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14 November 2006

November Newsletter

Change of date: Meeting about social web communities has been moved from 1st December at the Institute of Education in London to 11th January at BETT, Olympia

Contents

Prague Workshop Thursday 15th to Saturday 17th February 2007

The next Etopia event is a face-to-face workshop called:

Towards personalised learning: implementing the philosophy A CPD event examining the role of ICT in building partnership projects

You will be talking to other educators from all over the world about the way they use ICT in education, visiting Czech schools and building Etopian Projects for World Ecitizens. The social programme includes sightseeing, concerts and dinners in this beautiful city.

We had our first MirandaNet workshop in Prague in 1997 so ten years after it seems a good idea to repeat this success. For members outside the UK, the British Council in your country might fund you to come but you will have to hurry.

Book now for the Etopia workshop in Prague. We need to have the numbers very soon. The hotel we have booked at group prices is http://www.antikcity.cz/ We will not be able to keep these rooms much longer.

There is also a funding opportunity for a scholarship to attend the Czech workshop as part of your study of Inspiration concept mapping. See below.

2007 Inspired Scholarship - Win Technology for your school
Inspiration Software announced their 2007 Inspired Scholarship programme and invite MirandaNet Fellows and their colleagues to apply. Each year the scholarship awards 750 USD to educators who demonstrate visual learning and technology in their classrooms.

BETT 2007, Olympia, London
10 - 13 January 2007
S97 Grand Hall Gallery

BETT is the world's leading event placing technology at the centre of learning. Constantly innovating, consistently thought-provoking, BETT provides solutions enabling educators to touch and test resources and debate ideas.

Anyone can book an appointment with Christina or John Cuthell online, by visiting www.bettshow.com and then selecting book an appointment with an exhibitor and choose MirandaNet from the listing.

The MirandaNet BETT07 seminars
Learning to Be: Social Software; Young People's Web Communities
A meeting about starting a MirandaNet working group in 2007
On Thursday 11th January
12:30 – 13:30
MirandaNet stand number S97 Grand Hall Gallery

The agenda
Web2 affordances are part of young people's lives. The ICT they encounter in educational contexts fails to reflect their leisure use of electronic communications media. Extra-curricular ICT use is leaking into classrooms, and the ripples are beginning to worry teachers and school leaders. School ICT use can no longer be thought of as a walled garden, in which young people can be insulated and isolated from outside influences. Is it only the teachers who are unaware of the world outside?

Following on from our online discussion, in this informal forum members will explore some of the issues with young people's ICT use, their web communities and the social software that enables young people to create their own worlds - and sense of identity.

Members will discuss strategies for schools and their young people to work creatively and effectively with communications technologies, and gather evidence to inform policy makers and schools in their practice. We will also be looking for funding sources to begin a working party in 2007.

Please note : This meeting is instead of the meeting advertised for 1st December at the Institute of Education in London. We thought more people would be able to attend this one as part of their exhibition visit

A BETT07 Fellows’ seminar
Social Technologies and Learning in Your Classroom: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and More
On Thursday 11th January - 15.15 in Rm A

Miles Berry & Terry Freedman, two of our Fellows, are doing a session on the same day, Thursday 11th January in Room A at 15.15 on Social Technologies and Learning in Your Classroom: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and More. See you there.

Email Christina for more information.

A Major pre-BETT International ICT Conference
Information and Communication Technology: Global Learning Communities
8th January 2007

Keynote : Christina Preston

We hope to see you next at this exciting international conference which explores key issues of global learning communities in relationship to ICT access, the effectiveness of interactive technologies and the creation and educational use of digital media.

Oracle, Promethean and 2Simple Collaboration

The first Etopia workshop in Friesland - Multimodal literacy
Leeuwarden September 2006

Many thanks for teacher scholarships from Oracle and 2Simple
Nicki and Mikee from Norbury School primary school in Harrow

This is our report
The opportunity to share our ICT/Literacy work with teachers from the Netherlands was an exciting yet daunting prospect. Although we were unsure where our journey would lead us, we knew that it would be a positive experience.

