Members of the E-HELP project

Richard Jones-Nerzic (France: International School of Toulouse): I am Richard Jones-Nerzic, History teacher and Head of Humanities at the International School of Toulouse. I am coordinator of the E-Help project. When it opened in 1999, the IST was Europe's first fully laptop school. My website is an attempt to document this educational experiment. I am an administrator of this forum and the Student Education Forum I am also a member of the European Virtual School History Department. 

Nico Zijlstra (Netherlands: Sintermeerten College, Heerlen): I am a History teacher teaching in a Secondary School in Heerlen, The Netherlands. I run my own website Sintermeerten History website. I also work closely together with a webdesign firm called E-Linq which is specialized in ICT implementation in schools. As a member of the Virtual School team I've become involved in the E-Help project.

Anders MacGregor-Thunell (Sweden: Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet, Gothenburg): My name is Anders MacGregor-Thunell. I’m currently a full-time teacher of History at Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet, an Upper Secondary School with 1800 students, in the centre of the city of Gothenburg, Sweden. Most of the time I teach IB (International Baccalaureate) History, both Standard and Higher Level, but I also teach History within the ordinary Swedish system. Since 1998 I’ve been the Head of the History Department at Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet. I started my teaching career in the middle of the 1970’s. Just a few years ago I became a member of the Virtual School. Through VS I participate in the development of international web-pages within different history topics. During the last years I have also built up the History Department site on our school’s intranet.
http://www.macgregorishistory.com/

Dalibor Svoboda (Sweden: Fredrika Bremer Gymnasium, Stockholm): I was born in communist Czechoslovakia 1948. In 1968, after the occupation of my country by Warszawa Pact countries suppressing the “Prague spring” I moved to Sweden. After five years of studies at University of Stockholm and different petty jobs I started to teach at Fredrika Bremergymnasiet, an upper secondary school situated in a suburb of Stockholm in 1980. During the 1990s I worked with information technology and pedagogical issues first at Knowledge and Competence Foundation then at National Agency for Education. Now I’m back at my old school teaching the subjects of History, Civics and International Relations. I have been engaged in activities of Virtual School since its start. I have been Head of History department since 1998.

Terry Hadyn (UK: University of East Anglia): I taught history in an inner-city secondary school in Manchester for about 20 years before moving into history teacher education in the early 1990s. Throughout this period I have been interested in the use of new technology in history teaching and it was the subject of my doctoral thesis, tracing the development of ICT in school history over the past 30 years. The main bit of my current job is training history graduates to be secondary history teachers, but I also undertake research into the use of ICT in history. I was Co-editor (together with Christine Counsell) of History, ICT and Learning (London, RoutledgeFalmer 2003), a collection of chapters from several leading UK practitioners in the field of history and ICT, and have a (modest) website at:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~m242/

Andy Walker (UK: Dartford Technology College): I am Andy Walker. I am Head of History and E-Learning Coordinator at Dartford Technology College. I have my own website at Education Forum.co.uk which I use to teach History, Sociology and Vocational Health and Social Care. My web site has been online since 1999. I am the joint founder and an administrator of this forum. I also run the International Student Form in partnership with Richard Jones-Nerzic of the International School of Toulouse. I have been involved in web based projects for the Learning Skills Development Agency and Kent County Council, and in writing work for CGP publications

John Simkin (UK: Spartacus Educational): I have been a history teacher since 1977. In 1979 I was a founder member of the Tressell Publishing Cooperative and in 1984 established Spartacus Educational. Since 1997 I have run the Spartacus Educational website. I have also produced electronic and online resources for a wide range of different organisations including the Guardian (Learn), the Daily Telegraph (Electronic Telegraph), British Library, Historical Association and Becta. I was also a founder member of the Association of Teacher Websites and an early member of the European Virtual School.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/
ttp://www.byteachers.org.uk
http://vs.eun.org/eun.org2/eun/en/index_vs.cfm

Les Albiston (France: International School of Toulouse): I am Principal of the International of Toulouse and have worked in a variety of roles in the realm of education, training and HR for Airbus over the last twenty years, all in Toulouse. My discipline is English and I have a special interest in language acquisition, bilingualism and the cultural challenge of relocation and intercultural managment. 
Apart from the predictable interests in literature, the cinema, music I have a passion for French rugby and English football only surpassed by my utter devotion to Shakespeare.

