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4 April 2003
END MARCH/APRIL NEWSLETTER
DEBRA COOKDebra Cook joined MirandaNet on 17th March. Debra has worked for a number of voluntary sector organisations on a variety of projects. She was office manager at The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and is an active member of Amnesty International and Stop The War. Her hobbies include music, reading, cinema and theatre. We welcome her to MirandaNet and hope she will be happy with us.
NEW FELLOW AND PENPAL
We are very pleased to announce a new American MirandaNet Fellow, Mary Rector, who teaches at Pleasantville Elementary School, Iowa USA. Well done, Mary. We are sure your article will inspire other Keystage One teachers to see the benefits of curriculum exchange for small children.
As part of MirandaNet’s SchoolScape@Future project Mary Rector has been building a two year penpal project with Marion Scott Baker. The partnership at Keystage One started conventionally with letters and posting videos and cassettes. Only later on in the project have these Early Years teachers felt confident in introduced emailing for a data collection exercise on homes. The US children thought it particularly interesting that their houses had names!
www.mirandanet.ac.uk/schoolscape/penpals.htm
It’s no bad thing that the teachers have started with technologies they are comfortable with and concentrated on building the human relationship. When the relationship is strong, teachers can cope with new modes of communication and take set backs in their stride.
rector at harenet.net
marion.scottbaker at ukonline.co.uk
WRITING A BOOK CHAPTER ABOUT OUR ANGLO-CZECH CONNECTIONS
Calling all MirandaNet participants in Anglo - Czech projects : deadline April 14th for you reminiscences
Nikki Davis and Andrew Brown, editors of the World Year Book 2004, have invited MirandaNet Fellows to write a chapter about the impact on their learning of our membership of the Anglo-Czech alliance. Mirka Cernochova and Christina Preston met in London a couple of weeks ago to plan a questionnaire which they would like you to fill in.
Also Boba Mannova, Lenka Zerzanova and Zdenka Hamhalterova made a collage for the MirandaNet 10th birthday to commemorate our long relationship which you will find on www.mirandanet.ac.uk/internat/czech.htm. We also thought that this might stimulate your memories. We would like to quote you.
The proposed book is ICT and Education: World Year Book 2004 : Digital Technology, Communities and Education
Editors: Dr Andrew Brown and Professor Niki Davis
Series Editor: David Coulby & Crispin Jones
Publisher: Kogan Page, London.
Many of you will remember the chapters written about MirandaNet work with the Czechs in 1999 and 2000. MN Fellows quoted are Alistair Wells, Ray Barker and John Potter. Other Fellows who have had projects with the Czechs include David Fuller and David Litchfield, any more?
The questionnaire is on
www.mirandanet.ac.uk/survey
Lots of you were on the visit to Prague. Please fill in the questionnaire if you were.
These are the books titles linked to some extracts on the web.
Preston, C and Mannova, B (2000) ‘Collaboration through Technology Now and in the Future: Linking New Europe with the World’, in Culture and Technology in the New Europe: Civic Discourse in Transition in Post-Socialist Nations by L.Lengel New York: Ablex and Preston, C. (1999).
www.mirandanet.ac.uk/ftp/CollaborationExtract.doc
'Building Online Professional Development Communities for Schools, Professional Associations or LEAs'. In M. Leask & N. Pachler (Eds.), Learning to teach using ICT in the Secondary School London: Routledge.
www.mirandanet.ac.uk/ftp/BuildingOnlineExtract.doc
FIVE MORE NEW SCHOLARS
We hope to meet some of our new scholars at meetings and events in the future. In the meantime if you see a new (or old) scholar mentioned who has similar interests as yourself, do not hesitate to get in touch with them and let us know the results.
Derek Bartels
Christina met Derek Bartels at the recent BETT Conference in London this year. He is the Australian Education Officer – ICT Curriculum for Brisbane Catholic Education Australia and represents 140 schools in his district.
Nik Peachey
Nik Peachey has been working with British Council as ICT co-ordinator and trainer in Morocco. The school has approximately 2000 EFL students. Nik was recently involved in a project to evaluate interactive whiteboards (Promethean) for use with EFL students and is currently finishing a dissertation for the M.ED. in technology and ELT. Nik is also involved in a number of materials creation projects for multi media CD ROMs and web sites.
Euline Cutrim
Euline Cutrim is an EFL teacher in Brazil and is currently doing a PhDat the University of Lancaster under the supervision of David Barton and Alan Waters. Her research is on the use of interactive white boards for language teaching and she is working with ESOL learners. Her Masters dissertation was in the area of computer conferencing in online distance courses at the University of Lancaster.
Margaret Danby
Margaret Danby is a freelance consultant and is interested in conference activity relating to citizenship and transforming learning. We hope to be able to give you new of her recent work in Jordan. She is working on a MirandaNet evaluation of the ECDL for Educators run by Aston Swann and the British Computer Society.
David Somerset
David Somerset is interested in joining MirandaNet, firstly on the recommendation of Alice Tomic, Communications Leader at Richmond University and also a member of MirandaNet (who has encouraged David’s interest ever since working as a sessional tutor) and secondly after having looked around our excellent site. He recently qualified with a PG Dip in On-Line learning at City University. This was partly inspired by his own lecturing in New Media Writing technologies (looking both at the appropriate use of language and the technical requirements of writing for the Internet). He has also contributed and edited a web site dedicated to film art.
BANGLADESH COLLEAGUES
Our Web Editor, Francis Howlett has put some photos of our Bangladesh colleagues up on their web page so we can see whom we are talking to. Do have a look:
www.mirandanet.ac.uk/internat/bangladesh.htm
CAL03
Teachers' Braided Voices:
A professional community on elearning in Practice
Bryn Holmes and Christina Preston are presenting a paper about braided learning at CAL03. They use as an example an ejournal site they have developed for the GTC. This site is a display of the capture first of professional practice and then of reflections on the case studies. Teachers have been selected by national competition to be efacilitators for the GTC forums. They are learning to stimulate and summarize debate. Bryn and Christina are capturing their expert professional voices in an elearning ejournal, Braided Voices, which will provide a focus for lively debate within the professional family and promote a strong, expert and respected voice in public. Dr Norbert Pachler, the GTC ejournal editor, will help the efacilitation scholars to work on articles to create an elearning knowledge base for GTC members. Eventually, like an academic journal, teachers authors will be supported in the publication process by their peers who will decide which submissions are most likely to move the profession forward.
21st Century Schools: A report on the first year of the Schoolscape@future Minerva Action
www.mirandanet.ac.uk/schoolscape/report.htm
www.mirandanet.ac.uk/ftp/21stCschools_ab_itte.doc
Sharing Innovative Practice:
A report on the project.
www.mirandanet.ac.uk/schoolscape/index.htm
ANOTHER USEFUL RESOURCE
Here is another logo for MirandaNet members to download from this page on the MirandaNet site. Try it and see if you find it useful.
www.mirandanet.ac.uk/logos.htm
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