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13 February 2006
February MirandaNet Newsletter
MirandaNet Mission StatementTime to reflect on our mission statement. All members are invited to send suggestions for new wording to me, Christina Preston.
The MirandaNet Fellowship spans national, social, cultural, commercial and political divides. Peer mentoring and practice-based research strategies celebrate individual learning patterns and varied experience. Together members create an inclusive forum to develop innovative programmes for professional learning. Dissemination and web publication are central to the Fellowship learning process. Through this shared knowledge base Fellows across the world are sharing emergent trends in the use of new media and technology to promote education and citizenship. Partnership with the education industry and with policy makers is at the heart of these activities.
Mexican Cocktails at BETT06
The highest number of MirandaNet members ever visited our stand this year. We had rather a party for the four days as a result of our partnership with the Mexican MirandaNet chapter. Nearly 100 people attended the reception after the seminar on the invitation to try out ‘Cuba Libre’, rum, cola and lime. Dai Thomas was an excellent impromptu barman!
Christina Preston
New members from Muslim countries
Always a warm welcome for new members. We would like to have news and views at any time from any members, scholars and fellows. Just a paragraph is enough. Do not worry about the standard of your English. I will help you.
This month I would like to welcome the increasing numbers of Muslim educators from all over the world who have joined recently on the web. I really appreciate this gesture of reaching out as World Citizens. I wonder how MN can fund and implement ICT projects with these members. I am used to raising funds from the European Union, but not sure how to fund projects between Europe and countries further afield. There are many countries where we have members where we have not had the funds to run projects or to fund members to join our conferences and workshops.
Please get in touch if you have any ideas for international projects and funding. MirandaNet Fellowship and World Ecitizens with our web environments and international dissemination make us attractive partners to funding agencies. We could set up a forum and working party online to discuss projects if any of you are interested. Let me know.
Christina Preston
Stimulating and supporting visual literacy: concept mapping as a tool for learning
25th February at Institute of Education (IOE), University of London: Room 677
A small MirandaNet working party will be meeting at the Institute of Education (IOE), University of London to plan a non-linear MN publication for an IOE teachers' publication in February 2007.
MN Members will be discussing IWBs and concept-mapping practice in schools as part of this project.
All participants will receive a certificate of attendance for this free Saturday seminar and workshop 10 am to 4 pm. We can also discuss qualifications in practice-based research which offer alternative forms of accreditation to linear essays.
For those who cannot attend there will be a forum on the subject. We will be sending you information about how to join after the meeting.
Let Christina Preston know by 17th February if you can come.
Awards
We’re hoping to nominate a teacher for the Teaching Awards 2006, one of the categories we’re exploring is ‘Outstanding New Teacher’ do any of you know of a New Teacher doing either Think.com or ThinkQuest that could be a nominee? Our PR company will work on the application with the teacher.
Caroline Hook
Marketing Director, Oracle EMEA
Think.com & ThinkQuest
Mobile Media Article
The volume of material broadcast to the educational community through digital TV channels or via the internet has far exceeded the ageing VCR’s capabilities. However, portable devices such as Windows based PDAs and pocket sized mp3 players such as the Apple iPod can help us to keep our heads above the rising waters of the information age. Geoffrey Scott-Baker, a MirandaNet Fellow, describes how such devices can be used to record, store and time shift programmes using simple format conversion utilities.
Geoffrey Scott Baker
New Scholars
Hannah Olubunmi Ajayi
Hannah Ajayi is a lecturer in the Primary Education studies Department of Federal College of Education (Special), Oyo. Oyo State. Nigeria. She bagged a Doctoral Degree in Early Childhood Education from the Teacher Education Department, University of Ibadan. Nigeria in December 2004.
The focus of her research is on the language development (Reading proficiency of the Nursery/Primary School children. She has published research works on referred journals. She has also attended conferences where academic papers were presented. She is married with four children.
Timothy Teo
Timothy Teo is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). The Institute is the responsible for all pre-service teacher training in Singapore and conducts both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in education.
Timothy is trained in areas such as psychology, music, and education. He is especially interested in quantitative research methodology and applying multivariate statistical tools (e.g. structural equation modelling) to study variables of interests in various fields e.g. IT in education, critical thinking, and teacher epistemology. Another area of interest is the development and validation scales for measuring latent variables e.g. attitudes, dispositions, etc.
Prior to his current position, Timothy has taught in the primary school, secondary school, and the polytechnic. At the same time, he taught adult education classes and university-level courses on a part-time basis. Experience in curriculum development and syllabus writing was obtained as a Senior Curriculum Specialist at the Singapore Ministry of Education at one stage of his career.
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