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17 June 2005
MirandaNet People Newsletter
MirandaNet Fellows supporting World Ecitizens projectsWe have a vibrant and busy MirandaNet community online, but there comes a time when friendships need to be renewed face to face and new projects planned. This summer we are inviting members and friends to attend four ICT CPD events which we hope will be opportunities for members of our community to devise projects that they can do together. You will find all the details on the website.
At all these events we are hoping to raise funding for teachers and students to travel as part of their projects through World Ecitizens (WE) bursaries. WE is the new MirandaNet Fellows’ charity which aims to encourage understanding between peoples and communities and to share the fascinating diversity within nations and across the world.
We have so many ICT experts amongst our membership that everyone who joins in will have much to learn and much to give. We draw widely from the whole education community: some are classroom practitioners, supply teachers and teacher assistants, some are senior managers and policy makers and others are representatives of the ICT companies who support our activities. This rich mix should mean that we are able to support a wide range of projects between schools and communities. These events are being held in London and at the MirandaNet Academy which is based at Bath Spa University College.
Please make all bookings through Lynne Coombs.
Auntie Edith’s donation to WE
Lawrence Williams pops up again because his Auntie Edith, soon to be 90, is the first person to donate to World Ecitizens. Please send ideas for creative ways to make best use of our first £50.
Lawrence tells us how this donation came about….
My Aunt, Edith Jones, has long been a financial supporter of my ICT lecturing travels around the world, especially the work I have done over the last ten years for the Charles University in Prague, at the Poskole conferences. She has recently shown great interest in the new MirandaNet World Ecitizens Project, especially the WE eLapa project with Free State, South Africa, and has donated £50 to support this work. Amazingly, at 90, she has just become an email user! She is now in regular email contact with my children who have been studying in Birmingham and Cambridge, as well as with the rest of the wider family. One is never too old to learn new ICT skills. Some years ago, now, Professor Hiro Tanaka, from Osaka Kyoiku University, and currently at King’s College, London invented the new acronym, ICFT, where the F stands for Friendship. Now it also stands for Family.
Lynne Coombs - The New MirandaNet Manager
Having been in public service all my working life the philosophy and ethical nature of MirandaNet appealed immensely. It was with great pleasure that I agreed to be the MirandaNet Manager in April. Thank you, MirandaNet, for this opportunity. I hope to get to know the members in due course especially as I am organizing and attending the workshop in Bath, Collaborating at the Boundaries of the Possible. Do book soon.
I would like to take the opportunity to introduce myself. For many years I worked in the fields of education and social work, starting many years ago as a primary teacher and a teacher of adult literacy. After a number of years life as a student sounded appealing and I gained from Bath University a Sociology Degree along with a social work qualification.
Initially I taught a variety of social science related subjects in Further Education Colleges in Wiltshire and Cornwall, where I also organized training courses for Social Services. It then felt the right time to concentrate on social work and I worked for 10 years as a field social worker in a local Children’s Team. During this period I was Secretary of the British Association of Social Workers and became a teacher of social work students within the field office.
Towards the end of the 90’s I had a welcome break and travelled to Singapore and California with my husband, who is the director of the MirandaNet Academy at Bath Spa University. We returned in 2002 to enjoy a cooler climate and grandchildren. Since then I have worked part-time as an Academic Support Tutor to those students assessed as having special needs at university.
Thank you, MirandaNet, for this opportunity to be part of a community of practice. I’m looking forward to this. See you in Bath. Lynne Coombs
MirandaNet London Office, Mayfair
This is now our registered address for MirandaNet Ltd, the consultancy, where we can hold official meetings.
MirandaNet, 15 Stratton Street, Mayfair, WLJ 8LQ
The road is just opposite the Ritz!
The Royal Academy is not so far, and there's a very good Waterstones at the other end of Piccadilly.
NEW FELLOWS
Margaret Danby
Margaret is an education consultant specialising in the use of ICT for teaching and learning and in the professional development of teachers. She has considerable experience in project management, evaluation, quality assurance and inspection, and the development and delivery of training programmes and materials for teachers.
NEW SCHOLARS
Miles Berry
I'm deputy head and information systems manager of St Ives School, Haslemere, a small prep school for girls. My educational interests include schools as learning organizations, knowledge management in education, independent learning, and social constructivism, these latter with particular regard to mathematics education. In computing, St Ives has used open source software where appropriate, and has pioneered the use of virtual learning environments in primary aged education. We're interested in exploring further applications of open source web-based applications in this context, such as wikis and blogging. I'm a member of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and the British Computer Society, and am presently working towards an MBA in educational management.
Paulet Brown
I am currently reading for my PhD in education with emphasis on pupils' literacy learning during the first year after transfer to secondary school. This study emerged from a project based in London with students who were at risk of academic achievements.
