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A MirandaNet Fellowship case study

Building international communities of teachers online: Promethean Ambassadors for ACTIVlearning.

Introduction

The MirandaNet Fellowship has been using new technologies to support participative models of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) within a moral, social and aesthetic framework since 1992 (www.mirandanet.ac.uk). Fellows have been engaged in several ICT research projects for BECTA, DfES and TTA as well as developing the use of ICTs in continents and countries as diverse as China, Eastern European, Latin America and South Africa. Over the years Fellows have developed a series of strategies, which can be helpful in particularly in countries where computers are just being introduced. The mix of professionals in the organisation is noteworthy: teachers, teacher educators, researchers, policy makers and company partners. The reason why companies like Aston Swann, Oracle, Microsoft, Inspiration and Toshiba a like to partner MirandaNet Fellows is their critical engagement with the issues as well as the evidence of effective practice. The professional organisation has developed innovative approaches to CPD in the new media thus meeting the learning needs of local, regional and global communities. Case studies which can be seen on the website highlight a wide range of issues in digital education from the emergence of learning communities to opportunities for boosting the local economy for indigenous people. The companies involved find this a good method of using research and development funds not only to improve their products but also to raise the awareness and competence of the teaching profession

Since 2003 one of the MirandaNet research and development project has been in partnership with the Promethean on the effective use of interactive whiteboards, or ACTIVboards, in raising attainment and transforming teaching and learning.

Case study
The Promethean ACTIVlearning Ambassadors team is one illustration of the collaborative learning of teachers across four nations; China, Mexico, South Africa and the UK. The research is focusing on the use of ACTIVboards in raising attainment and transforming learning across four universities and 30 schools. 24 teachers are also developing detailed action research studies of good practice to share with other suers on the Promethean World website. At the centre of this action research is the belief in finding ways of releasing the creative power of professional teachers.

The MirandaNet Fellowship were the natural choice of partner for Promethean as took up the use of ACTIVboards as soon as they appeared in the market. As early as 1999 MirandaNet Fellows identified the interactive white board (IWB) or ACTIVboard as a tool that had the potential to transform teaching and learning before they were widely used in the UK. From 2000 – 2003 an early case study about ACTIVboard on the MirandaNet site was at the top of the hit list and download list because there was so little on the subject. Despite the lack of available evidence in the early noughties, the UK government has made a considerable investment in ACTIVboard through the National Grid for Learning and through targeted national government funds known as “Standards Funds”. The literature in the UK which has now grown exponentially indicates that there appears to be a progression from descriptions of perceived gains in presentation and motivation when ACTIVboard are first purchased to a growing concentration on the pedagogy involved and the potential for resourcing the learners’ need for diversity of teaching and learning styles. Many of the short term studies that have been developed so far have concluded with simplistic lists of the advantages and disadvantages of using boards. Better studies have concentrated on different forms of practice and made suggestions about training. From the start MirandaNet have been interested in the wider picture of digital tools that can help to raise teachers’ self esteem, lower the stress levels in innovative activity,improve attainment and provide a means of transforming the school learning environment. Emerging findings suggest that the ACTIVboard is such a tool.

This kind of approach to teachers as masters of creativity emerged from the Promethean/ MirandaNet pilot project conducted with twelve UK Fellow in 2003/2004 and is a major area of investigation in the new stage of the research from 2005 - 2008. This final illustration of the way in which the MirandaNet model operates relates to a community called Promethean World, which is being facilitated by MirandaNet Fellows between teachers in the UK, Mexico, China and South Africa. The reason for the choice of nations is that the policy makers are all committed to the transformation of traditional classroom teaching and examination reform. They see the ACTIVboard as a powerful catalyst for change. The MirandaNet partners are Promethean UK, manufacturers of the ACTIVboard. The company started as a hardware manufacturer, but has proven to be as far-sighted as Toshiba was ten years before. The Promethean staff see learning as a totality of experience and specialise in providing a full learning suite of award winning software and in-depth training. Experience has alerted the company to the fact that some purchasers are disillusioned with their purchase of IWB because they do not provide adequate training. As a result teachers use the boards as expensive blackboards, if they use them at all. Promethean are now funding a three-year international practice-based research project to evaluate the impact of their ACTIVboards on traditional attainment as well as the transformation of teaching and learning so that the software and the training can be further strengthened.

Since the start of the pilot in 2002 the project has been documented on the MirandaNorth site. Detailed analysis has also been published of the impact of the project on pedagogy, praxis and learning. This UK study has developed the ‘missioners’ in schools who Glover, Miller define as the teacher who not only understands the technology but who also sees the ability to see how this could be used to advantage and often develops software to demonstrate the pedagogical advantages. MirandaNet is a self-selected group of missioners who have achieved the necessary critical mass to make advance as a group possible. However, this kind of external community support can be vital to teachers who do not find this critical mass in their schools. Three of the five schools in this project in 2003 have provided mentor Fellows who are able to support other teachers in learning ‘how to do it’ through visits and seminars. Castle View in Sunderland, has ACTIVboards in every department, support for the whole staff in training and, despite the local challenges, a vision for transformation, which embraces the principles of the management of change. This is a good example of a school where there are enough missioners to make a difference. Here the missioners are supported by the Continuing Professional Development plan in ICT for the whole school team which includes assistants, supplies and support staff. The head teacher started as a MirandaNet Toshiba scholar in 1994 and has written a paper about the support this membership has given him in the building of his thinking as he has moved from a classroom teacher to a head. This head teacher‘s progress through the MirandaNet community is an important illustration of the way in which active scholars achieve fellowship and then prove themselves as lead learners and mentors in the fellow system of awards. Educators like David graduate to run their own local version of a MirandaNet chapter, which takes on the relevant community features in the context of a school or a regional or local group. The Missioners who stand out from the Tentatives and Luddites in schools in the Glover and Miller’s study of leadership and change will probably need communities like MirandaNet in order to maintain their cutting edge and vision.

