only makes you want to speak and write good English -which means you improve your command of the language- but it also allows you to develop technical skills and teaches you how to use the web better.” Marion, 2de E, Lycée la Jetée, Martinique, 2003-2004 .

“ This year, our class, with our English teacher Mrs Bernard, participated in the “Time Project”. I think it was a great idea because many people from many different countries could chat and speak in harmony together. So, I (and the rest of the class) hope that other people will have the chance to meet many other students from all over the world. Thank you for this great forum.” Charly, 2de E , Lycée Jetée, Martinique, 2003-2004.’

Barbara Dieu honestly deserves this award. She has contributed to develop multiple web-based learning environments and has provided the community of English Language teachers with valuable teaching material . She is an enthusiastic promoter of the use of ICT in the English classroom and her projects have made it possible for many educators and students, to meet, work together and share ideas, knowledge and experience.

Laurence Bernard http://perso.wanadoo.fr/absolutenglish-972/

5. Testimonial from Graham Stanley (5)
Teacher at British Council
Spain

I met Barbara Dieu through an online forum for English language educators just over six months ago. I was just beginning to investigate collaborative learning using online journals, such as weblogs, and I discovered that that Barbara had already started such a project (http://beeonline.blogspot.com), a collaborative learning project which showed that weblogs could be used to great effect as a tool for student self-expression and an aid to greater learner autonomy and inter-cultural awareness.

Reading through the posts both on the class weblog, and the associated individual student blogs, it was clear to me that Barbara had succeeded in instilling the students with a great enthusiasm not only for writing in English, but for learning in general. I also noted that Barbara seemed to know instinctively when to intervene to encourage the students to respond, and when to hold back and let them get on with it.

The entries on Barbara’s site showed me how she had dealt with the students’ initial confusion about the nature and reason for using weblogs, coaxing them into becoming dedicated webloggers, keen to improve their English, as well as other skills. One student, for example, writes how she had started to learn HTML so that she could make her weblog more attractive, adding different interactive features. I got in touch with Barbara, and was warmed by her enthusiastic advice. She described to me in depth how she had come to start the blog, and told me what she had done to encourage the students to write. She also invited me to join in her weblog, as a “mystery guest”, and through this experience, and by observing the ways she worked with her students online in this venture, I was able to find out how to run my own similar project.

It quickly became obvious that Barbara’s weblog experience was a model to follow –of all of the people involved with weblogs with student learners of English, she seemed to be doing it right – the students seemed to be excited about the project, and full of questions. I became more and more interested in contributing to her weblog, and did so on a daily basis, moved by the questions and comments from the students, who seemed to be particularly interested in comparing their culture with mine, and with the other learners involved in the project. It was especially interesting to me to see how she had managed to encourage learner autonomy through the weblog, encouraging her students to take charge of their own learning, through setting examples and good advice.

I started phasing out my input into Beeonline as the Italian students began to join. I noted with interest how the weblog soon became a lively discussion space for both the Brazilian and Italian students as they asked and answered each others questions about life and culture in their hometowns. Barbara also introduced me to the teacher exchange she had begun (garibaldinos.blogspot.com), which proved to be another interesting collaborative use of weblogs, this time between colleagues contributing to a shared project.

I feel fortunate to have met Barbara, and her help, advice and encouragement has meant a lot to me - I probably would not have continued in my own efforts to use weblogs with my students had it not been for her encouragement.

Barbara also introduced me to the Webheads Community of Practice, and invited me to join her in a tandem discussion about using weblogs at Tapped In (http://ti2.sri.com/tappedin/), a virtual learning environment for educators willing to share knowledge and experience with others. It was my first experience of such an event, but with her help, it proved to be an enjoyable experience. Barbara is a fine example of generosity of spirit, time, and sensibility. She shows this in her project work with both students and colleagues online. Her persistence and desire to press forward with a project should be an example to us all, and it is clear that she has dedicated a considerable amount of time and effort into this.

