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18 July 2006
MirandaNet July Newsletter
MirandaNet Seminars & WorkshopsMirandaNet members are warmly invited to all these seminars
Etopia - Mapping the World We Want
The Etopia launch programme
21st and 22nd September 2006 Leeuwarden, Friesland, The Netherlands.
The first project meeting in Friesland when teachers of children between 4 and 7 will be setting up multimodal literacy projects with the UK. Visits to local schools will be part of the programme.
3rd November 2006 London, England
The international launch of Etopia will be at an evening dinner at the Institute of Directors after an international seminar Getting Better Together, at Great Ormond Street, for 700 teachers of sick children. Many of these children are in isolation because of their treatments. This project online with children from other countries will be a lifeline for them.
21st – 23rd February 2007 Prague, Czech Republic
A three day workshop for teachers from all over the world to include visits to local schools where more Etopia projects will be set up.
You will find more about the Etopia project here.
For more details email Christina Preston.
Teachers talking to teachers: bringing educators together across national and cultural boundaries
The 2007 Series of Seminar and Workshop Programmes
What subjects would you like us to cover? Drop me an email if you would like to speak as well. We are planning the next series now.
Face-to-face meetings are a useful aspect of MirandaNet membership although we know that some of you can only be online members because your location. If you would like us to hold a workshop in your region or country let us know.
We also offer accreditation in work-based projects at any level from a certificate to a Ph.D. Much of the programme can be online as well as in visits to your place of work. Contact us if you are interested in any of these elements of MirandaNet Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
Members stories in an e-journal
How were you introduced to computers in education?
I've been looking back on the critical incidents in my life that led to the founding of the MirandaNet Fellowship in a paper in the MirandaNet Braided Learning e-journal volume called, O brave new world: the birth of an e-community - 1955-1991
The full paper is also a reflection on the ways in which teachers in my generation were introduced to the use of computers in the classroom in the 1970s, 1980s and the 1990s. You will find the full paper in the Etopia volume of the MirandaNet ejournal.
Here is one of the incidents in my paper:
'It’s' on the timetable
It was something of a surprise in September 1986 to find 'IT' in four slots on my timetable.
'What is IT?' I asked the curriculum deputy.
'Information technology' he said patiently. 'You are teaching IT to two first year classes this year starting next Tuesday.'
'Why me?'
'Because English and Drama teachers communicate well, and because you had a two day MicroElectronics Programme (MEP) government project course on computers in May.'
'Two days! ' I squealed.
'Well it's two days more than anyone else teaching information technology this term.'
Remember at this point in time I had still never touched a keyboard. In retrospect, I am surprised I did not make more fuss, but I was too ignorant to know what I was agreeing to.
Continued....
O brave new world
Etopia Ejournal link
I shall be adding to these incidents in each newsletter. MirandaNet members are invited to add their own critical incidents about learning about ICT to the e-journal volume by using the peer review facility.
We will also publish your incident in a special edition of the MirandaNet newsletter. This way we can build up knowledge of our e-community’s personal history and experience. It will be interesting to reflect on these experiences as we set up the new Etopia project which will be predicting the future.
Christina Preston
Virtual Learning Environments
Following all the positive mentions of Moodle I decided it was time to investigate, and I have installed Moodle on World Ecitizens.
Hours of fun await anyone who wants to play. Let me know if you need extra permissions to do things - the first thing is to enrol yourself on it, then of course to add courses, students, teachers, content...
Miles Berry also has an entry in his blog about the government reports on Virtual Learning Environments that makes very interesting reading for schools who are feeling pressured into introducing one of these new environments. (Editor: Miles has changed his blog URL since this entry was posted: his blog is now here - http://milesberry.net/)
Where are your blogs?
Why do bloggers blog? This was a question I asked myself when I first began my research blog and I’ll come back to that in a moment as, for the uninitiated amongst you, a more pertinent question may well be – what is a blog? In brief, a blog is an online writing space. It is most commonly used as a form of journal but can also be used as a community writing space (for collaborative writing and discussion). As a journalling space, it can take many different forms – reflective, informative, creative.
