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17 October 2005
October 05 Newsletter
Dear MirandaNetters,Tina's summer blog 'in one'
Maybe I should set up a blog - but it's when I am most busy that I am unlikely to keep it filled in. So here are the summer activities recorded all together in tranquillity on a stunningly soft and sunny autumn Sunday in South London where the trees are just turning to gold. (Yes, you cynics - we do have trees in London :-)
November 28th Winter Solstice London
The next chance to meet you is 28th November 2005 when we are holding an all-day concept mapping and learning assessment workshop at the Institute of Education, University of London. MN Fellows will be presenting work in progress in this interesting area of multi-modal literacy. This will be followed by our Winter Solstice, 7:30 - 9:30pm to be held at our favourite Chinese watering hole, Poons, at 50 Woburn Place, Russell Square, WC1H OJZ. I'll send more details in the next newsletter, but please add this to your diary now. We like Poons because of the large round tables which facilitate discussion. Do come if you can. If anyone can come in from abroad or out of London and stay overnight, I will be available for meetings about funding joint projects the next day, 29th November. Let me know asap if you are coming.
Plans for meetings in 2006 include, in no particular order: Blackburn, Bath and Southampton, England; Orlando, Florida; Monterrey, Mexico; Champagne, France; Leuwarden, Friesland; Prague, Czech Republic; BETT06, Olympia, independent city state of London (£8 congestion charge to cross the border :-).
I'm exhausted already just writing it all down!
I've had a most interesting summer meeting MirandaNetters in Bath, UK, China, South Africa, Portugal and Friesland.
The main focus of our activities was the Bath workshop.
Bath workshop 1-2 Sept - Collaborating on the boundaries of the possible
Many many thanks to the people who worked so hard to make this workshop happen: Mara Chrystie, Christianah Modupe Opaleye and her husband Stephen, John Cuthell and Steven Coombs. Particular thanks to Lynne Coombs who got the show on the road and kept it there!
Special thanks also to our generous partners: Oracle, 2Simple, Promethean, Aston Swann, Microsoft, Inspiration, The Golden Bottle Fund and Lawrence William's Auntie Edith.
We had some stimulating talks from policy maker and academics at the MN Bath workshop. Marilyn Leask and Tim Tarrant introduced the new remit for the Training Development Agency, formerly the TTA. Doug Brown inspired us with his ideas for doing the impossible now. He also made us laugh which is good going for a civil servant: shades of Yes, Minister! Rupert Wegerif really stretched us on the philosophical background to creativity and thinking skills. Steven Coombs enthused MirandaNetters about taking our practice-based research MAs and PhDs. Get in touch if you were not there and this route appeals.
We also had a debate between the educators, the companies and the policy makers. Terry Freedman is also editing the recording he made on his iPod so those who were not able to be there will be able to judge the quality of the talking for themselves. We hope this will be available on MirandaNet soon.
The discussions are still going on in the forums and John Cuthell has written a piece below telling you how to get involved. Many projects came out of this workshop and many scholars received their Fellowships. The scenery, the food and the swimming made this a location we may well use again.
I will be publishing the evaluations soon but meanwhile if anyone who was there wants to reflect on the workshop activity please send me a paragraph for the next newsletter. A selection of photos from Tom Rank are in the WE Ejournal where the discussions are also happening.
See how MN Fellows from Nigeria, Mexico, US and the UK scrub up for dinner. There is also a picture of the MN rose that Hiro's mother-in-law made for us from rice flower (you will not believe this until you look). The picture of Coombe Grove Manor.makes it easy to picture Jane Austen in these surroundings.
Please send more photos to Francis for display.
The next MN annual workshop in Prague October half-term 2006
Many members have said they would prefer Autumn Half term 2006 for our next annual workshop so that more teachers can come. Also we will be able to visit our partner schools in Prague. If I do not receive any strong objections, we will plan this event with Bozena Mannova for the period Saturday 21st October to Sunday 29th. There will be a 3 day core workshop, visits to schools, sightseeing and so on. By starting the planning this early we hope that many of you will be able to access EU funding in order to attend. Let us know if you can suggest other sources of funding for colleagues as well.
Tina's travels
In our last newsletter we commented briefly on the meetings of MN Fellows in Stellenbosch at the WCCE05 conference in July - about 20 MirandaNetters altogether including some teachers from our Elapa project in Free State South Africa.