I have used Barbara’s online projects as models, and now, just over six months after I began, they still remain rare examples of how to undertake this kind of collaboration well. It is an honour and a privilege to be able to write a testimonial for her, as she has done much to increase my own learning in this field.

6. Testimonial from Maria Pia Mauro (6)
Teacher High School/Secondary (ages 14-18) at Liceo Classico "Giuseppe Garibaldi"
Italy

I am a teacher and I teach English at the Liceo Classico "Giuseppe Garibaldi" in Naples Italy. I would like to give a testimonial for Barbara Dieu because she is a teacher and a person who has helped and encouraged me to work on the net and to be persistent in order to carry on a difficult situation, focusing both on the process and the goal. I met Barbara last April 2003 , while I was surfing on the net and looking for new partners to share projects and to find new friends. I was not very good at working on my computer and really insecure. Barbara has always been patient with me and she spent her time to teach me the easiest way to enter, read and create a blogger(http://garibaldinos.blogspot.com). Also my collegues and my students were helped by Barbara and for everybody it was a new way to study, to learn and keep in contact with people having common interests. We are working on a project: "Garibaldi: breaks and continuities". The title was inspired by the name of my school: Garibaldi, and by the famous historical characters who travelled a lot, lived in Brazil and visited England, and the United States for a period of time. Our students are researching about the period Garibaldi left Italy to go to Brazil and the historical and social events that characterized that time. The students of my Liceo are very interested in the blogger Barbara Dieu has created for them and for her students(http://beeonline.blogspot.com). In fact they love to write in a blog in which they can keep in touch, writing about their life, studies, school, teachers, music, religion, philosophy, etc... After these past months during whiuch Barbara has helped and mentored us, we have managed to read, write and create a blog and we trust much more in ourselves. barbara, I think, is not only the teacher and the friend ready to help, but she is the person who has made us aware of our possibilities and indipendence to learn and carry out our work.

7. Testimonial from Claudia Cardone (7)
Student at Liceo ginnasio giuseppe garibaldi
Italy

My name is Claudia Cardone, I’m 16 years old and an Italian student from the “Liceo Garibaldi”, in Naples. My experience online with Barbara Dieu and her students began in September, when, here in Italy, the school year starts. Our English teacher suggested to my class a project of cultural exchange with a Brazilian school of Sao Paulo.To keep in touch with Brazilian students she gave us the address of a blog, their blog.

I had never entered a blog, that was for me the first time, so I had lots of problems. Like me also my teachers , my school-friends were unable to carry on alone.

But Barbara was always available to help, explain and encourage me with e-mails. I liked that . I saw in her attitude, our temper, the Italian one… so warm.

When I could enter there and join their conversation I understood that Italy and Brazil are similar in lots of things.

Blogspot for Barbara’s students is another way to live school. They can meet there, and using English they are able to keep in touch not only with their school-friends, but also with other teachers and students like us. We weren’t the only people on the blog - teachers from other countries also joined in and discussed with us.

Seeing the importance of “a school on the net” also my school-friends and I also decided to have a blog. So we created one, called “I A” inspired in Beeonline in which all my class could write, but it is not as famous.

Thanks to Beeonline I’ve understood that the first thing to link Italy to Brazil is youth. Yes, we, young people, we are so far in distance but our minds are so near. We have the same problem with religion, with school, in life. It could seem a general speech but it’s the truth!

For this reason we worked a lot to find other similar aspects. To do it we were divided in four groups. The first called “Music & Traditions” researched information about Brazilian life. The second “History” studied their history underlining events, similar to the Italian one(revolutions, Garibaldi’s trip and so on..)The third “VIP &Consulate” found Brazilian people able to come to our school and answer our questions. The fourth “emigration&immigration” studied this phenomenon that interested both Brazil and Italy.

Thanks to this work and the exchanges we carried we learnt that Brazil isn’t only Rio, Carnival, colours and beautiful dancers, but a wonderful country that we would love to visit one day.

This testimonial is a way to thank Mrs Dieu for inviting us to participate in this experience and the door she has opened for us!

