NGO Friends of Education was founded on the initiative of Marina Vasileva Connell in May 2014. She registered the association together with Nikola Mijanovic, Bojan Vasilev and Vladimir Mijanovic. A few months later, she presented the vision and mission of the association to 10 prominent Macedonian teachers and invited all of them to become active members of the association in further activities. She is a Senior Education Consultant internationally, a world champion in education game design, a former part-time university professor & an international master teacher trainer whose passion is advocating the 4th Educational Revolution across the full breadth of learning experiences for future generations. Given her background and experience, she was keen to continue her work in Scotland and internationally. She was part of a major project in the University of Edinburgh that developed curriculum materials in STEM for all Scottish schools. Currently she is undertaking a large-scale evaluation of a major European STEM project, Scientix. To date she have developed an online Academy called Easy4Teachers, as part of Friends of Education and I Am learner, which offers face to face and online workshops for bridging the gap between education and technology, using robots in the classroom etc. Read more: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/marinaconnell
Darko Taleski is art teacher from Prilep, Macedonia and followed specialized seminars and projects on the practical usage of Computer technology in the educational process and for the modernization of education. He is working since 5 years on the stop-motion animation as an educational tool and used this approach to teach primary and secondary students 12 different subjects among them mathematics, languages, biology, physics and art. He won in 2012 the Educators´ choice award at the Microsoft Partners in Learning European Forum in Lisbon; 2nd price at the 2013 Educational Global Forum in Prague with the project “Fun, education, stop motion animation” and 1st prize in the category Collaboration in 2014 at Microsoft Educational Global Forum in Barcelona with the project “This is my voice”. Both projects involved student and teachers from many schools from Macedonia. He is very interested on digital art development and using new technologies for encouraging creativity. He completed several Adobe courses about creativity and technology. He is official adobe teacher trainer. Darko Taleski http://www.wix.com/darkopp/darko
Elena Apostoloska graduated on the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Mathematics and Physics studies. Her interests are dedicated to the method of learning by projects, so she finished he master studies in 2011 on the Pedagogy Institute, on the study program Management in the Education. Since 2001 she has been working as a Maths teacher in the Primary school “Zivko Brajkovski” in Butel, Skopje. She has participated in many projects as: Step by step, the Project for Modernization of Education, E-School Project, in PEP project, external testing and using objective mathematical tasks for tests, in the components for improving the assessment, improving Mathematic teaching and Improving the Natural Sciences, Using ICT in the Mathematic classes as a lecturer. As an enthusiastic teacher who supports sharing good teaching practices has recorded a lot of video tutorials. She has participated on the program for developing family values and skills, prevention from drugs abuse, AIDS and youth crime deeds. She has participated in the project for interethnic integration in the educational process. She was trained to use an interactive board and she uses it actively on her classes. Her name is mentioned a co-author of Handbooks for Mathematics Teachers and Collection with Mathematical tasks, and associate in the magazine Numerus with attachments from Vedic Mathematics. She has participated on domestic and international scientific meetings and conferences.
Vladimir Trajkovik received his PhD Degree at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University – Skopje, Macedonia in 2003. Currently he is a Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering at the same university. His research interests include: information systems analyses and design, distributed computer systems, distance educational systems, multi-agent systems, ICT-based collaboration systems and mobile services. He has over 100 publications in various international conferences and international journals.
Vera Stojanovska received her PhD Degree at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University – Skopje, Macedonia. Currently she is a Professor at the Faculty at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University – Skopje, Department of Pedagogy at the same university. Her research interests include: the fields of didactics, pedagogy and computer pedagogy. Since 2012 she has been a full-time professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje in the fields of Didactics (General didactics, Education Technology, ICT in education, School Docimology), Pedagogy (School pedagogy, Pedagogy – General Course) and Methodology (Methodology of pedagogical work). She has participated in many domestic and international scientific gatherings, symposiums and conferences.