Originally, I am from The Bahamas and it is here where I began my formal training in Child Development. I continued my training in the United States where I completed two additional degrees, the first in Early childhood education (Hons) and the second in Curriculum and instructions (Hons). While in the United States, I worked within a Family Literacy center where I thought English as an Additional Language to refugees. In addition, I worked with the National Writing Project where I facilitated reading and writing projects. As you can see I am no stranger to working with projects. Since moving to London to begin studies, I have worked with MirandaNet on a few research projects in the capacity of research assistant. This relationship with MirandaNet provided an opportunity to explore the ideas of establishing a link within the schools in The Bahamas and introducing a new phase to an already existing IT program. We have been running an IT program for students in grade 4 (Year4) which has proven to be a success and is now expanding to all the primary schools in The Bahamas. With this in mind, I hope to make a formal proposal to our government, specifically the Minister for Education to be a part of this initiative to improve our students' IT knowledge as we move from local to global advancements in our educational system.
Hannah Dovey
I completed a BSc (Hons) in Music Technology at Staffordshire University in 2001. After graduating, I worked in numerous media/post production companies. Then out of the blue, I landed myself a job as a part-time lecturer in University of Glamorgan, teaching Music Technology, Multimedia & website design modules for 2 years. During my last year at Glamorgan (2003-2004)I undertook an MSc in E-Learning, in which I achieved a distinction. I have since moved on from the university, and I am currently working for a charity, Gwent Association of Voluntary Organisations (GAVO), where I am their E-learning Champion.
Dulce Franco
I am a Teacher at Lusofona University, http://www.ulusofona.pt, in Sciences Education Course (ICT). Also a Member of UID OPECE
I am responsible for the UID OPECE' Newsletter and UID OPECE'Site http://www.uid-opece.net
My interest areas are: e-learning, school websites and training teachers. Some papers about: Web school sites, training teachers and others publications like didactics books for middle school.
Linda van der Loo
Linda is a qualified teacher and is currently studying Masters Degree in Computer Integrated Education. She has 15 Years experience in IT industry and taught in London for 18 Months. Previous work experience included, Director of Computer Studies – Damelin Computer School and Head of the Elearning Centre of Excellence for the Liberty Life. She has been actively involved in elearning projects for the last 7 years, since the days of CBT and WBT. For the last 3 years Linda has been an independent elearning consultant. Linda believes elearning purchases are optimised by empowering the people in the elearning process; with this as her focus she founded the Elearning Institute. Based on Linda's extensive "hands on" experience and thorough knowledge of the elearning industry, the elearning institute provides consulting, workshops and advice on elearning and learning.
The Elearning Institute has pioneered the concept of the Elearning Practitioner, and facilitates “empowering” workshops and structured consulting session aimed at learning and training practitioners working with computer integrated education and elearning.
Linda is a past member of Customer Advisory boards for the WBT Systems LMS TopClass, Centra Virtual Classroom, and Oracle ilearn. She is currently involved in a Global project with South African, Mexican and Chinese schools – aimed at attainment and transformation in the classroom using Interactive whiteboard technology.
Dr Sri Raman
DR. SRI RAMAN is at present executive Director of DAGAR a five year old NGO working in Bihar (India) in the field of Women Empowerment with focus on microcredit, health, education and communication. He teaches economics and management in Patna Womens' College and other institutes and does behavioural science based training. At present he is pursuing policy and planning based research in education.
Dr Sylvia Rojas-Drummond
Dr. Sylvia Rojas-Drummond has been a Full Time, Tenured Professor at the Faculty of Psychology, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), for over 25 years, where she directs the Laboratory of Cognition and Communication. She has taught over 100 courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels and has directed over 60 thesis and dissertations at these same levels. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Educational Psychology in the same institution in 1975, and her Ph D. in Experimental Psychology with a minor in Developmental Psychology at the University of Tennessee in 1980. She also holds a degree as Teacher of English as a Second Language, obtained in 1973. She has been a visiting academic during 3 postdoctoral sabbatical stays. The first one was in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford between 1987-88, supported by scholarships from the British Council and the UNAM. The second one was in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis between 1997-98, where she held a distinction as a “Fulbright Scholar”. The third one is currently in the School of Education at the University of Bristol, supported by scholarships from the British Council and the UNAM. She is a member of the “National System of Researchers” in Mexico and of the “Programme for Stimulus for Productivity” from her University. She has also received the distinction of “Catedrático Universitario” (Honors Professor) from the UNAM. She has received financial support through various international and national institutions to carry out research for 25 years, including a 9 year award from the British Council to carry out a long standing collaborative project with the School of Education at the Open University in the UK and another one from UC-Mexus to collaborate with the University of California. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the “International Journal of Educational Research”, the “International Journal of Thinking Skills and Creativity”, as well as the “Latin Journal of Thinking and Speech”. Her main areas of research include: social, cognitive and psycholinguistic development; interaction and discourse to promote the social construction of knowledge in educational settings, as well as the effects of the introduction of educational innovations in schools to promote social, cognitive, psycholinguistic and technological abilities in children, with an emphasis on oracy, literacy and diverse uses of ICT to enhance learning. She has over 50 international and national publications in these areas, including articles, book chapters and books. She has also delivered numerous conferences in these areas in international and national forums, as well as radio and television programmes. She is a member of several international professional societies in her areas of research interests.
David Wray
I've had a professional and personal interest in ICT/literacy/learning for a number of years. I'm currently Prof. of Literacy Education at Warwick University and recently took on the role of e-learning co-ordinator for my department.
I maintain an active web site myself and am very interested in connecting to a network of like-minded people. MirandaNet seems to fit the bill!
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