8. Testimonial from Bernard Garcin (8)
Teacher High School/Secondary (ages 14-18) at LYCEE L'OISELET BOURGOIN-JALLIEU
France

To the attention of the Global SchoolNet Foundation Board of Directors.

The global project WKTO-E20 : http://wkto.free.fr/as/wktoE20.htm welcomes pupils from Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, Romania, Spain and Sweden.

Barbara Dieu is an organizer and manager of telecollaborative project-based learning projects and activities in this WKTO mobile collaborative learning programme : http://wkto.free.fr/a/schools1.htm and she uses digital workspaces to make one of her classes work together on the same web page with pupils from other countries.

The theme for the year 2003-2004 is economics and sustainable development : "Sustainable development meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. UN ". The notion of sustainable development covers three fields: social concerns, environmental issues and economic considerations. The social aspect includes poverty: for instance the fact that a billion people in the world have little or no income and suffer from hunger, malnutrition, poor health and a lack of access to education. Environmental issues include, for example, the regulation of the manufacture of cars which pollute the air with their exhaust gases, and need to be recycled at the end of their life. Economic considerations are important in the management of non renewable natural resources, such as gas and oil. The students were given a short questionnaire concerning economics and sustainable development : They translated this questionnaire from English to their own language with a view to conducting a survey in their own country. Then they collated all the results from Asia, Europe and the Americas. They were then able to write a collaborative report concerning the results.

Barabara Dieu is a very active partner in our activities, and the WKTO project is all the richer for her dynamic participation. We are pleased and honoured to work with such a citizen of the world. Barbara enjoys being in contact with young people and working on collaborative international projects exchanging ideas with different people around the world. She communicates her enthusiasm to her students who are regularly the "early birds" in the projects.

If you need information, you are welcome,

Sincerely yours,

Mary Vernet and Bernard Garcin. WKTO mobile collaborative learning. http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/wkto Lycée l’Oiselet à Bourgoin-Jallieu, France.

9. Testimonial from Haydée Oliveira (9)
Teacher High School/Secondary (ages 14-18) at Lycée Pasteur
Brazil

I first met Barbara Dieu in 1984 when I started working at the Lycée Pasteur in São Paulo, Brazil. Over these twenty years we have become more than fellow educators; we are friends and, probably because we both teach English, also "co-conspirators" in a few projects. Since the beginning, Barbara has struck me as caring, competent and supportive, both as a person and a professional. Over these two decades I have seen her keep up with the most recent techniques and developments in education and technology and apply them very successfully in the classroom to teach and motivate students. Always generous and imaginative, Barbara likes to share her skills with her fellow teachers, encouraging us to collaborate and to go beyond the classroom, so we can enrich our students' learning experience. She usually invites us to take part in workshops offered online or by other institutions. We have done quite a number of them together and in one of the last, we co-produced a webquest in Portuguese. Probably because she speaks four languages, Barbara is always interested in projects that integrate the languages taught at our school. Under her supervision, a group of students and teachers have been translating the Time Project site from English into Portuguese and French so that other schools around the world can have access to the project. She is never afraid to innovate in and out of the classroom, even when the odds seem to be against her. In 1997, for example, she organized from scratch a project called USA Connection. Despite all the skepticism and bureaucracy she faced, it was a very successful experience, proving that innovative visions coupled with hard work and dedication can and will lead to good results. For the last five years, Barbara has represented the renowned This is Our Time Project in Brazil and has been directly responsible for our school becoming home base for both French and Portuguese speaking countries. During the year our students take part in several activities online until Time Day in November, when they participate in the Unite the Nations Rally. The Classroom Twinning activity allows the students to interact online with other students all over the world, thus enhancing their own cross-cultural experience. Among her other projects, Barbara has encouraged her students to create online the Copabacana Club, part of the Viva Project. Besides her teaching hours, she still found time to work voluntarily as the coordinator of the English Department and the ICT team. She also maintains her own website called The English Department (http://members.tripod.com/the_english_dept/index.html) where teachers can find exercises, lesson plans and information. At the end of 2003, Barbara got involved in another project, the Garibaldi Project, in association with an Italian high school in Naples. Once again, students in two countries are being encouraged to cooperate online, this time to study the lives of the Garibaldis, both Italian and Brazilian heroes. Barbara really deserves to win the GSN Award for all her enthusiasm, dedication and the positive impact she has had on both her students and colleagues.