A Learner’s Space is a research blog. It represents my thinking space. I use it to store ideas, reflect on findings, practice, books, etc. relating to my research. It is a useful virtual space, a storehouse for a collection of things to do with my research that I like to have access to from multiple locations. I have been using the blogspace for just over a year now and it has been a really useful tool for tracking progress in relation to my studies. I find that the daily discipline of writing reflections keeps me on target (well, most of the time) and pushes me to push on with my studies. It is also useful in that it helps me to ‘notice’ the everyday things that I might otherwise not take note of. Having a blog has also helped me to appreciate the ups and downs of research, whether these are related to independent study, or striving to achieve a healthy work-study-life balance. Have a look at my blog. (Editor: that Blog has closed now)
Wilma Clark
We are very pleased to welcome Oracle returning as partners for MirandaNet Fellows in some new ventures in Friesland and Prague, more news in the Autumn term.
Christina Preston
Inspire your students through Project Learning on Think.com
Many of you already know – and use – Think.com from Oracle. The program has gone through a new development, and the latest version of Think.com, coming in August 2006, introduces a new Projects Space. This enables teachers to easily organise their students into working groups and run projects.
The teacher, in a role as facilitator and guide can create projects and challenges that motivate students to experience and explore relevant, real-world problems and issues. The Project Space provides students with the tools and discussion forums to present their findings, and to create products to share with others what they have learned. Teachers can create projects that within their schools, or join with other schools and students from around the world.
Engaging with the world
Oracle have introduced a feature in which teachers can describe their projects and request additional members from the community of Think.com. Students can also request to join open projects: their teacher will be asked to confirm the request for membership, or if teachers prefer they can limit the membership to known students and schools that they are partnering with. Students can work on the content of their projects together and once they are happy to share the results, make it available to everyone on Think.com.
The Project Space therefore becomes a major area within Think.com that can be accessed via the People, World and Organisation portals. Oracle believe that the new Project Space will facilitate how we learn best – socially in groups, collaborating to achieve a challenge and reaching a relevant goal. Creativity and innovation must be some of the outcomes of a modern educational system and Oracle believe that the Project Space in Think.com helps promote these outcomes. They hope that as an existing user or a new user to Think.com you will find the Project Space an ideal place to help your students develop the skills that are today’s “units of currency” for modern knowledge work; Critical Thinking & Problem Solving, Creativity & Innovation, Collaboration, Teamwork & Leadership, Cross Cultural Understanding, Communication & Information Literacy, Computing & ICT literacy and Career & Learning Self-reliance.
www.think.com is a FREE online learning community for educators and students provided by the Oracle Education Foundation. It is password-protected and specifically designed for students aged 7-14, although any student in formal education up to the age of 19 can have an account. Think.com makes it easy for schools to integrate technology into the curriculum; it provides students and teachers with their own websites, protected email accounts and discussion tools for communicating ideas and collaboration.
Caroline Hook describes the foundation which has been set up by Oracle.
Christina Preston
The Oracle Education Foundation
Who We Are
The Oracle Education Foundation is an independent, philanthropic organization funded by Oracle Corporation. As part of its mission, the Foundation provides ThinkQuest and Think.com as free services to the global primary and secondary school community. These programs are designed to connect students around the world and engage them in collaborative, project-based learning using technology. We promote global collaborative learning through partnerships with schools, government agencies, other nonprofits and NGOs internationally.
Why We Do This
Our aim is to support technology education that fosters students' love of learning and their sense of citizenship in a global community.
In a world in which cross-cultural understanding is more important than ever, the ThinkQuest and Think.com programs reflect our goal to promote collaboration and learning that spans borders, both real and imagined. We believe that getting students from different backgrounds to communicate, collaborate and learn about each other's life experiences is valuable.
The technology industry will continue to prosper only if our global society produces citizens capable of leveraging technology and teamwork to solve business challenges and address needs in all areas of life. The global community's future is reliant upon the same factors - the skills and wisdom of this next generation.