After this event in July, John Cuthell, Rupert Wegerif, Jan Lepeltak and I went on to work in Cape Town with our colleagues from Mexico, China and Jo'burg in South Africa. This was to develop the practice based project we are working on with our Promethean partners. The research is to see whether IWBs can raise attainment and transform learning over three years. There is more about this project below and on www.mirandanet.ac.uk/associates/promethean.htm
In August I flew to Nanchang in the Yellow River District (JiangXi) of China to talk about the IWB project with 3 teachers from school no 50 in Beijing: Mr Zhenghu Wang, Ms Han Guili and Ms Shang Yamei. They did an excellent presentation about their practice based research project which won them all a MN Fellowship. You will find this presentation on Zhenyu's website. Wang Zhenyu's presentation is (482KB) and Han Guili's presentation is (226KB).
I also stopped off to see Hong Kong and Shanghai, busy bustling cities with skyscrapers that make you giddy. I am still surprised about the extent of Western influence in the big cities and like to get out to the rural areas where you can see a little more of the real China.
In mid- September my presentation on 'e-communities of practice' given in Lisbon in Portugal will be one chapter of a book about self-regulated learning written jointly by these European colleagues. I'll keep you posted when it comes out.
Lisbon presentation (3.91MB)
Lisbon paper
I flew straight from Lisbon to Amsterdam where Steve Coombs and I met Jan Lepeltak. We took a breathtakingly beautiful drive over the polders to run a workshop on practice based research in Friesland in the Netherlands. This workshop was on a small island where we slept on a boat. The scenery and the small towns had all the charms of a place that is preserving its minority character. We are aiming to get EU Arion funding to hold a MN workshop here as soon as possible linking up with the new MirandaNet Chapter at Institute for Education and Communication at NHL University Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. www.nhl.nl/ictendidactiek
At the end of September, John Cuthell and I visited the Promethean ACTIVboard factory in Blackburn. This was an interesting insight into what happens under the gleaming surface of the ACTIVboard. Promethean welcome school visits if your learners need to know how factories operate. I certainly enjoyed the rolling country side views and the good local food. The English are enjoying a resurgence of interest in our local cultures and places after a long period of looking out from our shores and holidaying in foreign climes. Fellows from other countries let us advise you about special places to visit if you are making a visit to England. Of course we can always arrange visits to MN schools.
I also announced the interim results from the Promethean ACTIVboard research, Ambassadors for ACTIVlearning (20065-2008) at the Interactive Whiteboard Summit at Wolverhampton University on October 12th 2005. Follow this link for the presentation and the research report.
After this very busy summer, John Cuthell is back from China and going onto South Africa. I'm trying to cope with the backlog in my in-tray!
Wonderful to see so many of you this summer - keep in touch
Regards to you all,
Christina Preston
MirandaNet Discussion forums
From time to time people ask me about the MirandaNet discussion forums, and how they can participate. I take for granted the diversity of ideas and contributions, and because of that I assume that everyone else knows about the forums and accesses them.
One set of forums, Thinking Space, can be accessed from the menu link on MirandaNet. You don't need a user name or a password to read and contribute to these.
The World Ecitizens E-journal can be accessed through the World E-citizens link on the MirandaNet home page. This has some very interesting exchanges that have come out of the Bath workshop. (This includes Tina's reflections on the relationship between her grandson's interest in digital photos and visual literacy. We keep tripping up over this little Herbert in Miranda Net - talk about a besotted grandmother :-)
If you are a member of MirandaNet you will have a user name (usually your first name and your last name, in lower case, as one string: that is, with no space in between your names) and a password. Click on the Members' Log-on Area at the bottom right of the MirandaNet home page, enter your details and you'll see the range of forums to which you have access.
There are currently some fascinating discussions taking place in the World Ecitizens E-journal. Click in to them - and join the learning conversations.
John Cuthell
The IOE journal 'Reflecting Education' is now live
The IOE journal 'Reflecting Education' is now up and running. Congratulations to all the MN Fellows involved in contributing to this first edition on elearning: Mark Bennison, Maulfry Worthington, Michael Smith, Keith Turvey and Karen Hanrahan. It is best to register on the site.
The Fellows all gained A's in our practice-based Diploma module on the efacilitation aspects of elearning. So we were all rather surprised to find how much rewriting they had to do to satisfy the requirements of the audience who are not practising teachers as we had thought. The audience is actually teachers who are doing MAs and PhDs - a subtle difference. It has been a good learning experience for us all in the exigencies of academic writing.