10. Testimonial from Teresa Almeida d'Eca (10)
Teacher Middle School (ages 11-14) at Escola EB 2,3 de Sto. Antonio
Portugal

Dear Sirs,

I am Teresa Almeida d'Eça from Lisbon, Portugal, and I've taught EFL for 28 years. I'm currently teaching in a public middle school in the suburbs of Lisbon.

I've been a close observer of Barbara Dieu's work for almost two years. We met online at one of the numerous events sponsored by Tapped In. Portuguese and the strong Portugal-Brazil bond were our first common characteristics. Regular contacts at Tapped In from then onwards soon revealed several others: a great curiosity about all things new in the education world, namely, ICTs and their use in the classroom, and the improvement of the teaching-learning process on behalf of our top priority, our students.

This interest and vision has often encountered great institutional resistance both among our colleagues and administration. The obstacles and the shared purpose of overcoming them have brought us closer, both on the professional and personal basis even though we are physically an ocean apart. That's one of the most fabulous enchantments of today's (a)synchronous communication technologies.

I've attended several of Barbara's EuroLang sessions at Tapped In, in which she has always revealed high professionalism in managing content and time, a strong sense of leadership in facilitating the different phases of the presentations, and great warmth in welcoming all participants and during Q&A time. Her guests are generally well-known people with a name in the EFL/ESL sphere and the topics covered are of great interest, so these presentations are extremely interesting and relevant for professional development. The same is true when it's Barbara carrying on a presentation of her own.

Although my classes have never participated in projects with Barbara’s students, I've had the chance of participating in presentations of her past or ongoing collaborative projects like the Copabacana district at Viva, the webquest, and Time Classroom Twinning. They are all highly creative, appealing to the eye, motivating for the students and very pedagogical.

In the first semester 2003, we both entered "blogsphere" with our students. As I read her students' individual blogs, I noticed that their involvement, commitment and enthusiasm were a reflection of those same characteristics in her. They generally comment on or discuss work done in class, a very effective strategy to keep them interested both in class and out of class.

Barbara also joined the Webheads in Action, a community of practice of English teachers worldwide to which I have belonged for two years. At present, I am moderating a TESOL sponsored six-week online professional development session, Becoming a Webhead, with the aim of introducing participants to, and getting them to use, Web-based synchronous communication tools, as well as making them aware of the different ways these can be applied to the face-to-face, blended or exclusively online learning process. Barbara is not only our guest for a chat on blogs but was also one of the first to register and has already revealed several of the attributes that make her a true professional: warmth in welcoming and helping out other participants, dynamic involvement, commitment to furthering her knowledge and know-how, and the enthusiasm in everything she does attracts the others and makes them follow her.

In November 2003 we also got involved in Global Learn Day (GLD VII) following an invitation from John Hibbs, the coordinator of this 24-hour marathon of presentations about educational matters. Barbara not only gave a presentation with a very interesting Q&A period, but was also responsible for the Latin American slot. It was her first time in this kind of environment and she sounded like a pro!

Considering everything said, I believe that Barbara is one of those rare teachers and professionals whose enthusiasm, creativity, involvement and commitment to her profession, above all, to her students, make her a role model to many of us. I feel very grateful and honored to have accidentally crossed Barbara's path, and to have the opportunity of working with her. I hope my testimonial will help to bring her the credits she so fully deserves.