In the next stage of the Ambassadors for ACTIVlearning research from 2005 to 2008, the researchers from Monterrey, Pretoria and Southampton Universities and the Beijing Academy of Education Sciences are co-operating in collecting data about the impact on traditional attainment scores as well as on the transformation of teaching and learning. One strand of this research this will be to see whether the use of ACTIVboards facilitates a change from transmissional to more constructivist pedagogy. This raises interesting issues as in the countries where the study is taking place the influence of testing and formal examinations encourages transmissional pedagogy rather than constructivist pedagogy, even though this conflicts with the policy rhetoric that often recommends new approach.

A range of educational institutions is involved in the four countries from further education colleges to primary schools and early learning classrooms. The project spans the public and private sectors and each of the countries involved has been encouraged to take a different local slant on the use of ACTIVboards to ensure that Promethean World users have a diverse range of example to draw on.

In the practice based research element of the study, three MirandaNet Fellows from the original 2004 team who are now experienced practitioners are mentoring teachers from schools in Beijing and Shandong in China, Johannesburg in South Africa and Monterrey in Mexico. An online cross-cultural dialogue is already being built up between residential workshops. This collaborative discourse is planned to support all the participants, whether they be teachers, pupils, students or administrative staff.

International face-to-face meetings are supported by online dialogue and knowledge construction in the Promethean Ambassadors ejournal that also acts as a resource repository and an agent for distributed cognition. This cross-cultural dialogue is building a collaborative discourse to support all the participants, whether they be teachers, pupils, students or administrative staff. This community is open to any educators with ACTIVboards and is a source of resource development and sharing by teachers for teachers. This will add to the substantial resources, which have already been provided by the company in partnership with practising teachers. These resources are also used in the training programme offered to buyers by Promethean, which includes skills training as well as learning support.

The twenty Promethean Ambassadors are classroom teachers who are being supported by MirandaNet Mentors to be practice-based researchers who will feed back results in to their schools. In the next stage, some of them will also include the pupils as researchers as well. The teachers have been asked to identify a challenge in the classroom, which the use of the ACTIVboard might address. Figure Seven shows the range of challenges, which the different institutions have identified. The similarities are possibly more surprising than the differences.

Inspiration, concept map software developers are additional partners who have provided a new approach to collaborative thinking within the group. The software was used by Wegerif, the director of the MirandaNet International Research Centre at Southampton University to stimulate productive communication between the different national groups in the second residential workshop in Cape Town. This opportunity to record group thinking in a medium where the full picture could be grasped on a screen captured the imagination of all the teachers who choose, after this initial introduction, to use Inspiration for all their planning and to share these maps as a means of grounding discussions for the rest of the workshop. The range of projects reflects the freedom the teachers have been given to research what interests them.

The Chinese teachers are using the ACTIVboard in a series of complementary contexts: two in Beijing and one in Shandong. At the Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences (BAES) the research focus is on transforming teaching, learning and attainment in primary schools.

Shandong Agricultural University has also chosen to focus on the affordances of ACTIVboards for English language teaching and learning. The use of multimedia with flip charts is seen as a powerful language-teaching tool, with the ability to freeze-frame the video and then annotate the frame. Writing frameworks will also be developed in the flip charts to develop student performance. Students will then progress to the creation of flip charts and resources to support colleagues and pupils in Mexico through collaborative projects on the theme of Citizenship. The South African teachers have also picked up this theme in their outreach activities into schools in more disadvantaged areas although security is a challenge yet to be solved. These schools are concentrating on the use of the board in teaching literacy, numeracy as well as new media literacy, which uses the multimodal and multimedia affordances of the board. Using new media to make learning more active and to make students more independent in China and Mexico has also meant moving the furniture so that classes of 60 are not sitting in formal rows but in groups.

In the Monterrey region of Mexico, UNESCO are involved in the Promethean ACTIVboard research where teachers have identified strategies to combat the challenges that they face. In their projects these state schoolteachers already have evidence that the boards can help to:

In addition, there is evidence that the role of teachers acting as researchers of their own practice has produced:

In the MirandaNet tradition the Promethean World Ambassadors are also working on the development of a global online community of teachers who will share experiences of using new technologies between the UK, China, South Africa and Mexico. Currently the face-to-face workshops are an essential element in getting to know and trust each other. However, over three years the plan is that they will be able to mentor new ACTIVboard users and support software developers in creating exciting new materials. Ultimately the children themselves will be publishing for each other in the Promethean World website.

BETT Contact details

Christina Preston

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