ITTE Knowledge Mobilisation Strategy: Research Fellowship Programme
 
INVITATION TO APPLY
We are delighted to announce Phase 2 of the ITTE Knowledge Mobilisation Strategy.

This is relevant to:
Schools Direct -   Teaching Schools  - Teachers - Teacher Educators - Researchers
 
For Phase 2 educators are invited to lead a small team in filling in the research gaps, to challenge and strengthen research in areas relevant to the Association. Funded Fellowships are available to develop collaborative and/or co-ordinated research networks on a topic of interest to you within the field of digital technologies in educational settings relevant to the work of ITTE. This approach to developing evidence is well established in medicine. See, for example, the Cochrane Collaboration www.cochrane.org.

Information on Phase 1 successful projects can be found at itte.org.uk.

£1,000 Fellowship bursaries are available for teams interested in making a commitment to this area of knowledge in the long term. Project Leads will be supported by ITTE to recruit a team of interested people. Further funding may also be available in the future to revisit and extend the project subject to an impact review about the value of the Fellowship for the ITTE community.

For the period of the award, the Project Lead/s will be able to use the title ITTE Research Fellow and team mermbmers will be able to use the title ITTE Educational Researcher.
 
The outcomes of the Fellowship within two years are expected to be:

• a research review to be submitted for publication as an academic article in the Association’s journal Teaching, Pedagogy and Education 
• a summary of the findings of the review written in a form usable by teachers and published as a MESHGuide.
• dissemination including a presentation at the ITTE annual conference or alternative agreed by the ITTE National Executive Committee.

The outcomes of this application round will be announced on the ITTE web site in January 2018.
 
Eligibility: Applications are open to all but the project leader must be an ITTE member. To join go to the ITTE website: itte.org.uk.

To submit an application please complete the form at:  http://bit.ly/2j9dFYN.
 

 

 

What are the digital skills that teachers and pupils need and how can we support all learners to achieve their potential? How can we improve computing education, broadening how we prepare children to become digital citizens and make fulfilling use of digital tools throughout their lives?

The conference welcomes teachers, teacher educators, advisors and researchers to share and develop professional knowledge and skills through presentations and workshops with leading practitioners and researchers. CPD certificates will be awarded to all participants.
 

Evidence-informed practice – much talk, little action
Prof. Sarah Younie De Montfort University
First published in the Bera Blog: Research Matters October 2017
 

Bringing together researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in Technology Enhanced Learning

Margaret J. Cox (Co-Founder of Edusummits)

During the writing of the International Handbook for Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education in 2008 by Springer, the 18 Section Editors considered ways in which the reported research which would be published in the handbook might also reach policy makers and practitioners. Everyone agreed at the final editors’ meeting in Paris in 2007 that a follow-on World Summit bringing together researchers, practitioners and policy makers could help broaden the global impact of the International handbook and reduce the usual risk of policy makers and practitioners ‘reinventing the wheel’. A group of the editors formed a founding committee which organised the first Edusummit2009 held in The Hague in The Netherlands in June 2009. 70 leading researchers, policy makers and practitioners, working in groups, defined action steps for policy makers building on the work published in the Handbook on ICT in Primary and Secondary Education.
 
Since that first Edusummit, there have now been 4 subsequent summits in Paris (2011), Washington (2013), Bangkok (2015) and recently in Borovets. Bulgaria in September 2017. Several ITTE members have been regular contributors to these Edusummits and other members might be interested in contributing to the next one to be held in Quebec in September 2019. Meanwhile many of the working group papers will be of interest to ITTE members such as the Ebook produced by Edusummit2015 entitled Technology Advanced Quality Learning For All with articles from all nine working groups including “Advancing mobile learning in formal and informal settings”; “Professional development for policy makers, school leaders and teachers”; "Addressing gaps and promoting educational equity”; “Assessment as, for and of Learning” and "Advancing understanding of the roles of CS/Informatics in the curriculum” led by ITTE members Dr. Mary Webb and Prof. Margaret Cox.
 