Sincerely,

Teresa Almeida d'Eça

11. Testimonial from christian defontaine (11)
Principal/Headmaster at Lycée Pasteur São Paulo
Brazil

I met Barbara Dieu in 2000, when I came from France to occupy the post of vice-principal at the lycée Pasteur in São Paulo, Brazil. Soon, I recognized in her the qualities I had heard about her on arrival: competence, efficiency and strength of mind. These, allied to creativity and persistence make her an innovator in her field and have helped her , all along these years to fight against the natural obstacles and resistance against progress. Long before anyone else at school, she has not only used the new technologies in her pedagogy but has also convinced many of her colleagues of their values in teaching, giving them training and support. She has relentlessly worked with her classes and colleagues on various projects online involving different countries. She also brought This is our Time project to our school and organized activity days and events for several classes, combining research, reflection and fun - a formula which worked admirably well with our students. She is respected by her pupils and their parents and considered not just a very good teacher eager to open the world for the teenagers but also a kind and attentive person, willing to help and share her time with whoever needs it. Barbara has been teaching English at the Lycée for twenty years now and has always been actively involved in school issues as member of the ICT and pedagogical groups and as coordinator of the foreign langage department. She is undoubtely one of the teachers who has most helped our school to become renown for its excellence in the language area. For all these reasons above , I highly recommend Barbara Dieu and am convinced she is worthy of this award.

12. Testimonial from Walter Tizzano (12)
Student at Liceo classico Giuseppe Garibaldi
Italy

My name is Walter Tizzano and I'm 17 years old. I am a student of Liceo Classico “Giuseppe Garibaldi” of Naples, Italy. In my school we study humanities. We study also English and we often do cultural exchanges with people from other countries. I would like to give a testimonial for Barbara Dieu because I feel she has helped me to see a new dimension in my learning. I met Mrs Dieu thanks to my English teacher, Mrs Mauro who gave me her email address. I sent her an email asking how to enter the blog “beeonline” because I wanted to join the project and correspond with her students. A blog is a sort of diary where people can write and read messages.

Mrs Dieu helped me by explaining step by step how to sign up for a blog, log in and enter to post on Beeonline. There I could speak with boys and girls thousand of Km far from my house, and I think that today it is very important to keep in touch with people from other countries.

Thanks to Mrs Dieu (Bee) now I can enter the blogspot freely without any help and I have the possibility to make more friends, to know different habits and traditions and also improve the quality of my English.

I think that this way of teaching and learning English is very modern and efficient, and it gives the students something more that the simple possibility to speak the language. It allows us to establish relationships and work with people around the world.

In this way the study of English is not a goal, but a means to do something much more useful. It is a way to open the mind of adolescents and nowadays in our multi-ethnic society to be open- minded is one of the most important things.

13. Testimonial from Brigitte Cadaureille (13)
Teacher High School/Secondary (ages 14-18) at Lycée Pré de Cordy
France (European Territory)

I teach both French and English in a vocational school in France . My students are between 15 & 20 years old and they study catering and office-work . I met Ms B. Dieu through E-teach (a mailing list for French EFL teachers) in April 2001 . She got in touch to tell me about a classroom twinning project she was organising and this was the first step in our collaboration and my first experience with using the internet at school . My experience of collaboration with Ms B.Dieu is a very positive one and this for a number of reasons : a) she is always very helpful and gives all the time and energy necessary to make things work . b) she does it in the most pleasant way and makes you feel very comfortable . c) she is attentive to people 's remarks and demands .She is always ready to provide information ( lessons , lesson plans , sites & other documents ) to whoever asks for it. d) she plays an active part on the list we both belong to ( e-teach ) or on the collaborative work platform (TappedIn) . As I have often used the documents she referred to, I must say that they were both good quality and to the point. Her contributions are always very useful . So generosity, determination and good organisation are the key-words of my work-experience with B.Dieu.

