| E-HELP Gothenburg Meeting – MINUTES by Anders MacGregor-Thunell
Gothenburg (Thursday 8/9 to Sunday 11/9, 2005)
Participants; Richard Jones-Nerzic, John Simkin, Anders MacGregor-Thunell, Andy Walker, Terry Haydn, Dalibor Svoboda , Les Albiston, Nico Zijlstra, Peter Tollmar, Donald Cumming, Sarah Jaggs and David Richardson (David came Saturday evening). Three original members were unable to attend this meeting; Juan Carlos Ocaña, Alf Wilkinson and Javier Méndez.
Gothenburg: Thursday 8/9, 2005
20.00 – Hotel Lilton: The Gothenburg meeting was opened by a short introductory meeting at the Hotel (Hotel Lilton). Anders wished everybody welcome to Gothenburg. Richard and Les hosted this first short session.
Gothenburg: Friday 9/9, 2005
09.00-10.30 – Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet: As a task from the last meeting each member did a short presentation/proposal of a theme/topic. Some of these themes/topics are meant to be done by individuals, others require members to work together and a few can be done by the whole group;
Children during WWII – Oral History (Anders MacGregor-Thunell): This project would be based on video-interviews which will be published on our website. From the start we should agree to ask certain questions to all the people being interviewed (so we can compare the answers from different individuals). The project should also have a tutorial that explains how to conduct interviews and an explanation how these interviews were done. A start of this suggested theme can be found here:
http://www.macgregorishistory.com/english/projects/prochild.html
Training materials and tutorials from different case studies (Andy Walker): The basic idea is to construct units and then show different ways of applying ICT skills when working with this specific material. This work will be explained in several tutorials. Focus is here on the construction of ICT methods.
The Immigrant Experience – Oral History (Nico Zijlstra): The focus on this project would be students interviewing their parents/grandparents who are immigrants. Here the process of the student work will be as important as the result of the actual interviews. This project would also have a tutorial as well as an explanation on how it was conducted.
Collection of Impact Resources (Terry Haydn): This is an individual gathering of different resources of pictures, newspaper articles, URL’s from different resources on the net, etc… that can be used for specific topics like “Democracy”. The collection will be followed by a tutorial and explanations about the work process.
History – heritage (Richard Jones-Nerzic): A project where students would use examples of events (description of certain individuals) taken from national history textbooks, heritage websites, etc… from different regions/countries. It would attempt to raise awareness of how history curricula are constructed through selection and omission as much as perspective and interpretation. The collection will be followed by a tutorial and explanations about the work process. A more detailed presentation can be found at this address:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4179&view=findpost&p=39240
Resistance in Europe (John Simkin): JS proposed a new theme of resistance. This links with existing themes such as Women’s History and Children and the Second World War. JS provided a short presentation on a simulation that could be used to start the topic. The basic idea is to get the students to understand emotional experiences when a country suffers under a foreign occupation. This would be done by a simulation using a fictive country and situation. The simulation would end in a series of case studies of actual resistance thereby connecting the exercise with historical events. A more detailed presentation can be found at this address:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4184
Czech women and resistance, 1940 – 45 – Oral History ( Dalibor Svoboda ): Published biographies would be followed by interviews of women who played important roles in the Czech resistance during WWII. This project would also have a tutorial as well as an explanation on how it was conducted.