Even the Edusummit steering committee manages to take a break sometimes. Below is a photo of some Steering committee members relaxing at Guildford (Surrey, UK) Operatic Burns night taking a break from planning the Edusummit2013 meeting held later in the year in September in Washington DC. From left to right at the table: Prof. David Gibson (USA, now at University of Curtin, Australia and co-Chair of Edusummit2015 in Bangkok); Prof. Mike Searson (USA); Joan Hounsome (Guildford Opera); Assistant Professor Jo Tondeur (Belgium); Prof. Margaret Cox (King’s College London, Founder and Steering committee member and co-chair for Edusummit2019, Lifelong Fellow of ITTE); Dr. Mary Webb (King’s College London; and Leader of Working group on Computer Science in the school curriculum and ITTE member); and finally Professor Joke Voogt (Founder and Steering Committee member of  Edusummit, Co-Editor of the International Handbook); Professor at University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands). Prof. Gerald Knezek of the University of North Texas (also Steering Committee member of Edusummits) took the photo!



Similar policy documents have been produced at the most recent Edusummit2017 and the groups are in the process of writing up more extensive reports.  For example: TWG3: 'Professional development for technology-enhanced Learning leaders' focussed on the “professional development for school leaders with an emphasis on how to provide effective technology enhanced instruction from the perspective of a culture of learning. Learning technologies should support curriculum in ways that are not otherwise possible. Rather than focusing on the technology, learning activities should meet instructional goals and involve technology when it enhances the learning. Often teachers conceptualize integration as technological rather than primarily as curricular (Hutchison & Reinking, 2011). However, the focus should be on the learning and the curriculum, not the technology.”
 
ITTE members who feel that these numerous and well substantiated reports might support their ITT work, research or PhD supervision can find all the reports of the five EDusummits as well as download individual chapters of the 1^st Edition of the International Handbook from the Web. The 2^nd edition is currently being written and will be published in 2019. Any ITTE members interested in getting involved in the Edusummits can find Group Leader details on the websites.

• Edusummit 2009
• Edusummit 2011 
• Edusummit 2013 
• Edusummit 2015 
• Edusummit 2017

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Tomorrow’s Learning – The World Conference on Computers in Education

Chris Shelton, University of Chichester

This year, the World Conference on Computers in Education (WCCE 17) was held in Dublin, 3^rd - 6^th July 2017 and organized by IFIP and the Irish Computer Society. The conference theme was “Tomorrow’s Learning: Involving Everyone” and over 200 presenters from across the world shared their work at the conference. As you would expect from an international conference, the keynote sessions were very varied: Francesco Avvisati from OECD (with a recorded contribution from Andreas Schleicher) opened the conference and spoke about the 2015 report “Students, Computers and Learning”. When first published, this report was widely reported as showing that using technology in schools had a negative impact on learning but, as Avvisati showed, the report actually raises interesting questions about how we can best make use of technology and shows that teachers and school leaders need to think carefully about their use of technology.
 
The second keynote was Valerie Shute from Florida State University. She spoke about the role of “stealth assessment” in game based learning. This was a new idea for me and I’m still not sure that “stealth” is the word I want to use to describe my assessments. But, the way that this was used to promote learning through the “Physics playground” game was effective and I enjoyed playing the demo version of the game (now, sadly, not available).
 
Lord David Puttnam spoke in his role as the “Digital Champion” for Ireland and made some thought-provoking use of archive film and television footage. I was particularly struck by a video from the BBC archive that shows teenagers in 1984 sharing their views on technology. It’s fascinating to think that at that time, it was possible to imagine that computers would might have a future role in the home but not have a role in the workplace. (The video is called Speak Out: Micros and Girls and is available through the BBC Archive social media feeds).
 
Two speakers represented UNESCO (which is closely linked to the sponsors of the conference IFIP). Davide Storte introduced the Mobile Youth programme (http://en.unesco.org/youthmobile) that is helping young people, particularly young women, in developing countries to learn to create apps. The apps they have created are nothing if not ambitious – with one group in Sudan creating a app for peace. Indrajit Banerjee, UNESCO Director of Knowledge Societies spoke about the role of Open Educational Resources in education. He made some challenging comments about the ubiquity of the English language on the internet and how many languages are not yet represented online.
 