My preface was also too detailed for the e-journal. I've published it on the MN website as I thought MN members would be interested in our views on the 4,000 word mode of assessment which was the only mode of assessment available. The A's reflected their superior essay writing skills but did not address the human skills of efacilitation in which they also excelled. This essay is a draft so I would be delighted to receive comments.
Miranda Net goes Mexican
BETT 06 MirandaNet stand and seminar
After a wonderful African display at the last exhibition at Olympia we are going Mexican this year.
Preparations are underway for our MirandaNet presence at BETT06, 11-14 January 2006 at Olympia, London. Click to read some of the press releases and seminar plans.
Our seminar will be a practical session, 'Working with Whiteboards - Effects on Teaching, Learning and Attainment' Wednesday 11th January at 4.15pm for 45 minutes including questions and answers, followed by Tequila and Tortillas on the MirandaNet stand P30 . Members and potential members are invited to join us for an evening's eating and entertainment. Apply to Tina to book a place.
Jane's Engraving
News from MirandaNetter Jane Dorner
Many of you will remember Jane Dorner who was our first web editor. Her work has lasted until now. We are steadily introducing updates to the site to make use of the advantages of database technology. But many many thanks to Jane for the creative energy that got us started on the web in 1994. At this time you will know the Internet was not even a gleam in the eye of most ICT professional organisations.
Jane has changed her career entirely and is learning to be a glass engraver. She is a great blogger and here is her latest entry.
Everything about what I am doing now is on my blog including pictures of some wonky (but quite chuffing) goblets I made in Turkey last week.
New scholars
We are delighted to welcome these new scholars. We are saving the new Fellows list until the next newsletter as there are rather a lot.
Alan Cawson
Before retiring (early!) from the University of Sussex I was Professor of Digital Media and responsible for the MA course introduced in 1994. I have researched and written about consumer technologies, and firmly believe in the need to make technology accessible to everyone. I am convinced by the dictum (attributed to a former head of research at Microsoft) that the internet will take longer than you think to mature but its impact will be much more profound than you think. No-one can afford to be ignorant of the internet, and I am hopeful that further innovation in human-computer interfaces will make it more useful and more powerful. Teachers, perhaps more than others, need to constantly develop their skills and understanding and embrace the internet as a tool for creating content as well as accessing it. I am currently involved in an internet-based development education project (the Fiankoma Teacher Programme) that links schools in Ghana and the UK through collaborative curriculum-based cultural exchange projects. It is exciting to play even a small part in by-passing media stereotypes of Africa as a basket case and getting kids to communicate directly with each other about the similarities and differences in their everyday lives.
Jeanne Marie Ho Pau Yuen
I am currently a Senior Head at the R & D Section, Educational Technology Division (ETD), Ministry of Education, Singapore. I have been with ETD since the start of Singapore's 1st Masterplan for IT in Education (MPITE) in 1997. In the initial years, I was involved in developing the core IT training programme for Primary and Secondary teachers and in the design of electives and other support programmes. (If you are interested in what ETD does, visit our web site.
During the launch of our second Masterplan (mp2) in 2003, I was one of the pioneers of our newly formed R & D section. Next year, I will be attached to our National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, where I hope to focus more on research and to start my PhD. I will be studying the role of school leadership in technology implementation, particularly the interactions between the Principal and the Heads of Departments, and how middle management mediates the impact of the Principal's leadership.
Prior to joining ETD, I taught for 6 years in 2 secondary schools and a Junior College. I have a Masters of Science in Instructional Systems Technology from Indiana University, Bloomington.
Kris Vassos
Through this new involvement with MirandaNet, Kris hopes to improve technology integration through collaboration with other educational technology advocates. Kristen Vassos is a computer teacher in two K-4 schools in Mount Laurel, NJ, USA. Kris is passionate about integrating technology with curriculum and constantly looks for any opportunity to do so. In 2003, Kris was selected as an Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) and is actively involved in the ADE program. Kris has been invited by Apple Computers to present at national and international conferences and has authored exhibits for the Apple Learning Interchange. In addition, Kris has won national award from Promethean Inc. and the State of New Jersey for her work. As a result of this award Kriss will be going to the Promethean Summit in Wolverhampton in October to meet other users.
P.S. From Tina
Looking for our new scholar, Kris, I spent all day at the Promethean Summit staring at the chests of US male teachers reading their name badges. Finally found Kris on the coach back to London. She's a girl!
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