Spanish Women’s History in the Twentieth Century (Juan Carlos Ocaña): Even though Juan Carlos did not participate in the Gothenburg meeting he presented the continuation of this task on the Forum – a translation of his website about Spanish Women during the 20th Century into English:
http://www.historiasiglo20.org/sufragespana/index.htm
11.00-12.30 - Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet:
Presentation by Donald Cumming and Sarah Jaggs – “SMART learning & "this mad wicked folly", Ideas & ICT for the Histroy classroom”: Donald describes this presentation the following way – “Our objective was to show how we have taken ideas such as Accelerated Learning/Multiple Intelligences/Brain Gym/Active Learning and developed them for the History classroom, using ICT as the tool that helps us deliver our lessons in a more effective way. To illuminate this we will:
Explain some of the theory
Try to show some practical ideas
Explain how we use ICT
Suggest other places to look for further ideas”
A fuller account will be presented on the Forum later. This was quite a physical presentation which was very rewarding. It’s important to be informed (and sometimes reminded) of what it is that actually starts the learning process. Donald and Sarah's presentation showed very clearly different ways of approaching students to try to spark an interest in studying history. ICT is one of the tools that make this possible. It will be quite interesting to see this lively presentation described in words.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4956
14.00-15.30 - Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet:
Presentation by Peter Tollmar – “Using Digital storytelling and Powerpoint in History teaching”: Peter divided his presentation in two parts – one where he explained what Digital storytelling was and how he had used it, and the other part was focused on the use of Powerpoint. His presentation has already been posted on the Forum and there we can find detailed information on the above topics plus several links.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4968
John Simkin - “Ask an Expert” / “E-HELP Seminars” / “History Books”
Under this subtitle John showed some parts of the Forum which he found very suitable for the E-HELP project. John especially pointed out the success of his “E-HELP Seminars”. It was obvious that a continuation of our seminars is very much connected with an active continuous posting something that some of us have failed to do. We all agreed upon the importance to get our seminars going and therefore we will post some comments/suggestions/new angles etc… on our respective seminars in the near future. We were encouraged to try to participate personally or/and show our students the possibilities in the “Ask an Expert” section. A new interesting section is the “History Books”. Different authors presents their works and anybody can ask them questions about it (or about the writing of history in general). This is also something that can be of great use in our project as well as in our teaching… The meeting agreed on the great potential in all three Forum sections. It was also suggested that this approach could be applied to books on ICT. For example, Terry Hadyn’s book, History, ICT and Learning in the Secondary School (2003). We will further discuss how they can be used through our new website. Here are the links:
Ask an Expert:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=179
E-HELP Seminars:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=214
History Books:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=204
15.30-18.00 - Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet:
Andy Walker - CMS Work Shop
Andy presented the CMS system we bought from Uniservity. Everybody at the meeting received usernames and logons plus a little exercise Andy put together. We were then told to try out the system as much as possible to see its values and limitations. Some questions that came up were the structure of the website, the actual look, if all members should share the responsibility of the managing of the site and if not, who were going to be in charge…
The meeting decided that Andy, Richard and Nico will be the managers of the website. During the next weeks everybody gets to try it out as managers but after October 1st the three elected managers’ take control. After this date they will also decide on the actual look and the structure of the website. Everybody was encouraged to try the website out as much as possible during this period and give ideas as well as suggestions to the people in charge.
In the evening Gothenburg continued the tradition established in Toulouse – “Thai food all over Europe …”
Gothenburg: Saturday 10/9, 2005
09.00-10.30 - Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet:
As a continuation of the member presentation on Friday it was decided what we should do with the suggested themes/topics and what responsibility each member had in connection with that:
Children during WWII – Oral History (Anders MacGregor-Thunell): Anders will have responsibility for this suggested theme. He will start a thread on the member page on the Educational Forum and whoever is interested will then be able to express this at this part of the Forum. He will also create a structure for the theme as well as some practical advice and guidelines. JS offered to help Anders with this project. He might later present the idea in the E-HELP Seminars section.
Training materials and tutorials from different case studies (Andy Walker): Andy agreed on starting a thread in the member section where he will present the progress and ideas of this theme. This is more of an individual project that Andy will take care more or less by himself.
The Immigrant Experience – Oral History (Nico Zijlstra): Nico will have the responsibility for this suggested theme. It’s a theme that involves the teacher as well as the students since they will be responsible for collecting the material. Nico will start a thread on the member page on the Educational Forum and whoever is interested will then be able to express this at this part of the Forum. He will also create a tutorial of this exercise.
Collection of Impact Resources (Terry Haydn): This is also an individual theme. Terry has agreed to create a tutorial on this theme that will be posted in the member section of the Forum. JS offered to help with this project.
History – heritage (Richard Jones-Nerzic): Richard will have the responsibility for this suggested theme. Just as Nicos’ suggested theme, this one involves the teacher as well as the students. They will gather and evaluate the material. Richard will start a thread on the member page on the Educational Forum and whoever is interested will then be able to express this at this part of the Forum.
Resistance – a simulation (John Simkin): John is remaking this simulation and therefore he will take responsibility in further description of this exercise as well as guiding interested members when they want to try the simulation out. He will also publish this in connection with the E-HELP project.