The connection between technology and language was particularly apparent in one of my favourite submitted paper presentations of the conference. In a paper by Therese Keane, Monica Williams, Christina Chalmers and Marie Boden, we were introduced to a project using humanoid robots in Australia. In the example that they shared, the robot was programmed by pupils at Maitland Lutheran School in rural South Australia to speak in the local aboriginal language of Narungga. This is especially significant because it has become a dormant language with only one fluent speaker remaining. The children made an emotional connection with the robot and enthusiastically taught it the language while learning it themselves. While the cost of such robots would make it difficult to repeat the project right now, the impact is clear so I’ll look forward to the prices dropping! You can see the robot in action at: https://youtu.be/E6MjUxLvsPM
 
It was great to see so many members and friends of ITTE presenting at WCCE 17. The next IFIP education conference will be the Open Conference on Computers in Education (OCCE 18) to be held in Linz, Austria on 25-28^th June 2018. More information will appear on the conference website shortly http://occe.2018.ocg.at 
 

David Longman, MirandaNet Fellow
Prof Sarah Younie, De Montfort University

ITTE Fellowship Project: Mobilising earning: A synoptic review of learning supported by personal devices. In the 18 months since this review was begun the digital environment has continued to evolve rapidly in two main ways. The first is that the mobile phone form factor continues to rise as the leading device for accessing the internet and in some regions and nations it dominates other form-factors by a large margin (Haiti is included for comparison as one of the 20 lowest GDP nations in the world):
 

Table 1: proportions of form-factors used for online search:

%	World	UK	USA	China	India	Africa	Asia	Haiti
Mobile	51.0	36.0	39.0	62.0	79.0	65.0	65.0	78.5
Desktop	45.0	53.0	53.0	34.0	20.5	32.5	32.0	20.0
Tablet	4.50	11.0	8.0	2.0	0.7	2.5	2.0	2.0

These figures hide important details but they illustrate the increasing dominance of the ‘mobile way’ online (the differences between the UK or USA is likely a historic ‘early adopter’ effect). Disguised too are considerable inequalities in mobile phone ownership rates within nations and which likely correlate with educational opportunity:

Table 2: percentage of population owning a smartphone:

Haiti	India	China	USA	UK
13	23	52	69	69

A second area is the increasing technical sophistication and sensitivity of the hardware and software capabilities built into mobile devices. Mapped against human sensory capabilities, for example, smartphones are remarkable devices: they ‘respond’ to your human touch, ‘recognise’ your face, and ‘hear’ you speak to them. They can’t yet 'touch’ you or ‘smell’ you (although if dogs can smell some cancers why not your smartphone?) but they are receptive to forces and fields we mostly don’t notice directly such as gravity, magnetism and electromagnetism.

Public concerns have grown concurrently too. The power and influence of stakeholders in the digital economy, from international advertising giants such as Google to bureaucratic organs of state like the DVLA, has fuelled provoked ongoing concerns about the influence of lobbyists, marketeers or political trolls on the integrity of news feeds; concerns about the accumulation and marketing of personal data; the expansion of biometric and sociometric data capture; or the potential impact of cognitive automation on the workplace (that includes our classrooms); or the shift towards a ‘gig’ economy and a ‘precariat’ economic class (which includes more and more school-leavers and graduates). The list goes on.

Nevertheless, mobile technologies, like all computational technologies, are to be embraced for their human potential and the enrichment they can bring to learning and education. Given their relative ubiquity in our own society (a 70% ownership rate in the UK) the benefits they can bring to education could be considerable, if we get it right. It remains an open question, therefore, if mobile learning (or m-learning, or mlearning) is a radically different kind of edtech requiring its own paradigm. Is it an alternative or an accessory? Our forthcoming paper with the working title “Is Mobile Learning a Thing?” takes on that discussion.

