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28 April 2014

Spring 2014 Newsletter

Spring Newsletter

Dear MirandaNetters

A text version of Christina's newsletter was sent out on MirandaLink recently, but not all of you are on MirandaLink! So here is the full newsletter with images, and a quiet whisper that those of you not on MirandaLink have missed out on some cracking good debates recently.

Best wishes to you all.

Francis Howlett
MirandaNet Web Editor

Contents:

The heritage and future of Miranda

Sarah and Tina

I was invited to speak about the heritage and the future of the MirandaNet Fellowship at the London Book Fair in April. Congratulations are due to our 800 members in 80 countries as nearly 850,000 pages on our MirandaNet website are viewed each year. We have around 6,000 unique visitors each month, each of these on average making two visits and viewing over 11 pages. We score nearly 6 out of 10 on Google. These are unusually high figures and must be due to the quality of the publications you have sent us over the years. Nowadays as a not for profit organisation these figures are also important in attracting associates so that the MirandaNet Fellowship remains free to our professional members. Our current associates are: BrainPop, Engage, GroupCall, Follett, icould, Ingots, IRIS Connect, LightSpeed, MERU, Tablet Academy, Toshiba and Yellow Spot.

You will find links to them all on our front page where you will also find my London Book Fair presentation.

London Book Fair

 Your vision

At the moment in our membership section we describe the MirandaNet Fellowship as “an international professional organisation of policy makers, educators, developers and researchers who collaborate in exchanging ideas and support as well as publishing research studies, case studies and reports aimed at improving the use of innovative digital technologies in classrooms and in professional learning communities”.

Since 1992 when MirandaNet was founded as the first community of practice for educators interested in digital technologies, the mission statement has been changed several times by members. At the moment on our website our tag line reads, ‘sharing experience and expertise’. Please look out for a Mirandalink debate this week when I will ask members for suggestions for a vision and tag line that suit the spirit of the times we live in.

BETT14 pupils

Your profile

Have you updated your MirandaNet profile recently? Francis, our web editor, is also excellent at making sure your profile comes high in the Google ratings but I have noticed some are now out of date. Why not Google yourself and check? It is quick to change the detail.

Your publications

The Fellowship is not for profit and your membership is free. But a gift of a publication is important to keep the community alive. I hope these web stats will encourage you to publish your 2,000 word article for other teachers in HE, FE and schools. You can write on any topic in which you have knowledge and expertise. Reworking abstracts and summaries of your publications is fine as long as you have permission.

Gaudi

We encourage multimodal publications like a presentation with an explanatory commentary or a blog you have already written. Getting a bigger audience for your existing pieces is part of the point. We try to give our members more publishing freedom that usual. The only criteria on which we peer review is that the article or case study must be interesting to other educators.

Tina with Ben

After your piece has been peer reviewed and published you are awarded a MirandaNet Fellowship: 2 publications and you gain a Senior Fellowship. Sarah Younie and I are happy to give advice and help with English if you feel that is required. We are keen to publish pieces from members whose first language is not English.

Redesigning your website

We are also investing in a complete revamp of the website for September 2015 with the idea of giving your publications a stronger focus. We have been knitting the website together since 1994 when we were the first ‘face book’ type application for a community … that was when Toshiba gave members five laptops when everyone else was saying ‘Why on earth would teachers need their own laptops?’ I would be delighted to know what our members and associates would like to see on the website.

Overwhelmed by MirandaLink messages?

We have chosen not to go into forums because immediacy is lost, but you do not need to save the MirandaLink messages as they are all stored in the members archive. Also you can choose how often you want them sent – but, wow, what great debates we have had. Just last term:

Some great titles! There’s a book or a thesis for someone here! Would anyone mind if we put key comments on the front page of our new website? Anonymous?

Publishers at the Book Fair

Our associates

Thanks to these loyal companies who support us with an annual subscription we have new projects starting with MirandaNetters as co-researchers next term. Look out for news.

These are some of the research groups we set up on Google Hangouts from the BETT14 discussions each supported by one of our associates or partners:

BETT14 students

We need leaders for these groups who will also oversee the authoring of MESH pathways in their expert topic. Let me know if you would like to volunteer for the MirandaNet MESH guide authors team. Requests for volunteers will be out soon on MirandaLink. See MESHGuides

Miranda and Peaches Geldof

Bob Geldof has invested in GroupCall with the charitable intention of improving parental engagement in the learning of their children. Currently Sarah Younie, Karen Cameron and I are developing research in this area, funded by GroupCall, a MirandaNet associate, and we will be sending out a message on MirandaLink group sourcing what is known about this relatively new area.

As a result of the Group Call connection I had the privilege of interviewing Bob at BETT13. I found him a man of great commitment to education. Because I have met him I have sent Bob condolences from MirandaNet about the death of this daughter, Peaches. As we lost our daughter of a virus when she was sixteen I have some understanding of the grief of the family. When this happened to us many years ago knowing that other people cared was very important to us so I hope he receives a wave of sympathy. He will not have time or energy to respond but that is not the point of the gesture.

In this context not all members know that I set up the MirandaNet Fellowship in 1992 with many colleagues in memory of our daughter. The story is here if you are interested.

The interview with Bob at BETT14 is here.

The next MirandaMod – 28th April

In Partnership with our EU HandsON ICT colleagues, the next online MirandaMod about how to fund action research projects is 28th April from 1600-1730 (GMT) followed by a networking supper.

The details of the meeting as well as recordings of the BETT14 MirandaMods thanks to Theo Keuchel are here.

HO cooking

Get Involved

Keep an eye open for forthcoming MirandaMods by subscribing to MirandaLink

Follow @MirandaNet1 Mirandanet’s Twitter stream.

Join the MirandaNet Community on Google +

London Book Fair tweets under #whatworks14

@mirandanetter (Christina’s Twitterstream)

@mirandanet1 (MirandaNet Twitterstream)

More about our web stats here

I hope you have had the holiday you wanted

Regards,

Christina Preston
Founder of the MirandaNet Fellowship

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