Our Programs A protected online environment for schools worldwide, providing a suite of tools for email, website publishing, research, discussion, and project collaboration. It's 100% free and contains no advertising. An international competition in which students and teachers are challenged to create the best educational websites. These sites are hosted in the ThinkQuest Library, a rich resource used by millions worldwide. Winners receive a trip to ThinkQuest Live and other valuable prizes.
Caroline Hook
New Fellows
Congratulations to all our new Fellows.
You will find Maarten De Laat's paper in the e-journal. De Laat who is Dutch was supervised in his doctoral research by Etienne Wenger who is our guru in the field of communities of practice. He has allowed us to publish his new book study Networked Learning based on his research on our website for you to download. It’s worth reading just for this style in English. Few native speakers could reach his standards.
Maarten's paper on Networked Learning can be found in the Etopia E-Journal.
Maarten's book on networked learning is available for download as a PDF file (1MB).
Christina Preston
Maarten De Laat
Dr Maarten de Laat is a researcher at the department of education at Exeter University. He conducts research on e-learning in both educational and organisational contexts. His work covers, networked learning, CSCL, ICT, communities of practice, social learning, work related learning, and knowledge management. Besides working for the University of Exeter, he also works for the Centre for ICT in Education at IVLOS, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. He has published in internationally refereed journal articles on methodological and pedagogical issues in researching networked learning. He received a PhD on networked learning, in which he studied how participants of communities of practice learn and coach each other in a collaborative learning environment in both the workplace as well as in higher education. Having worked on many national and international research projects he is currently participating in the evaluation of the new educational system of the Dutch police academy, which was introduced in 2002, and he is involved in a three year European project called ARGUNAUT, which is aimed at developing awareness and feedback mechanisms for moderating e-discussion environments.
Tatjana Atanasoska and Daniella Andonovska-Trajkovska
Well done to Tatjana Atanasoska and Daniella Andonovska-Trajkovska who have gained Fellowships for their joint Report on how they set up a new MirandaNet Chapter in Macedonia, together with their encouragement of teachers in Bitola to create a series of web resources, currently posted on the London MirandaNet site. They plan to build their own web site in Bitola, so that future resources can be posted there. So far, these are lesson notes and resources in PowerPoint about butterflies, Beauty and the Beast, and the Breathing System. They are written up in English, so you can still try them out even if you do not speak Macedonian! I am sure that Tatjana and Daniella would love to know how you used these notes in other contexts.
Maybe others of you could get your Fellowship by submitting lesson notes of this kind that will help other teachers.
The new MirandaNet chapter in Macedonia has been working to produce on-line materials for their teachers and students. While they endeavour to create their own web site, MirandaNet UK is posting a selection of items on their behalf.
New Scholars
Jak Olivier
My name is Jac Olivier and as an ICT teacher with a postgraduate background in sociolinguistics I am very interested on the dynamic relationship between language use - especially of African languages in South Africa - and the use of ICT resources (and e-education) in schools. My main current research area is e-learning and multilingualism in South Africa.
For my MA thesis I researched language rights and television media (specifically subtitling) in South Africa. Currently my PhD research is focussed on education as I have been working as a teacher in South Africa for a while. For the past year I have been working in UK to gain experience and be exposed to different teaching methods – I will be returning to South Africa in 2007 to finish my research and implement what has been learnt in the UK.
In terms of African languages I have started two projects for the promotion of the languages spoken in South Africa through this website.
Furthermore I have also published a lot of information on the African language Sesotho, this includes an electronic dictionary.
Weixiong Shi
I got my first degree in BEng in Computer Science and Information Technology in School of Informatics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in China in 2005. Currently I am a student of MSc in Business Information Systems, an joint course hold by School of Management and Computer Science department of Royal Holloway, University of London. The major area of my interest is Human and Computer Interaction (HCI).
Two of the question I am working on my dissertation is: How the design of ICT (including hardware and software as well) can inform teaching and learning; The impact of ICT in education; I am looking forward to share my knowledge and learn from other members in MirandaNet.
Won-Joo Suh
I am reading for my PhD in Museum Education at Institute of Education, University of London. Besides, I am working as a docent in the British Museum and also teaching Korean at SOAS, University of London.