Associate members of the E-HELP project

David Richardson (Sweden: University of Kalmar): My name's David Richardson and I'm not really a History teacher at all! I was asked by John if I'd like to be associated with the E-HELP project and he reassured me that you need people who've used ICT tools in education, and people who've witnessed bits of history too!
  I'm a teacher of EFL (English as a Foreign Language), working as co-ordinator of distance education in English at a university in southern Sweden. I do teach British and US Culture and Society sometimes, and that involves a fair bit of history, though.
  I've been working with computers in education for a long while too. I've also programmed Sinclair ZXs and Apple IIes, but, like Mike, I'm still very computationally challenged. I've been working with the human side of things - if you like the C (communication) bit of ICT, rather than the I (Information) bit.
  If you click on the Distance Courses link in the bar at the top of this page, you'll come to our distance courses page. The links on the left lead to live courses … but we never think that people learn solely - or even mainly - from computer screens, so most of our courses are quite difficult to understand 'from the outside', so to speak. You need all the rest (Study Guides, lectures on CD, friendly comments from Internet tutors, etc) to really make sense of them. The Business Writing course is entirely web-based, though, so that's a bit of a stand-alone.
  I'm looking forward to working with you all - it's always interesting to see how people from other subject disciplines approach course design. And there's always some idea that's worth stealing!! 
http://www.humsam.hik.se/distans/index.htm

Peter Tollmar: My name is Peter Tollmar and I teach History, Social studies, Basic Computer skills, Design history and a subject called Technology, Man and Society (TMS) at Fredrika Bremergymnasiet in Haninge, Sweden. I also run a project called the Learning Bridge (www.learningbridge.nu) with Dalibor Svoboda, which was the first school based internet project in Sweden when it started in 1991 (I joined in 1997). In Learning Bridge our students collaborate with American students over the internet, raise money and go visit them for two weeks.
  Since I started teaching, and since I joined the Learning Bridge, I have been more and more involved and interested in using ICT and computers, and here are some of my experiences:
a. I have my own web site, www.tollmar.com/skola (mainly in Swedish) where I post all my classes and exercises, and also some student work.
b. I lived 6 months in New York City in 2003 and had distance learning with two of my classes back in Sweden. I was usning my web-page, e-mail and a discussionforum created in FrontPage.
c. All senior students in Sweden have to do an independent project. For the last two years I’ve had students doing a project called “Virtual Historic Movies”, where the make their own historical documentaries without leaving the classroom by using movie clips downloaded from the Prelinger archive at www.archive.org in combination with stills and their own voice-over.
d. In Learning Bridge we work with Digital Storytelling. The students make digital stories about someone in their life who has been important to their personal development, by combining scanned images, music and voice-over etc in Windows Moviemaker.
e. Instead of teaching the Basic Computer course, Design History and TMS as separate courses I fuse them into one course. Assigments I give my students can be “make a Q&A game about Bauhaus using Powerpoint”, “make a short movie about postmodern design using Windows Moviemaker” or “do a cartoon in Powerpoint where a painting by Mondrian is turned into a De Stijl-table”. I then evaluate the content for the Design history grade and the presentation for the Computer course grade.
These are some of the things I do and have been doing in the past. In Gothenburg in September I will talk about Digital storytelling and show some of the stories my students have made.
http://www.tollmar.com

Sarah Jaggs: Head of Humanities, Rush Croft School & Sports College. Sarah has been teaching History for 3 years and is now running the department here at Rush Croft. She is dedicated to trying out new pedagogic ideas and has literacy responsibilities to. She also won the Jack Petchey Leaders award in 2003. 
  This is Johns presentation on the forum of Donald Cumming and Sarah Jaggs -  I have just returned from the SHP Conference. It was even better than usual and I saw some outstanding workshop sessions. One session by Don Cumming and Sarah Jaggs was truly revolutionary. They have developed a way of teaching that reflects our modern age. I think it is vitally important that we get them to do a presentation in Gothenburg. The session I saw was on Crime and Punishment. However, they apply the same methods to all their teaching units. For example, I thought it would be a good idea to invite them to give a presentation on how they teach Women’s Suffrage and the First World War.
  Don and Sarah teach in a tough school in East London. They have developed these techniques in order to engage these disaffected youngsters. This is why these methods are based on the culture of young people (they for example make great use of music in their lessons).

Donald Cumming: AST, Rush Croft School & Sports College. History degree at Leeds University, and several years working with disabled adults prior to teaching. I have been teaching for 6 years and, prior to becoming an AST last year I was G&T co-ordinator & Head of History at Rush Croft. 
  This is Johns presentation on the forum of Donald Cumming and Sarah Jaggs -  I have just returned from the SHP Conference. It was even better than usual and I saw some outstanding workshop sessions. One session by Don Cumming and Sarah Jaggs was truly revolutionary. They have developed a way of teaching that reflects our modern age. I think it is vitally important that we get them to do a presentation in Gothenburg. The session I saw was on Crime and Punishment. However, they apply the same methods to all their teaching units. For example, I thought it would be a good idea to invite them to give a presentation on how they teach Women’s Suffrage and the First World War.
  Don and Sarah teach in a tough school in East London. They have developed these techniques in order to engage these disaffected youngsters. This is why these methods are based on the culture of young people (they for example make great use of music in their lessons).