Czech women and resistance, 1940 – 45 – Oral History (Dalibor Svoboda): Dalibor will be responsible for this theme. He will start a thread on the Forum where we will be able to follow the project through “digital storytelling”. Whoever is interested on doing similar research should get in touch with Dalibor. He will also create a tutorial on how to conduct the digital storytelling.
ISSUE – Language and translations.
A general suggestion was to translate the tutorials that will be published into all the languages of the members but the bigger themes/topics could do with a shorter summary in the native language. The same thing was suggested with native language themes/topics. If it’s very long and time-consuming it can be presented with a short English summary. It’s up to every member to evaluate how much time these translations will take and then see how much is possible to do besides the work that has to be done for the project. If members will use digital storytelling it will be less time-consuming to use different languages.
Comenius information – Richard
“Bureaucracy – budget and documents” - During this meeting Richard went through some important issues about the budget, documentation (several detailed descriptions about necessary documents and how to fill them in), due dates, etc… The members had the opportunity to ask about this more practical section and Richard did a great job taking us through the bureaucratic part of the E-HELP project. All members at the meeting were reminded about deadlines and their obligations.
“Use, reorganization and funding of the Educational Forum” The use, the reorganization and eventual funding of the Educational Forum was discussed. Several members expressed their gratitude to Andy and John about the Forum and the important role it had played in our project's short history. The meeting expressed a general will to continue with E-HELP on the Forum but they also expressed their opinion that the Educational Forum more clearly should show the specific E-HELP section. It should be very visibly obvious that this is a separate part of the Educational Forum. It’s also very important that all the E-HELP content should be gathered at this E-HELP section. Andy was asked to adjust the Forum so these wishes can be fulfilled. Different ideas of funding this part of the Forum were discussed but no decisions were made since it is a little bit unclear if a website with advertisement can hold a smaller section without. Comenius does not allow projects to generate income.
11.00-12.30 - Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet:
Video Editing Work Shop – Richard
A few members had used their digital video cameras and done some interviews. These were briefly discussed and then Richard started to show how to use the video editing program Moviemaker. He also showed some of the limitations with this program, like subtitles… The members tried some basic exercises and then they were encouraged to continue with this at home. Richard reminded the members about the importance of everybody learning how to use Moviemaker and Adobe Premiere (which was handed out to all members) since a lot of our work will be done with these tools (as well as some of the workshops in Toulouse at the final course).
14.00-15.30 - Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet:
In the afternoon we continued with the two workshops. All members were encouraged to try out as much as possible. Around 15.30 we left Hvitfeldtska to start the afternoon's “Social Event”…
15.30-21.00 - Social event: Marstrand
Anders had shortly mentioned that he wanted the members to bring their digital video cameras. The reason for this was an idea of trying to cover the social event this afternoon with several cameras. Due to low battery etc… only two cameras were used but that will at least give the members two different versions of what took place. The “Social Event” was a trip out to an island north-west of Gothenburg (therefore the suggestion of good walking shoes). The name of this place is Marstrand. We went by car and a small ferry (a very short boat tour). At the island of Marstrand we were taken around the fortress and then we very slowly walked along the harbor in a beautiful sunset. The old Scandinavian Weather Gods were with us (there is an old Scandinavian Viking saying that says that the biggest fortune a man can have is luck with weather…)… Here you can find a few links to Marstrand:
http://www.marstrand.org/
http://cityguide-europe.com/se/marstrand/
Gothenburg: Sunday 11/9, 2005
08.00-09.30 – Hotel Lilton:
CONCLUDING MEETING
At Hotel Lilton we had our concluding meeting. It was held during breakfast so we were able to save some time. The connections to Toulouse from Gothenburg are not the best so Richard and Les had to leave before the last presentation. At this meeting some comments were made about the Gothenburg meeting, we looked into the future – the next two meetings and then we established who was going to do what for the next meeting. Everything was rounded off with a formal evaluation;
Gothenburg meeting – Several members thought that this meeting had a good format. The coming meetings will usually take place between Thursday afternoon/evening and Sunday afternoon. The mixture between presentations and workshops was also mentioned as good. It’s also important to have an afternoon/evening for a social event so the future meeting planners need to consider time-squeezing and balance…(and good weather)
Next meeting in Heerlen – Nico suggested week 10: Thursday 9th or Friday 10th of March 2006 until Sunday 12th of March. These are now our preliminary dates. Since it’s important to book hotels, restaurants and plan extra events early we need to get back to Nico as soon as possible on the thread he opened at the member section on the Forum.
