Martin Owen (t.m.owen@bangor.ac.uk)
Wed, 24 Mar 1999 17:20:01 +0000
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 17:20:01 +0000 From: Martin Owen <t.m.owen@bangor.ac.uk> Subject: Re:
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Karen asks
>Hi I'm looking for information, a friend teaches in the public schools. The
>school system is purchasing technology but is not spending the money to
>train its faculty, the idea being they will train themselves on their own
>time.
>
Among the projects we run is a Wales Multimeida Primary Portables Project,
which is a follwing from a project in England http://portables.ngfl.gov.uk/
Two teachers in a range of 55 primary schools are given high end portables
with ISP accounts and a telcomm allowance, a range of high quality software
(Hypertudio, MS Office etc), printers and digital cameras.
These teachers are not left to their own devices. A commercial company
provided inital installalation and support and subsequent on-call services
for the hardware, and my team provide "educational support". This ammounts
to three half time field teachers. This means the schools get about a visit
a month.
Additionally the schools are linked together using FirstClass conferencing
systems, where they can exchange problems, ideas, leson plans , curriculum
materials etc.
The project will be evalauted on the outcomes in literacy teaching in their
classrooms (not their ICT skills).
So.. the teachers are given computers and alot of learning takes place "in
their own time".However this time is spent in a richly supported enironment
of peer collaboration and external agents.
We are in the middle of this so we do not have definative results ( we have
an on-line literacy festival this week that is going well), however you can
look at the England website and get some flavour.
The external support ammounts to about 900 dollars per teacher. However
that also incudes the evaluation and reporting to the funding body etc. as
well as travel costs, which in rural areas with UK fuel prices is quite a
lot.
Martin
Martin Owen
T.M.Owen@bangor.ac.uk
Director, Project REM
School of Education Yr Ysgol Addysg
University of Wales, Bangor Prifysgol Cymru, Bangor
Normal Site Safle'r Normal
Holyhead Rd Ffordd Caergybi
Bangor Bangor
Gwynedd
LL57 2PX
Voice/Llais +44 1248 382 943
Fax/Ffacs +44 1248 38 36 40
URL: http://weblife.bangor.ac.uk/rem/rem.html
REM is a EC DGXIII Telematics Education and Training Project
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"Technology is nothing more or less than a natural phase of the creative
process which engaged man from the moment he forged his first tool and
began to transform the world for its humanization"
Paulo Freire : Cultural Action for Freedom
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