These are the project-works I have been able to do thanks to her help :

1) Forums : Following her invitation I joined three forums (Time Classroom Twinning ) with a group of catering students and we all greatly enjoyed them . These forums were totally new elements in my teaching practice and were very positive experiences for the group of teenagers who took part in them . On top of that, I noticed that the ideas which were suggested after each forum on how to improve the whole process, were taken into consideration by Ms B.Dieu for the next forum . The forums organised by MS B.Dieu were both easy and interesting to do as she did a good planning, provided an easy platform, chose a good topic. She offered all the help necessary to make the projects work by offering a platform where the participants could exchange information and ideas . The selected topics were both motivating for the students and easy to fit within the curriculum whatever age or level concerned . They offered a possibility to introduce a humanistic dimension to the project: cultural diversity (origins of names and celebrations), tolerance (stereotypes).

2) Mail exchange: Through This is Our Time project I got in touch with a Belarusian partner with whom we had a year long class-to-class mail exchange . This project was very positive for both my students and I. They enjoyed exchanging personal and general information, learning about another country, specially as they knew very little about it beforehand (introduction letters, poems, Christmas cards ,group photos with quiz information about each others ' country through questions ,quizzes and posters recipes). Whenever I asked Ms B.Dieu for her help or advice needless to say she answered my requests.

Conclusion: These projects helped creating a very friendly atmosphere in the classroom as they enabled me to use a new approach to the use of the English language with students who have a low English proficiency and need to recover from negative learning experiences. I am very grateful to Ms B Dieu for the positive opportunity she offered me to include web-based activities in my teaching practice . This was largely due to the kindness and patience she showed during my first steps. Now I use the internet more and more with my students and I carry on sharing work (collaborative work on "Child labour " ), information ( e-teach ) and ideas ( forums on TapppedIn ) with Ms B.Dieu.

14. Testimonial from Richard Erickson (14)
Teacher Middle School (ages 11-14) at Sycamore Middle School (retired)
United States

March 1, 2004

Ms. Dieu is more than worthy of your reward because of the many contributions she has made to learning on the Internet. She has worked hard, and has been instrumental in the sharing of cultures through this powerful medium.

Ms. Dieu found my email address posted on a bulletin board looking for email contacts for my students so they could communicate with students their age from other cultures. Immediately we had between 30 and 40 students emailing back and forth.

Together we planned writing activities that ended up with students from both schools writing short stories with was published as a book. Each student participating in the writing has a copy of that book.

Ms. Dieu worked hard in Sao Paulo to keep her Internet connection up. She guided her students in learning about the USA as well as mine in learning about Brazil. Our students shared their cultures with each other through email. They shared music, hobbies, activities, and pictures.

With Ms. Dieu's guidance, her students and mine each made a video of their cultures. They made personal statements on camera as well as showing their city. Then they exchanged those videos and had a chance to see their email friends walk and talk on the TV.

Ms. Dieu led her students in fund-raising activities, and eventually they were actually able to travel to the USA. Many of my students were able to travel to San Francisco and spend the day sharing with their Brazilian friends at Pier 39 and surrounds.

With Ms. Dieu's guidance, the students in Brazil and the students in Gridley, California, were able to learn a great deal about each other's cultures through the use of the Internet. They shared, they wrote, they wrote stories, and they visited in real time. The students in both locations will never forget the experience. That is real time learning.

Sincerely,

Richard G. Erickson 1758 Grace Rd. Gridley, CA 95948

530 846 3786 (home) rgus63@earthlink.net

15. Testimonial from Hugo Corbucci (15)
Student at LIcée Pasteur
Brazil

My name's Hugo Corbucci and I'm 19. I was Mrs. Dieu's student at the Lycée Pasteur between 1997 and 2001. When I learned about her nomination for this award, I was very happy I could contribute with a testimonial because I will never forget the opportunity she gave us when she organized USA Connection.

I participated in the project for 2 years. The first year, writing to students all over the United States and the second year, during the trip around the Southwest of the USA.

The first year marked me. I was 13 then and my first contact with some of the American students was really strange: they asked us how life in the jungle was and if we lived on trees. We were angry because they thought we were non-civilized people. It was not easy to explain that we were kids just like them and lived in a city bigger than many others in the world. It was sure an incentive to write and I think we managed to convince them. After we sent our first class photograph, their mails became easier to answer. We made a film to show them our school and city and what we looked like. They also sent us one showing what they did at school.

