Untitled Document

BRATISLAVA PRESENTATION OF MODULES - SATURDAY 27/9 2008

Richard Jones-Nerzic started this final working day of e-help by welcoming our evaluators and then present the agenda for this evaluation day.

Terry Haydn continued this first part by going through the evaluation process with the evaluating group. Note that all parts of the e-help project has been evaluated, both by the members and the associates. Now we have come to the completion of our project and this day was not just another part to evaluate - it was the result of all our work. The importance of this was explained to the group!

Richard Jones-Nercic then presented the aims we presented at the beginning of the e-help project (2003). In this we clearly identified three "products"

1. Forum

2. Website

3. Course

All the above products have been fullfilled. The Education Forum is a success. It's very active and it has a varietry of topics. We have ten thousands of visitors every month and many active contributors. Here is a link to the forum:

Education Forum

Our website is under reconstruction and it will reflect all the conferences as well as a lot of material (video presentations, seminars, links to important microsites, etc...). Here is a link to the old website we are replacing:

www.e-help.eu

The course layout will be presented here + some of the modules. To these three stated products come two more. These are:

4. Micro sites. Since we will deal with many different topics we decided early in the project that the different members would host their own material on their own websites. This was also necessary at the time since our first webhost didn't allow us to publish a lot of content on the www.e-help.eu website. On our rebuilt website you will be able to find short presentations of each topic that is included in this project and then a link to the specific website where its hosted. What we first thought would be an obstacle has actually become an advantage since we now get our members and associates (and in the future the course participators) to visit many different individual websites - with lots of other material that might interest and expand their knowledge.

5. Book. The last product that we are discussing is a book. Some of the members have previously presented ICT ideas and practice in book form. Even though we all are more or less webworkers we can see the need of writing some of the main results from this project down. The advantage would be to reach more people that see a book as a way to get more involved in ICT and teaching. We would also be able to have several of our very skilled associates contributing to this. Some of them are, as mentioned, leading cutting edge webdevelopers. No such book really exsist today and therefore it's tempting to go ahead and do this. We have the contacts and ideas of a layout - now it all depends on the reception of our work. The evaluators and in the end the administration that granted us the money for this project will indicate if this is a good idea.

After the presentation above was done we started the presentation of our course suggestion:

The course will cover five working days. Each day will have a theme and some of the members responsible for that specific theme. Here is a list of that:

DAY 1

DAY 2

DAY 3

DAY 4

DAY 5

KEYNOTE

"Build your own website"

"Communication"

"ICT in the classroom"

"Video"

"Interaction"

John Anders

Andy

Terry

Richard Dalibor

Juan Carlos Johannes

WEBSITE

MODULES

WEBSITE

MODULES

LUNCH

WEBSITE

MODULES

SOCIAL EVENT

MODULES

CONCLUSION

REINFORCEMENT

SOCIAL EVENT

REINFORCEMENT

EVALUATION

DINNER TOGETHER

SOCIAL EVENT

DINNER TOGETHER

The idea is to start day one by giving each member a website, a appropriate webdesign program and the necessary skills to start to work on it. During the first day all members of the e-help project will be involved in teaching each participator "face-to-face" the necessary skills of basic "how to build my own website". During the rest of the week the participators will see this website develop and they will be able to take it with them when they leave the course.

The rest of the course is adjusted to each individual as well as the skills of the group together. Before the course starts each participator will get a form where the different modules will be presented. She/he states her/his previous skills in ICT and what specific modules she/he wants to try out. With other words - the course will be individually designed according to the interest of each course participator. The members of e-help will be the main resources on this course but they will also invite several different associate members who have ICT skills not represented by the members - some of them cutting edge pioneers.

During this week the participator will experience an escalating learning process. The first days deal with basic skills and by the end of the week more complex modules will be taught. As stated above - everything will be adjusted to each participators individual skill. If we have a "beginner" the modules will be adjusted to this persons expressed interest and if we have a more "experienced user of ICT" more complex modules of communication and ICT in the classroom will be offered.

We then reached the final stage of our evaluation day - the presentation of the different modules:

John Simkin - "Local History and the Internet" and "Oral History and Internet Forums"
John presented a project in local history. He showed how this went from a classroom paper product to the use of ICT. This marked the start of building up the most successful history website we have today - Spartacus Educational. John has over 6 million visitors on his site per month! John is Mr Spartacus! Here is a link to his famous website - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ He also gave a short presentation on oral history and the use of forums. One of the great benefits for the participators on this course is to meet a person like John who is a pioneer within the practical use of ICT...

Terry Haydn - "How to make Power Point less boring" and "Using and building ICT based collections of resources".
Terry is our most professional educator. In his doctoral thesis he traced the development of ICT in school history over the past 30 years. Now he teaches history graduates to be secondary history teachers. He also continues to do research about the use of ICT in history... (and publish books in this topic). Terry presented a way to make ordinary Power Point presentations more interesting (so you don't become a victim of "death by PP"). Ordinary simple programs can be used in a variety of ways... Terry also presented a module of impact resources. A picture can say more than thousand words and several pictures can bend our mind...

