Overview of ISHN Activities
The International School Health Network (ISHN) has focused on a limited number of strategies in its work at the international level and in helping national and state/provincial organizations use information and knowledge from other countries effectively in their own work serving practitioners, advocates, researchers and government officials. These include:
These strategies will be followed in a limited number of ongoing and project-based activities that will be undertaken by ISHN, usually in cooperation with other organizations and networks. These include
- helping us all to learn more about multi-intervention approaches, programs and strategies that help schools, agencies and systems to address board health, safety, equity, social and sustainable development issues
- being a pioneer and facilitator of effective, professional uses of web-based tools and processes that enable us all to work with others around the world
- organizing convenient and small symposia and meetings in conjunction with other international conferences, meetings and consultations so that effective policy, program and practices in school-based and school-linked work are more apparent and accessible to participants
These strategies will be followed in a limited number of ongoing and project-based activities that will be undertaken by ISHN, usually in cooperation with other organizations and networks. These include
- World Encyclopedia & Knowledge Exchange Program on School Health, Safety, Equity, Social and Sustainable Development:
This wiki-based web site is positioned as a shared work space to be used by several organizations, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations and individual practitioners as a forum and document development tool. Over 40 individuals and ten organizations have already contributed their time, expertise and funding to the calls for writers, contributors and sponsors in several subject areas (core concepts, nutrition friendly schools, monitoring/reporting/ evaluation, school substance abuse prevention, mental health, implementation issues, girls and women’s health, behaviour theories, teacher education and development, integration within education systems and more). As of June 2011, over 40 Glossary Terms (1-2 paragraphs), over 25 Encyclopedia Entries (2-3 pages), and over 20 Handbook Sections (15-20 pages) and over 50 Bibliographies of web-linked research, reports and educational/planning/training resources have been developed. There are seven “first edition” documents that have been developed to a publication stage. There are several very extensive “toolboxes” of research and resources on broad topics such as nutrition friendly schools, mental health, sexual health, LGBT students, physical activity and substance abuse. Many of the summaries include one or more of at least twenty recorded webinars that have been embedded as presentations within the text of the documents. Our ongoing scanning of web networking sites such as SlideShare, GoogleDocs, YouTube and others is identifying and gathering collections of bookmarks, web sites, selected policy and guidance documents and more. These collections will be integrated within the bibliographies. The Alphabetical List of almost 400 topics provides a glimpse of the eventual coverage of this program that we hope to achieve over the course of several years. We have developed outlines for the contents for each type of summary in the program that can be used as guidelines by writers and contributors. A similar set of outlines will guide the development of bibliographies and toolboxes. A protocol for controlling and sharing the right to publish in other venues is being developed. ISHN will review all content to ensure that we comply with copyright laws and have permission from other sources if we use or adapt their content. Our technology tools enable us to host and record webinars, use the wiki-based tools to edit and store drafts of the summaries, to encourage participants to post comments and attach their own papers, documents and reports as case studies. These new technologies permit us to loosen the grip of geography, telephone charges and time zones. However, the real value of this enterprise is the content and the people who benefit from their participation. - ISHN Membership Access to our Global Information Service:
As of December 2011, a membership in the International School Health Network or one of its partner organizations will be required to access our daily, weekly and monthly monitoring/reporting from over 150 journals, over 75 media and over 75 media outlets. Membership will be available on an individual, organizational, state/provincial and national basis through the purchase of annual memberships or license agreements. Partnerships to share revenues and responsibilities with national and international associations will be developed. The service, which has been developed over the past four years will be available as a free public web site (www.schoolhealthinsider.org) and Twitter account (www.twitter.com/shinsidertweets) until December 31, 2011. After that, a membership will be required to access the vast amount of information which includes identifying and posting the titles of related journal article titles form over 150 journals, monitoring over 75 blogs and other social media accounts published by education, health, welfare, development and other organizations, monitoring major media outlets around the worlds, tracking and posting reports and key web sites from all 200 countries and their respective provinces/states, collecting and archiving links to recorded webinars, document collections, presentations and bookmarks from the various social media outlets. This vast amount of information is collected and analyzed in different ways and published in daily, weekly and monthly formats that members can choose to receive at their convenience. Prior to December 31, 2011, ISHN will transfer a large collection of links to lesson plans that has been developed over several years as well. these will also be accessible to ISHN members. For more information, go to the ISHN Membership section of this web site or contact [email protected] - Contacts in all countries. states and international organizations, networks and agencies:
In 2011-12, ISHN will be approaching a researcher, government official and NGO staff person to ask that they act as contacts or correspondent for their country, state, organization or network. As a contact, they will be asked to update a web page/report twice a year with any major reports, web sites or key contacts relating to promoting school health, safety, equity, social or sustainable development. In return, these contacts will receive access to a part of the School Health Insider information service and be able to post selected items from the SHInsider Twitter account and blog on their own web sites (See example here). This network will be made available to officials, researchers and others seeking a rapid response or environment scan to identify innovative practices or the the status of various types of programs used by countries and states around the world. - International School Health Symposiums: ISHN has worked with several other organizations to organize four international symposiums since 2004. These events have preceded or coincided with major health promotion conferences. In the future, ISHN will work with issue-based international networks and other types of organizations to organize similar one or two day events.
- Webinars, Web Meetings and Online International Consultation & Web Dialogues
ISHN's experience in organizing webinars, web meetings and other online discussions will be used to support other organizations in using the web effectively to exchange information and knowledge around the world.