Selected Newsletter

News | Diary | Newsletter | Newsletter Archive | Seminars

15 March 2010

MirandaNet Newsletter March 2010

MirandaNet March 2010 Newsletter

March 2010 Contents

MirandaMod: Computer games, learning and the curriculum: uneasy bedfellows?

Participants in this debate on March 9th made it clear how many perspectives there are on this subject that spans school and leisure. Go to the website to see the video presentations, download resources and view the beginnings of a collaborative map:

The second instalment that promises to be equally heated is coming up on March 29th at the Games Based conference at the Brewery in London. You will find details of this second MirandaMod at the end of the same page:

Doctorate

Congratulations to Dr. John Potter, one of our longest standing members who gained his doctorate without having to do any corrections. No mean feat. Well done. He can be seen discussing primary ICT for Futurelab and is featured on their podcast at:

Fellowship Award

Delighted to announce a Fellowship award to Keith Heggart in Australia who has been writing about a World Ecitizens project, The Avatar project, a 12 week program undertaken at St Mark's Catholic College, Australia, with the aim of generating opportunities for students to undertake active citizenship in the local and global community. He quotes new research in this area that says:

"Citizenship education should not necessarily be focused on knowledge about political and social institutions, but instead be directed towards the development of young people towards becoming active citizens and members of their community."

These active approaches fall in line with MirandaNetters intentions when they founded the charity World Ecitizens. Keith very much gave the students their head and ended up with 30 different proposals on the server. Time was set aside for students to watch the presentations and then vote online for the proposals they thought had the most merit. The voting process was hosted on the school learning platform and the two that won were Pink Daffodil Day and The Environmental Group."

Opportunities for members

Keith would like to extend the range of these projects to involve MirandaNet members in World Ecitizens exchange. Every young person who publishes on the World Ecitizens website is awarded a certificate. Let us know if you want to be involved. You will find Keith's article here:

Achieving a senior Fellowship

Keith already planning his senior Fellowship submission about his trials using iPhones in an educational setting with a number of Vocational Education students. "It's a very exciting project," he says, " and I hope to share the findings soon'. Do you have anything to share? Do get in touch.

Fellowship debates

Are you aware that you can gain your Fellowship by summarising a debate and using this text as a base for your own comments or add further information about the topic to make up an article? So far this year Members have raised some interesting topics and, generally speaking, more of our members are contributing where they have knowledge or opinions. I hope our international members will continue to rescue the discussions from becoming too UK-centric.

Accessing the MirandaNet archives

You can now find members comments in the MirandaNet archives. Francis explains

When you log on to the Members' Area on MirandaNet (look for the link at the lower end of the menu) you will now see a link to the MirandaLink Archive where you can catch up on any past items that you wish to savour again. You can even download a month's supply of past messages in zipped format if you so wish. The archive only goes back to when we changed servers last July.

Starting your own discussion thread

In case you do not know we do not use our web based forums for these debates because we find that the most effective way still of maintaining momentum in discussion is just to use email.. and for some members who have limited access to broadband this ensures their equal participation in debate. Members are encouraged to start their own threads. Your participation will enrich the value of sharing professional learning. Ask for my help if you have an issue you want to launch but feel a little shy....

One of our discussion threads prompted this response:

Where we you in the snow?

Tom Rank, one of our MirandaNetters, was gritting his teeth and enjoying the snow, as well as the puns:

"More seriously (as we must be, of course), it's been interesting to read the MirandaNet comments saying this was both 'a fine advert for some sort of VLE' and that the learning platforms the teachers have to use are 'too slow, too locked down, not what we use, never work'.

In the light of Stephen Heppell's comments on the widespread use of free, non-institutional, applications such as Google Docs, etc, I wonder how long it will be before learning platforms become redundant?

Just the right time, perhaps, to mention that the National Association for the Teaching of English is looking for teachers to explore how (or even if?) learning platforms can enhance teaching and learning in English. There's some funding for teachers case studies - more details here:

or get in touch with

Meanwhile, Brenda Bigland of Lent Rise School found that their learning platform came into its own when faced with the snow problems! You can see a nice report on the web site:

Will iPads change what we read and how?

Geoff Scott Baker draws our attention to an article about the iPad that makes a global roll-out a distinct possibility with competitors joining the party. Should this be one of our next topics of conversation?

Geoff thinks the iPad has started the ball rolling for illustrated text books to go electronic. "The wifi connection will allow tutors/teachers to 'push' assignments to students' eReaders in a more interesting format than the monochrome Kindle. Pre-travel video tours in preparation for site visits and illustrated onsite quizzes with built-in pre-formatted assignment report output capability have also become feasible.

The only question is....will the new wave of eReader software developers address that market, and who will fund the eReaders in schools?

The article can be found here....

Computers in Classrooms Special Announcement

The expert and prolific Terry Freedman has been busy creating new free resources for teachers and advisers. So new I have not had time to review yet but we could be pleased to publish any reviews in the next newsletter. Terry says:

A new, revamped, much expanded version of the Web 2.0 projects book is now ready!
For MirandaNetters here is the URL www.ictineducation.org/free-stuff

Here is some information about the book:

At last! The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book!

BETT 2010

We met plenty of old friends and made some new ones at BETT10.

If you missed the show Terry Freedman has written a newsletter containing the views of a number of people about BETT, ie what they saw that 'wow'ed them, plus various news items.

Leon Cych has also blogged about BETT10 in Learn4Life

Conference News 2010

MirandaNetters in the US, New Zealand, Australia and Japan in 2010

Members of MirandaNet will be travelling the world in March and April 2010. We hope to see as many of our international members as we can.

Portugal

Christina Preston will be giving a keynote at the IADIS International conference e-Society 2010 (http://www.esociety-conf.org/) Porto, Portugal on 18-21 March 2010.

The USA

John Cuthell, Christina Preston, Sarah Younie, Marilyn Leask and Niki Davis will be at SITE10 http://site.aace.org/conf/. San Diego March 29th to April 2nd

Australia

Christina Preston and Marilyn Leask will travel onto Melbourne 6th- 9th April https://acec2010.info.

New Zealand

Christina Preston will also visit Christ Church, New Zealand with Professor Niki Davis(April 9th - 14th).

Japan

Marilyn Leask and Christina Preston will also be in Tokyo with Professor Hiro Tanaka from April 23rd - 25th. Get in touch if you can meet us in these different locations; Christina@mirandanet.ac.uk

The HandHeld Learning conference October 2010

Graham Brown Martin has a great offer for Early Birds registering at this conference- a free Apple iPad and £100 off registration for the Game Based Learning 2010 Conference (29th March - 31st March)

11th-13th October 2010 http://handheld.eventbrite.com/?ref=eweb#top

"Ideas Worth Shedding: Challenging the Sacred Cows of Learning"

Join the world's largest conference about learning, teaching and mobile computing.

Register for the conference before March 31st as a super early bird and receive a free Apple iPad* and £100 off registration for the Game Based Learning 2010 Conference!

Get in touch if you have an event/seminar of conference to publicise in this conference listing.

[Back to the top]

[Back]