Anders MacGregor-Thunell - "Students in the Archive ", "Children during WWII (Finland & Sweden)" and "Why should I have a forum when I have a website?".
I'm the junior member (not according to age but knowledge within ICT) of this group. A few years ago I knew nothing about ICT. During the last years I have learned a few things that I shared with the evaluation group. It's good for a group of teachers and teacher educators to meet somebody that is partly incompetent. That has always been my role in this group...

"Charo" Rosario Requejo Villasevil and Juan Carlos Ocaña presented a few modules on how to teach history in English as a second language. This was connected to the use of educational computer programs - "Captivate: An ICT tool to teach history through English" and "Articulate: how to create ESL interactivities when teaching History".
"Charo" Rosario Requejo Villasevil works with students who learns English as a Second Language (EAL = English as Added Language) by studying a variety of topics including history. Her module shows approaches to this teaching which is also one of the basic themes of this project. Rosario was an Advisor in the Sociolinguistic Department at the Teacher's Resource Centre in Alcorcón, Madrid from September 2005 to June 2008. At present, she works as Head of the English department at a Secondary School in Madrid, IES Marqués de Suances. She is our expert on teaching EAL together with Juan Carlos Ocaña. Charo's knowledge within this field is invaluable for all the teachers that teaches English or History in English for students that have English as their second (or third, fourth...) language.
Juan Carlos Ocaña (PhD) is the Head of a History Department in a Secondary School in Alcorcón, near Madrid. He created and runs http://www.historiasiglo20.org/ - a very successful educational website in Spain. He has also developed several netbased resources using programs like Articulate and Captivate. Programs like these will have a big impact on teaching in the close future and Juan Carlos is already one of the leading users in this field. He works a lot with visual aids as well. Juan Carlos is another very experienced webworker which the course participators will benefit from.

Richard Jones-Nerzic presented modules on "How you can use digital videocameras in the classroom" and "Editing digital video to teach interpretations".
Richard Jones-Nerzic has always been the rock this project leans against. He worked several years in a "laptop school" and is now employed to further develop the ICT skills among students at BISB as an IB History teacher, IB Film teacher and the new Academic Director. Richard has many specialities but he is the groups most experienced "MovieMaker". He works daily with DV cameras in the classroom. He presented some modules on how to gain basic skills within this field. He also know how to use a variety of programs necessary for the editing process. This is a skill many teachers would like to have. In the course they will have a great chance to gain some of that knowledge. Richard is also a skilled historian who is involved in text book writing (IB material in History). The administrative skills together with his ICT and history skills makes him the most valuable member of this group.

Dalibor Svoboda presented two modules "Digital Storytelling" and "Editing video".
Dalibor Svoboda was the Head of the History Department of VS (Virtual School). Virtual School was a pioneer school in digital learning. This is the place where most of the members of e-help first met. Dalibor had for several years developed ICT material for the Swedish Education Board when he got this position and he continued to develop some of these ideas in VS as well as inside this project. He presented a simple but ingenious module of "Digital storytelling". Working in Sweden but being of foreign origin have given Dalibor an extra orinary insight in the use of a second language - something he will share at the course.

Johannes Ahrenfelt - "Create a Thinking-Skills Mystery using Adobe Flash", "Make your own Interactive Diagrams with Adobe Flash" and "Use Microsoft Word to encourage reading skills and Assessment for Learning".
The newest member of e-help is Johannes Ahrenfelt. He belongs to the new generation of ICT users who basically have absorbed the new knowledge since early childhood. Many of the latest developments is basic stuff for this young energetic man. He has already written books in the topic and he continous to produce educational material. His modules stretched from the use of "Word" to more advanced uses of "Flash". In this session he presented a drag/drop exercise and some diagrams. He also explained how to use MS Word in an innovative way. It's very interesting to see how ordinary computer programs that we use daily can be developed into an advanced learning tool. Johannes presentation was the last visual one at this evaluation meeting but we had one more which Richard explained.

Andy Walker had to leave before this evaluation but he still contributed with two modules. Richard gave the evaluation group a short summary of his modules - "Creating, Administrating and Using Forums in the history Classroom" and "Creating Online lessons for your website".
Andy Walker is E-Learning Coordinator Dartford Technology College and Kent and Medway Teacher Training SCITT. He runs http://www.historygcse.org/ and http://www.educationforum.co.uk/ - and have extensive skills in the interaction of websites and forums. Andy has also published several books like the Sociology A1 Revision Guide for 2008 specifications CGP Publications 2008 and CD Rom 2002 Author for "Raising Achievement in History CD Roms". He is the most experience creator and user of forums in the group something we have benefit from greatly when we built up our own forum. These skills will also be available for the participators of the planned course...

This ended the evaluation meeting. Now it's just for you evaluators to go home and be critical...