Educational Reform: An insight into the Welsh Context

Dr Jan Barnes, UWTSD

Wales has a population of just over three million and includes about 540,000 children aged 0–15 years. Further, 19% of the Welsh population speak Welsh; 23% live in households in relative income poverty. 29% of children too live in households in relative income poverty. These proportions are greater than equivalent figures for England, Scotland and Northern Ireland (13%, 11% and 13% respectively). Recent PISA results have indicated a drop in performance in Wales resulting in lowest results among the home nations. It is within this context that there is a drive for change across all schools in Wales.

The Welsh Government review of education has involved a rigorous consideration of the Welsh curriculum including associated assessment and reporting processes, and the systemic review of provision for initial teacher education (ITE). Both Donaldson (‘Successful Futures’ 2015) and Furlong (‘Teaching Tomorrow’s Teachers’, 2015) were published in 2015 and make reference to each other. All recommendations made within both reports have been accepted and supported by Welsh Government.

The curriculum is designed to have four purposes, that young people in Wales develop to become:

• ambitious, capable learners, ready to learn throughout their lives
• enterprising, creative contributors, ready to play a full part in life and work
• ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world
• healthy, confident individuals, ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society

ITTE members’ academic development:
Become an Associate or Full member of the National Conference of University Professors.

Margaret Cox, President of NCUP
 

Book Reviews

Review of 'Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play' by Mitchel Resnick

Review by David Longman

At first, I was a little disappointed with Mitchel Resnick’s new book ‘Lifelong Kindergarten’. I had expected to read more about the genesis and development of Scratch along with other interesting background about the brilliant work of the Lifelong Kindergarten group led by Mitchel Resnick. Yes, a lot of that is in there though somewhat incidentally; it did not seem central to the book I was expecting and I was puzzled.

I put it aside for a day or two after I decided that this was yet another homily about the stultification of ‘natural’ human learning caused by organised but inauthentic schooling.  Worthy but not new and at 200 pages with a lot of white space it promised a relaitvely light read.

It’s all there in the book’s title. The four P’s? Cultivating creativity? Kindergarten? But this is Mitchel Resnick! Lego/Logo, Starlogo, Computer Clubhouses, Scratch! I have to pay attention.

Then after reading on a few more pages I realise that is probably one of the most interesting and practical books I have read for a while.

Far from disappointing after all.

Read the full review here ... Review of 'Digital Technologies and Change in Education: The Arena Framework' by Niki Davis

Review by Christina Preston

I remember in the 1990s at the start of an ITTE conference at Exeter University when we were all given a CD-ROM of the papers instead of the paper programme we had all learnt to expect. Niki Davis, who was behind this strategy, was an innovator from the start of her career.

In this book, Niki, now Distinguished Professor of E-learning at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, generously tells her story about what she has learnt about teacher education in EdTech since the 1980s and from whom she has learnt her profressonal expertise. What she presents in this book about her own journey is the milestones that influenced the development of her theoretical framework, the Arena. This first version of the Arena emerged after a MirandaNet gathering in London.

Read the full review here ...
Review of 'Mobile learning in schools : key issues, opportunities and ideas for practice' by Jocelyn Wishart

Review by David Longman

Here is a useful and relevant overview of the use of mobile technologies in teaching and learning, or ‘mlearning’ as it is sometimes known. As the title suggests it aims at practitioners working in schools but it also has a more specific audience in mind: practitioners who work in teacher development and teacher education. There is thus a great deal here for practitioner-researchers and practitioner-developers who are thinking  about exploring mlearning through investigation or project. Living up to its subtitle the book steers us to think about key educational issues in relation to mlearning and through illustrations from case studies, research projects, and reports the reader will find pointers to opportunities for further exploration.

Important aspects of educational practice are covered in chapters on assessment, activity management, and ethical issues. One of the great challenges in understanding mlearning, i.e. the role of mobile digital devices in education, is that the environment in which it operates is so fast moving that even as this book is published the topics have already moved on. This is fairly easy to see in relation to technical features but also in relation to ethical issues where, in the realm of public debate and policy making, there is often considerable turbulence.

Read the full review here ...

Diary Dates

ITTE

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