>From the moment we learned that Mrs. Dieu was planning a trip to make us discover the U.S.A., we could not wait until it happened. All the students helped to organize a raffle and sold homemade cookies during school breaks. Mrs. Dieu had a real hard time negotiating prices with airplane companies, trying to make it as cheap as possible for our parents. And, we made it! Not everyone went but most of us took part in it and even some students who couldn't afford it came thanks to sponsors. We couldn't believe it was really happening: over 40 friends together in a two-week trip around unknown land? It was too good to be true!

On the bus our teachers would not leave us alone but all work was quickly done and we had a wonderful time. At 13 you never get tired! Thanks to this trip, our class got really close. We formed a group nobody could break apart. The teachers were much loved and part of it all, as crazy as us! The Grand Canyon surely is the most amazing place I went to. It was the only place where all the students stayed quiet for more than 5 minutes. We were breathless!

During the trip we finally met some of our pals in flesh. It was strange to look in the eyes of a person you had been writing to for one year and discover that all the images you had made were completely wrong. When we met our e-pals in San Francisco, they took us to class. What a big school! I remember watching a dance class. It was again weird because our school was much smaller and we would never dream having dance classes. They also had computer rooms for technology! It was quite an experience to discover these differences.

The trip was, without doubt, the best time I have ever had in my life for the fun I had, the things I learned and the wonderful friendships that developed after. I surely owe the one thing I will always remember to Mrs. Dieu, who made all this happen."

16. Testimonial from Tuly Quintanilla (16)
Other School Personnel at ITESM
Mexico

My name is Tuly Quintanilla and I am a Professor of Social Studies at ITESM-Campus Chiapas, México. I am writing this testimonial to describe my experience in working together on an online project with Barbara Dieu.

Two years ago I was invited to participate in Time Project, an online forum for classes from all over the world. The students shared their opinions on important topics on Time Day. This was when I first “met” Barbara Dieu and her classes.

My students were so happy with this experience that the following year I decided to have them participate again. This time we were involved in the Classroom Twinning Activity. Barbara was the one organizing everything at the web page and she was not only coaching and motivating the students but also other teachers from schools around the world. The idea was for teachers to follow the same lesson plan with their students and let them exchange ideas in forums on prepared topics.

My students ended up twinning their comments with Barbara´s students and were very happy to meet and exchange ideas with Brazil. Some of them even continued writing afterwards.

In my opinion, Barbara is an excellent and dedicated teacher. She is always innovating class activities with the use of technology and motivating students to participate in collaborative projects.

She is also a natural leader, always promoting intercultural participation among teachers from different countries. Even on Sundays, at the Euro Language Forum at Tapped In, she is looking forward to contributing, interacting and sharing ideas and resources with us.

I truly believe she deserves the award she has been nominated for.

Tuly Quintanilla Coordinación de Humanidades ITESM-Campus Chiapas

17. Testimonial from Brigitte Parry (17)
Other at +32 2 790 75 57
Belgium

Because of my status at the European Schoolnet office (School Networking Manager), I have been in direct contact with teachers for many years. I came across Barbara Dieu very early because she stood out as a very active teacher in the field of international cooperation. She has adhered to our different initiatives with professionalism and motivation through the years. She always shows up when a project is worthwhile for her pupils? development and her contribution adds a precious value to the content of international projects.

Some examples of her creative cooperation with us: eSchola 2001: This event was a challenge and we needed to experience of teachers to orient the content of the operation in the right pedagogical way. She spontaneously offered her help and experience during the setting up period. Her suggestions helped me think differently and adapt to teachers who are situated beyond European borders. Then she took part in several activities (This is our time, open doors) and very professionally shared her experience at school with our news editor.

The EUN rebels experience: when I set up a special reflection group to discuss the developments of ICT and their impact, positive or negative, on education, she joined the community and contributed many links and thoughts.

