Friday 27 June 2008

VIASL - IFIP 23rd - 26th June, Prague


Although I have kept a diary of my week in Prague on my wiki I felt I should add something to my CPD record. This isn't the normal CPD you might expect to be recorded in a teacher's record. It is a quite remarkable opportunity which arose out of an international partnership with Meadowbank Primary School in Auckland, New Zealand, maintained and developed on the whole by myself and David Kinane who is the IT Director. Our partnership which began in late 2006 instigated the "blog" Tohatoha in May 2007, as means of sharing our work and showing our collaborative projects.



During the Autumn term, David contacted me and asked whether I would be interested in presenting a joint 'paper' at the Valuing Individual And Shared Learning: the role of ICT Conference, organised by the International Federation of Information Processing, which was to be held in Prague in June 2008. We had a story to tell about our partnership, the technologies we were using and the collaborations which we were undertaking. An abstract was drafted and sent to the organising committee, who asked for this then to be written in more detail before final submission in January 2008. Once our paper was submitted there was no going back and I don't really suppose I thought we would be accepted, but to my (our) amazement we were and in March we were invited to present our paper at the conference.
With the support and permission of the Governors and Head Teacher I began the logistical preparations of booking flights, hotels etc, as well as preparing my husband for the fact that I would be away for 5 days leaving him to cope with our three children on his own! June still seemed a long way off! David and I began planning the presentation for the conference. Courtesy of skype, email and wikis we transferred our work back and forth between New Zealand and Plymouth until we were happy with the results. The PowerPoint presentation and bulleted script complete we realised that we were ready and June had crept up on us. David's journey to Prague is far more impressive than mine (read David's blog from June 18). My first anxieties were obviously our meeting at Gatwick. We had been working together in a virtual world for the last eighteen months but now virtual was to become real! I needn't have worried - our meeting was easy, like old friends and soon we were finalising the presentation and making several back up copies. I shan't comment on the journey here as this has been detailed in my wiki!
The conference was held at the University of Prague's Faculty of Education and day one was intimidating. I (we) suddenly realised that we were part of a conference which consisted mainly of doctors, professors, lecturers and researchers in the area of education. Their papers represented research into aspects of pedagogy related to ICT, IWB, digital literacy, ITT etc. They were all experienced (some leading professionals) in their fields and in my mind we didn't compare. I was terrified! That night (Monday) David and I decided to go through our presentation, making sure that we knew which of us was covering which aspect of our 'story'. The fact that we hadn't researched, or weren't presenting facts and figures, but simply sharing our collaborative community and the technologies we used seemed so different to the presentations we had been listening to all day.
As Tuesday dawned I felt like a 'wobbly jelly on a plate'! Thankfully the keynote speech for the morning was more interactive than previous presentations and the content gave both David and I ideas as to possible future projects. Create-A-Scape: mediascapes and curriculum integration gave me all sorts of ideas as to how we might be able to do similar projects at Woodford and in partnership with Meadowbank. I've no doubt we will investigate this further at a later date. I can't say that I concentrated much during the next hour as 11:30 loomed and our 'turn'.
As the hour approached I was surprised to see so many people entering the room. We were now in split sessions and had only anticipated 15 or so. However as we began to get ready the room suddenly filled and people were standing at the back of the room as there weren't enough seats! The chair, Tomas O'Brian left us to introduce ourselves. With prompts in hand we began. Ours was a 'short' paper and therefore only 15 minutes with 5 for discussion. (Long papers were 25 minutes with 5 minute discussion time). We worked well together taking over seamlessly at the relevant points. That was the fastest 15 minutes of my life! We ran out of time, answered further questions and left the 'stage' to a room buzzing and full of praise. I was amazed! Here was a room full of academics congratulating us on our presentation, on our collaboration and the sustainability of the project. During lunch three of the delegates made a beeline for us at lunch in order to continue and further discuss the collaboration. Even at the end of the day during the reporting and discussion session, half of that block was taken up again with discussing us.
Wednesday was a 'cultural' day and we therefore took the opportunity to explore the incredible architecture that is Prague. Charles Bridge, Prague Palace (castle), St Vitus' Cathedral, St George's Basilica, Golden Lane, the Old town Square with its Astronomical Clock offer the most eclectic mix of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classic, Art Nouveau, and contemporary architecture. Prague really is breathtakingly beautiful!

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The final day of the conference explored further themes of educational research into pedagogic practices and the use of ICT. The final keynote speech of the conference focused on 'Embedding interactive whiteboards in teaching and learning: the process of change in pedagogic practice'. It was based on research carried out by the government which ran over 2 years to evaluate the effect of IWB in the classroom, i.e. did the use of the IWB have an effect on raising the standards in Literacy, Numeracy and Science. The research concluded that the length of time pupils were taught with an IWB was the major factor that raised attainment. A point to note however is that the IWB does not always have an impact on lower attaining pupils and these pupils may benefit from using IWB in different ways. How might we tackle achieve this at Woodford? The conference closed with thanks and presentations to the organising committee and goodbyes!

I have not noted the content of all the papers here but over the next few weeks I hope to write more as I review and consider my notes.

I have very much enjoyed my time in Prague. It has been a great experience to present at this conference of the International Federation for Information Processing. At the beginning of the week I was totally overwhelmed by academia and the papers that were being presented but the buzz and comments after our presentation about the work we have been doing with Tohatoha certainly helped put that into some perspective. We now have a peer reviewed, published paper! I even have a certificate as proof of our presentation. This is certainly something to add to my CV! Who knows what will come from this? It will certainly move our links with New Zealand forward as we push to develop our work further. All we need is to maintain the creativity and the enthusiasm.

Where is WJS?

Internet Safety

When I grow up....

A short video from teacher tube which really demonstrates how important technology is today and in the future.