Our apprehension was unjustified when we were greeted by Christina and her team, Mara Chrystie, Dughall McCormick and Wolfgang Fischer, who put us at ease.

We learnt a lot by listening to the other presentations and talking to the group of teachers who were present. Even though we were mostly strangers we felt connected by our common interests of being primary school teachers who want the best learning for their students.

Our presentation was about our literacy work at Norbury Primary School in London. I am the Assistant Headteacher of the First School and also Literacy Co-ordinator. I have been working with a Year 2 class on a poetry unit of work on fire. Many of the children in the class are EAL children and English is their second or even third language. I wanted the poetry to be a way of facilitating meaningful new vocabulary for the children and thought that using the 2Simple 2Animate Program would enable me, and the children, produce a poem that was not just a verbal art form but also a dramatic and kinaesthetic one.

The unit of work was a longish one; children could explore words to do with fire through drama, paint and eventually through the written form. The finished work can be seen at www.norbury.harrow.sch.uk under 2M's poems and Visual Literacy.

We were impressed by the Friesian teachers’ ability to speak not only Friesian but Dutch and English fluently. We had a very interesting exchange about the way in which literacy is taught in our different countries.

The day after the seminar we were introduced to the beautiful landscape of Friesland as we left Holland and travelled to Leeuwarden by train. In the following days our first impressions were strengthened. We saw and learnt more about this amazing country of Friesland from our generous, friendly and humorous hosts, Jan Lepeltak, Piet Rodenhuis and Jelle de Boer.

When walking through the schools, speaking to both teachers and pupils, we felt a strong empathy. We realised that we were all striving towards similar goals, resulting in a familiar ethos of learning through sharing.

One of the most valuable experiences of our trip was meeting teachers in their own classroom environment. We were impressed with all the good practice and gained many useful ideas.

As we leave each other and travel on our parallel paths for now, we hope to keep in touch with our new friends in Friesland and develop strong links between our children and theirs.

We would whole heartedly recommend this experience if you have the opportunity to embark on a similar journey.

As we continue climbing to higher ground, Miranda.com, Etopia, Think.com and the Comenius Project have widened our view. We can see endless opportunities for our children to develop a sense of being a world citizen.
Thuranin

Read the MirandaNet team report and see their pictures
Dughall McCormick, Holmfirth JIN School, UK

Multimodal Literacy workshop series
Funded by Inspiration
October 14th 2006 Institute of Education, University of London

Jane Finch from Worcestershire LEA talked about using Inspiration in classrooms.

Mark Oronzio showed the new data handling tool from Inspiration, InspireData, which is very visual. It could be used for practice based research very effectively. InspireData enables data sets to be investigated and experimented and the detailed presentation on how Inspiration can be used in the learning and management environments.

Mike Smith then took the meeting on an Inspirational Journey. He demonstrated how Inspiration can be used to capture the richness of the discussion threads that come out of MirandaNet seminars. He then went on to illustrate conceptually his own journey with integrating ICT into the learning environment. He talked about step changes in his understanding when his ideas were challenged and unfrozen and then a period of crystallisation and refreezing ones outlook. He showed how he used Inspiration software to crystallise ideas from his learning environments and build a foundation for further development. Inspiration had been used to model his CPD journey which started with the essential 'discs and chips' and routine skills of using ICT. This phase leads to an increasingly philosophical strategic viewpoint when one seeks to see the ways in which ICT can transform pedagogy and allow learners to follow their own learning journeys in collaborative environments where the learners can become the teachers and the teachers the learners.

Michael Smith
http://www.inspiration.com/ie/index.cfm?fuseaction=products.inspiredata

Still Life?
A picture donated to Etopia for teachers’ scholarships
By Christina Preston

Many members know that MirandaNet is in memory of Corinna, my daughter, who died of a virus when she was 16. Carole Hensher, our neighbour, is a printmaker who knew my daughter Corinna very well as she was a young artist.