EUN Virtual School: Barbara is an active member of the EUN virtual school (English department), a network of 150 teachers who share and propose subject oriented materials and collaborative projects to the broad education community.

2002: Barbara takes part in almost all our initiatives and contributes to eSchola, disseminates the projects she takes part in at all the meetings she is invited to. She also helps me evaluate a new Canadian learning environment using voice over IP together with expert educators for 6 other countries. She tests and uses forums, sets up projects on different multicultural and citizenship issues.

2003; Spring day in Europe: Barbara is now a recognised member of the world education community, she joins the Spring Day initiative and belongs to the very exclusive "club" of those teachers who simply know how to collaborate and communicate, integrate ICT and the international dimension to their work.

2004, Spring day in Europe, the enlargement: Barbara has registered her school and is already planning an event/debate on the European enlargement taking place in May.

Well, to sum it up, I feel lucky to have such a professional and reliable educator around, and I sincerely feel that the luckiest of all are after all, her pupils!

Yours truly,

Brigitte Parry"

18. Testimonial from Péter Rádai (18)
Teacher at Eötvös University of Sciences, Budapest
Hungary

A testimonial for Barbara Dieu

Europe and South-America used to be much farther from each other than they are now, in this cyber-age. The same can be said about the world of language educators on both continents. However, apart from the technological advancement, many of us living and working in the “Old World” firmly believe that another strong reason for the shrinking of this distance in spirit and in real terms is Barbara Dieu herself.

If you had asked me three years ago who Barbara was, I wouldn’t have been able to answer. But since our first contact was established in 2001, her persistent drive to initiate and maintain collaboration between fellow-professionals has convinced us that Barbara acts as a special kind of reference person, who is able to connect thousands of language educators all over the globe directly and indirectly. Hardly a week passes by without a reminder to some online and offline professional activities or gatherings which we had better not miss. And the highly informative messages invariably come from the same, familiar e-mail address: bwjdieu@terra.com.br. No wonder I did not even blink when I first got news of the existence and activities of several Central-European communities of language educators, my region within Europe, via my Sao Paulo friend, it seemed most natural.

Being involved in a special project for the European Centre for Modern Languages in Graz, Austria (ECML – an institution of the Council of Europe), my colleagues and I were setting up all kinds of activities to increase the visibility and status of language educators in spring 2001. Slightly blinded by our common European thinking, we were rather surprised to receive one of the first contributions to our interactive portrait gallery called Teacher of the Week from a fellow-professional from Brazil. The thought-provoking, highly awareness-raising ideas were written in impeccable English, but it somehow turned out from the personal data that it could have been written in half a dozen other languages. Why Barbara, why from Brazil? The answer is simple: because Barbara Dieu interprets life-long professional learning as a constant quest for new ideas, new contacts, new opportunities for professional networking for the benefit of language learning and teaching.

And when somewhat later in 2001 the same project launched a discussion forum on the website of the ECML, who was there to contribute to most topics with highly relevant and often poetic remarks, ideas, suggestions but Barbara? Her presence has been felt in every activity of The Status of Language Educators project ever since, and one particular contribution of hers, which refers to language teachers’ attitude to their work, is displayed in several places at the ECML premises in Graz. Thus, it seems appropriate to express the pride of the whole language education profession for such a unique practitioner as Barbara Dieu by using her own words:

‘Professional development is a profoundly individual gain. But not only individual because what you gain is not kept to yourself but shared with others. But what you gain is not countable. What you share cannot be measured. […] I guess that as we are expected to do our job out of nobility […] they take us for granted and know we will do a good, or at least reasonable, job anyhow...and we will. Because for most of us...money counts but not as much as some values most people leave in their closets and only wear in “grand gala”. And it is exactly for this reason we do not earn more and do not have a “status”. We do not have “grand galas”...we have them everyday in class.’ (Dieu, 2001)

I cannot imagine this prestigious award in better hands than in those of Barbara Dieu! Congratulations!