After I graduated from Yonsei University (Education and Psychology) in South Korea, I did an MA in Comparative Education at Institute of Education. Then, I studied in Keio University in Japan. I am a qualified teacher (Secondary) and worked as an education officer in Human Resource Development Department in a company.
My research interests are museum learning, intercultural understanding, constructivism and meaning mapping. Currently, I am doing research on visitors learning of other cultures from museum experiences. I am using Personal Meaning Mapping (PMM) as a research method.
New Members
Ahmed Al Koofi
I am just want to learn about ICT.
Robin Bevan
ESRC TLRP funded Research Training Fellow
From Black Boxes to Glass Boxes: the application of computerised concept mapping in schools.
Roger Broadie
I am an independent consultant who works on educational, political and commercial aspects of ICT in education. I have recently facilitated Personalised Learning, BSF and Transformed Learning projects for Naace, worked on the e-Strategy Impact Review for Becta/DfES and on the evaluation of NGfL Cymru, worked with schools and companies on learning platforms issues, and with a variety of companies involved with ICT for learning on strategic developments. I also act as Chief Executive of the European Education Partnership. Having been involved in developing and promoting the use of ICT to catalyse, enable and support advancement in education, since the inception of computers in schools in the early 80s, I desire to see the potential of ICT-for-learning realised to the full. I am particularly interested in the ways in which ICT enable knowledge to be constructed and communicated in new ways, and in the pedagogical change that this requires.
Julie Burton
I am currently lecturing at Lincoln University in Psychology and Medical Ethics. I am also half way through a 2 year part time PGCE (Post Compulsory) Course. I am also a trained Nurse.
I have recently been appointed as Module Leader In Psychology 1 for Distance Learning and am particularly interested in how methods that appear to work for e-learners can be applied to improve learning in the more traditional setting of the University.
Suzanne Dreyer
I provide ongoing, sequential technology professional development to the elementary faculty as well as integration strategies and ideas to incorporate technology seamlessly into the classroom curriculum. I have 17 years teaching experience in Pre-K -5th grades, and 10 years as an instructional technologist.
This summer I am working with sixteen, Pre-K-2nd grade teachers to integrate ACTIVprimary into their daily practice.
Mark Pelling
I currently work in the Learning and Teaching Unit of UWIC supporting the staff in developing their teaching both technologically and pedagogy, within that I also support the virtual / blended;learning environment. Previously I was Head of Network Development in secondary school and Head of ICT. Since completing my degree in Information Systems unlike my peers who gained industry based jobs I have mainly worked in the education sector. Be it in an advisor or management role, or even at the 'chalkface' of teaching.
Catherine Richards
I have been interested in the use of learning technologies within the sixth form teaching environment to support the teaching of business studies and the provision of pastoral support. I am specifically interested in the use of synchronous communication systems and in particular the use of chat environments that can be used to support student emotional development.
I am currently conducting research in this area with the purpose of building a chat system that can provide an outlet for student emotional needs.
Ziv Semadar
I am a graduate student in a program of Applied Sociology and Public Policy. As part of a Knowledge Management course I am researching emerging and extant Communities of Practice in Prague and around Central Europe. I was hoping this could be a good starting point. Additionally, after reading various sources regarding CoP and related issues, I am thinking about launching a project for creating a CoP based Czech-Hebrew dictionary (as none was ever made) and thus facilitating further creation of knowledge and interaction between the two cultures, as well as among Hebrew enthusiasts (and there are quite a few of them) in the Czech Republic.
Deborah Trayhurn
My current interest in developing learning resources and using facilities relates to work-based learning, though I have been engaged in developing and using learning materials for Computing / Information Systems courses in Universities for over 15 years. In this time I have also been involved in teaching on-line for the Open University in UK, with students in various locations.
I am keen to develop more contemporary knowledge of various Virtual Learning Environments, having direct experience of WebCT, Blackboard I am very interested in systems with a more constructivist approach to learning and developing community. Other strands of interest are in viewing ideas and questions concerning different take up, uses and interests in technology by men and women.
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