Gordon Academic College of Education

The goal of The Gordon Academic College is to train teachers, educators and leaders innovatively in education and teaching while integrating community involvement. Gordon Academic College promotes academic excellence based on the newest theories, incorporating the most advanced technology and practical trials in teaching. The College focuses on the student, while still emphasizing a commitment to society, and imparting the moral and ethical foundations of education as its purpose and mission. The students studying at Gordon come from diverse groups in the Israeli society: Israeli-born, new immigrants, Christian, Muslims, Druze and physically-challenged, as the values of multiculturism, tolerance and accepting the other are form the pillars of the educational vision. The academic staff which trains our students for the challenges of dealing with the education system includes professional staff such as education lecturers and professors of other disciplines, and serves as a model of educating the next generation of the children in Israel. The students learn the importance of seeing and helping the individual within the system’s framework, using the connection between the students’ educators, family and the system. The location of Gordon Academic College is on a cliff with a spectacular Mediterranean Sea view, in a green environment that evokes inspiration, and in a city that is home to people from different backgrounds and religions, living side-by-side. Celebrating over 60 years of education, Gordon has greatly contributed to the training of generations of teachers and educators, both undergraduate and graduate, in various subjects, and will continue to lead education through the latest technology available today worldwide.

Website: http://www.gordon.ac.il/English

Contacts:

Dr. Rhonda Sofer

Dr. Rhonda Sofer is an applied anthropologist who has been working in the field of teacher training for over 30 years. She has a BA from Fairleigh Dickson University, Madison Campus New Jersey and M. Phil and PhD. From Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She is the Director of the Multicultural Educational Resource Center at Gordon Academic College of Education in Haifa Israel and is also a lecturer at Oranim Academic College of Education in Tivon, Israel. She is the program initiator and coordinator of an European Commission TEMPUS IV Fifth call program Development of an International Model for Curriculum Reform in Multicultural Education and Diversity Training (acronym DOIT) and the coordinator of Gordon College’s partnership in the TEMPUS IV Sixth call program Life-Long Learning in Applied Fields.

Lecturing in higher educational institutions in Israel since 1979, Dr. Sofer has introduced anthropology and multicultural education to thousands of Jewish and Arab Israeli students and teachers. She has initiated and/or developed resources for a range of community projects that included a mentoring program for Ethiopian children and tolerance educational programs in Hebrew and in Arabic speaking schools. Dr. Sofer has also been involved with promoting GACE Holocaust teacher training program and developing a program that empowers Ethiopians to be teachers in Israel. Since 2002, she has been the involved in an international tri-city project (Haifa-Boston-Dnepropetrovsk) which trains teachers at a Ukrainian Center for Special Needs and a student-foreign exchange program.

Dr. Hava Vidergor

Hava E. Vidergor, Ph.D in learning, instruction and teacher education with specialization in gifted education from the University of Haifa, Israel. Hava works in the Arab Academic College of Education and Gordon Academic College. She has 30 years of experience in teaching and holding various administrative positions at school. She has presented a number of papers, posters, and has conducted workshops in World Council, Asia-Pacific and ICIE international conferences. She has numerous research papers in top gifted education journals, and is the initiator and co-editor of Applied Practice for Educators of Gifted and Able Learners with C.R. Harris, and Enhancing the Gift of Leadership with D.A. Sisk. Hava has developed a comprehensive Multidimensional Curriculum Model (MdCM) for teaching gifted and able students. She is an active member of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children (WCGTC) and currently serves as the Israeli delegate.

Limor Harary

Limor Harary is the Head of the Department of Education Technology. She has earned a Master in the development of educational systems integrate technology at Haifa University of Haifa.
Harary is an ADE (Apple Distinguish Educator) of Apple Company, and GCT (Google Certified Teacher).
Prior to her role at GCE, Harary has been in charge of Safe internet and I.P issues at the Ministry of Education. She served as observer at MOACH management -Israeli Association for Information Technologies in Education.

Harary operates in different areas in order to promote innovative teaching by using technology. As Head of the Department of Education Technology, she consistently promotes faculty development in this field toward integrating technology into the curriculum at all academic levels. In addition, she is actively involved in mentoring students and in helping, them become technology leaders in education, able to integrate 21st century pedagogies. Harary has initiated and nurtured partnerships between GCE and the industry, with companies such as Google, Apple, etc.

Her main interests are to engage learning by using different kinds of technological means and methods; One-to-one tablets initiatives and redefinition of Pedagogical; using new tasks that were previously inconceivable. In addition, she focuses on engagement and learning through distance education, and on collaborated learning using different and new technologies.

Dr. Hadas Huber

Dr. Hadas Huber is a lecturer at Gordon Academic College for Education (Haifa, Israel), special education and early childhood department. Head of pedagogical teacher training for activity and involving method of learning (PBL). She is currently a Doctoral student at Bar Ilan University researching the field of Thinking Enhancement, meta-cognition, self- regulation learning and development models for multi-disciplinary literate discourse. She has expertise in coordinating the special educational track for the retraining of academics in the field of special education. She has experience as an advisor for parent and student groups for self-regulated learning. She has created many learning programs including a professional workshop engaged in technology-learning, self-awareness and emotional intelligence. The program was held in formal education and I Mrs. Huber has a Professional Personal website: “learning in a different way.” In addition she is the author and publisher of a Children’s Book: “A Pink Cloud of love” that describes emotional care and presents tools to cope with peer pressure.

Davida Pollak

Davida Pollak is a lecturer in the department for Innovation and technology in Education at GACE. She teaches educational technology practices. Davida also supports faculty with technology integration into their courses: face to face, blended or fully online courses. She was chosen to be the techno pedagogical advisor to an innovative MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) course that is being developed during 2018, and will be held on Campus (EdX Israeli platform). Ms. Pollak also takes part in some of the other International project at GAEC.

Davida’ main interest and effort is put in professional development of faculty regarding integration and implementation of educational technology in order to promote and support collaborative learning and applying innovative way of teaching and learning.