Summer meeting in Toulouse 2006 – Richard is planning a necessary meeting in Toulouse, summer 2006. It will go from Wednesday to Sunday. No date was fixed during this meeting but the last week of June / first week of July were possibilities that was mentioned.
Interactive whiteboards – During this meeting there was a short discussion about the advantage of interactive whiteboards. Several members expressed a will to look into this part further.
Membership on our website – Since we have a bigger number of memberships to the new CMS system than we have members in the project it was suggested that some associate members should be able to become active members on this website
Responsibilities to the next meeting:
ALL – CMS: During the next three weeks (until the last day of September) everybody has full access to the new CMS system. The members promised to try it out and publish things so they get the hang of how it works. It’s very important to try its values as well as its limitations.
ALL – video editing: Everybody will work with video editing programs. Richard suggested that we start with Moviemaker and then start to use Adobe Premiere. By the next meeting everybody should be familiar with these two programs.
Richard:
- will prepare a CD/DVD with our Toulouse presentations and send them out to each member so they can edit their own presentation
- contact everybody (also the members that did not participate in this meeting).
- Comenius work - Send out different forms, see that payments go out and write the first report
- build up and manage the structure of the CMS together with Nico and Andy
- theme: “History – heritage” (see above)
Anders:
- will write the minutes and publish them on the Forum
- edit the Toulouse presentation and then send it back to Richard
- theme: “Children during WWII” (see above)
- edit the interviews about “Children during WWII”
- edit one version of “Marstrand the Movie”
- continue with the content building on Swedish Women during the 20th Century
- translate some of the above + different tutorials
Nico:
- prepare the Heerlen meeting
- build up and manage the structure of the CMS together with Richard and Andy
- edit the Toulouse presentation and then send it back to Richard
- edit one version of “Marstrand the Movie”
- theme: “The Immigrant Experience – Oral History” (see above)
Andy:
- build up and manage the structure of the CMS together with Nico and Richard
- edit the Toulouse presentation and then send it back to Richard
- reorganize the Educational Forum
- theme: “Training materials and tutorials from different case studies” (see above)
Dalibor:
- edit the Toulouse presentation and then send it back to Richard
- improve previous pages
- carry out and edit interviews with Czech Women
- theme: “Czech women and resistance, 1940 – 45 – Oral History” (see above)
John:
- write the Dissemination Report (everybody needs to tell John what they have done…)
- edit the Toulouse presentation and then send it back to Richard
- edit the interview with his mother
- theme: “Resistance – a simulation” (see above)
- help Anders with the “Children in the 2WW Project”
- help Terry with the Collection of Impact Resources.
- develop the Ask the Expert section
- start a new section where people can discuss books and articles about ICT with authors on the Forum.
Terry:
- write the Evaluation Report
- edit the Toulouse presentation and then send it back to Richard
- work on a collection of Impact Resources and put them together on a DVD
- theme: “Collection of Impact Resources” (see above)
Les:
- make an ICT presentation of the International Cultural Week in Toulouse, Summer 2006…
Sarah/Donald:
- make a summary of the Gothenburg presentation and post it on the Educational Forum - E-HELP Seminars. If possible they will also film some of the work they do in their classroom.
Peter:
- make a summary of the Gothenburg presentation and post it on the Educational Forum - E-HELP Seminars
David:
- make a summary of the Gothenburg presentation and post it on the Educational Forum - E-HELP Seminars
After going through everybody’s responsibilities Terry handed out and carried through an evaluation of the Gothenburg meeting. This ended the meeting.
10.00-11.30 – Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet
Presentation by David Richardson - ICT in Distance Education in Sweden: David made a presentation based on his experience as a University teacher in “Distance Education”. His classroom is the “world”. It was very interesting to hear how far we now have come with the software necessary to be able to conduct this kind of ICT based education. His presentation has already been posted on the Forum:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4941
Note also David’s offer to the E-HELP group “If E-HELP members want to use one of our Marratech rooms for on-line meetings, get in touch and I'll set it up for you. I'd be happy to host an on-line meeting to show you different ways in which we use Marratech”…
This presentation ended the Gothenburg Meeting!
Anders MacGregor-Thunell
September 2005
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