Carole specialises in drawing pieces of clothing which tell a story. She saw me in a pair of shoes last year that were too silly for a grandmother, and made an etching of them. We called the print ‘Still Life?’ You can see this on the front page of the MirandaNet website.

When she heard about the Etopia project, Carole generously donated a copy of Still Life to Etopia for auction at the Getting Better together dinner to raise funds for teachers’ scholarships on Etopia projects. We raised £570.

The print is one of a run of fifty signed copies. If you would like to buy a print and put a small donation into Etopia as well you will be contributing towards a teachers’ scholarship. The reserve price is £150 which includes £20 towards Etopia bursaries. Might make a nice Xmas present…

Email Christina for more information.

Notes about Carole Hensher
Carole is an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers (ARE). Her work is exhibited and sold by several London galleries and appears regularly in National Print Exhibitions. Still Life ? is a steel plate etching with aquatint and burnishing, printed on archive Somerset 300 gsm rag paper. Her web site can be viewed.

We were delighted when Michael Rosen accepted our invitation to speak after the Etopia launch dinner at the Chelsea Children’s Hospital School international conference earlier this month. Mara Chrystie, a Mirandanet Fellow who had taught one of his children many years ago, asked him to join us as she knew of his commitment to enriching children’s lives.

Michael read and talked about poems he’d written about his own childhood, and within minutes had this large, formal gathering joining in unbidden with silly noises. He talked hilariously about the exchange of ideas for stories and of the influence of his father. We all spent most of his talk in laughter but there were also tears of sadness when he referred to his son Eddie ‘who didn’t make it to hospital’.

Members’ Profiles

Since 2000 we have gained a number of members from countries in the Middle and the Far East which is very encouraging, Congratulations to all members who join into discussions on MirandaLink for whom English is not their first language.

We have had Members’ Profiles for years which are a kind of blog. These are the most requested items by our international readers, so please make sure yours is up to date. This is your website, it is very easy to fill in.

Have a look at John Cuthell’s profile.

He uses his profile to keep his curriculum vitae up to date which is a good idea especially if you do not have any other web presence. Is yours up to date? Log in to the Members’ Area and get cracking!

Fellowship Award Certificates

Anyone can gain their Fellowship by writing 2,000 words or a multimedia equivalent about a project that will interest other teachers. We publish these in the newsletter and then put them in the e-journals. More than 1,000 educators from all over the world download these case studies every day.

We will be awarding the next Fellowship certificates at BETT07 and in Prague. We like to pat people on the head with a rolled up copy in a special ceremony J
But if you cannot attend a face to face meeting I can send your MirandaNet Fellowship certificate online.

There are also certificates for children’s World Ecitizens’ web publications.
Email Christina for more information.

New Scholars

Paula Antunes
In 1990 I had my degree in teaching Portuguese and French, but over the years I've been developing a growing interest in ICT and its use in education.

For long I've been interested in ICT, participating at a lower level in some projects [Projecto Ria.edu (e-learning platform), PROF2000)]. Nowadays, I'm starting a master's degree in "Multimedia in Education", specialising in IWBs, since in Portugal the use of this technology is recent and not many studies are already published. The aim of this case study which is limited to a school (primary and secondary) is to assert the effects of IWBs use in teaching practice.

Martin Barker
I am a teacher (of Science) who is seeking to expand and enhance the learning experience of pupils using ICT. I teach children who have, so far, had a relatively poor experience in education. Some of my pupils have limited interpersonal skills, which prevents them in engaging in ‘traditional’ teaching. However, such children often have a strong affinity with ICT, perhaps because a computer is regarded by them as impersonal and ‘safe’. My main interest is in developing computer aided assessment for formative testing. I am using a program which allows a range of different and stimulating question styles. Tests can be made adaptive, allowing less able pupils to receive more encouragement and assistance, while more able pupils are given progressively more challenging questions.

Rachelle Duffus
ICT’s applicability to involve students, demonstrate best practices or evoke emotional experiences is only based on the limit of a teacher’s expertise and creativity. My hope is that through MirandaNet I can stay abreast of international advances and research in ICT so I can incorporate the best of the digital world into best teaching practices.

Russell Dyas
I am currently Network Manager for Limehurst High School in Loughborough, Leicestershire and I am also heavily involved in EduGeek.net, an organisation that works with ICT Support staff working in education. I have been involved in ICT Support in education for nearly 8 years now and work on national agenda issues through my work with EduGeek.net.

I am member of BCS Schools Working Party and also have advised many people and organisations on ICT support matters. I have been involved in KS3 ICT pilot and we have for past two years since we started the pilot had very successful results coming above national average. I also work closely with RM and other education companies on various projects.

Alex Gibson
I started my career in education as an English teacher and teacher trainer in Turkey and Italy. I grew into ICT as computers started to appear in schools. I got involved with online tutoring and materials writing which led me into an MA in Online and Distance Education. After some time as an ICT co-ordinator I became an ICT Consultant working mainly in Western Europe but also in Poland, Egypt and Hong Kong. The last couple of years have been spent in the Middle East working on educational reform in state schools as Senior Management ICT Advisor helping them with ICT integration throughout the curriculum and in administration. I am particularly interested in how ICT can be used to transform learning and teaching releasing creativity and promoting individual growth.

Diane Matthews-Levine
I have had an abiding interest in technology in education for about 6 years now. That doesn’t seem to encapsulate the challenging journey that interest has inspired!

I was a primary school teacher and researcher. I then moved to Becta where I had four happy years, initially in the Policy Unit and then in the Evidence and Evaluation Directorate as a Research Manager. I’m currently working for the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth as a Programme Manager with responsibility for networked learning.

My personal 'bees in bonnet' lie in the ways technology amplifies or stifles learner voice, alternative education methods, gifted and talented learners and research methods.

Kevin Moore
I am currently a teacher and co-ordinator of ICT at the Dubai English Speaking School which has over 700 primary school children following the National Curriculum of England. I am presently studying for my MSc in eLearning technologies with the University of Portsmouth after recently gaining a diploma in computing sciences with Oxford University. I have a BEd (honours) from the University of Plymouth (specialising in mathematics) and a MA in educational management from the University of Bath. My aim is to try and develop better cross-curricular learning using (particularly) new Web 2.0 technologies and the facilities offered by software such as Moodle etc - this is one of the reasons I am on the MSc course with Portsmouth University.

The school has two ICT rooms (one with 24 desktop PCs and the other with 24 laptops) and each classroom also has at least one PC. The school is currently installing data projectors in each classroom but NOT interactive whiteboards. After two years research we have decided to use a bluetooth mouse and keyboard rather than spending huge sums on interactive boards. Using the bluetooth facility allows the teacher to teach from anywhere in the room and also gives each child the opportunity to interact from wherever they are seated.

Kaj Rietberg
I believe that computers can help my children in the class to learn better. For example, it helps them write better. I also believe with international projects it can help the children to practise in a safe way with communication.

The computer is a machine which is attractive for the children. If learning goes with that machine, the children are more motivated to learn.

Dughall McCormick
I have been a Primary classteacher since 1992, working in schools in West Yorkshire, UK. Throughout my career I have maintained a keen interest in ICT as an important element in all aspects of learning. I have conducted action research on the influence ICT can have on writing. I have been a user of an Interactive Whiteboard for 5 years and incorporate the latest technologies into my classroom practice - this involves a range of digital media, cameras, video, visualisers, interactive voting devices etc. I am currently especially interested in collaborative learning and peer tutoring and can testify to the power of ICT to bring students together in collaborative projects that enhance all areas of learning, and particularly speaking, listening and language development. At the end of October 2006 I will take up a year-long secondment working as a Primary ICT consultant for the Local Education Authority.

New Members

Nikos Amanatidis
Primary school teacher with 12 years experience in the field. Recently on a study leave doing a PhD in ICT in Education at the London Southbank University.

Abdulhak Elwakili
Interest in ICT and Education. Will add information later.

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