Travel Notes

I haven’t blogged for a while because first of all I was on holiday here (fab!) and then went to New York for the AERA conference. I attended some excellent sessions, including a brilliant symposium organised by Jabari Mahiri. Some great work on digital media production and youth is being undertaken by Jabari and his team. Sneha Veeragoudar Harrell talked about a project titled ‘Fractal Village’. In the project, students were presented with ‘Barren Island’ in Second Life which was, as its name suggests, completely barren, and they were then supported in using programming tools to create objects, buildings and avatars. It was pedagogically very exciting as the project was open-ended and student-led in nature and you can read more about it here. Will not blog again until I get back to England as I now want to fit a bit of shopping in this weekend before I get home. Apparently the Apple store on 5th Avenue is open 24 hours a day - could be dangerous...

Tracking practice

Having had a terrible day with trains yesterday getting to this interesting seminar, I nearly didn't get here in time for a seminar I was presenting at today because of signals, or whatever lame excuse the train company gave. Luckily I did, because we had an excellent discussion about Web 2.0 and pedagogies. There is some very interesting work being undertaken at the Warwick research centre on pre-service teachers and their use of ICT, with assumptions that are often made about the way in which 'digital insiders' might approach pedagogy as teachers themselves being challenged by the research team. This is also the theme of Lynda Graham's thoughtful paper on the issue. It reinforces the fact that everyone's experiences of teaching are dependent upon a complex range of factors that intersect in relation to their own digital histories, subject knowledge and beliefs and values...map that dynamic out and it might look a little like the tracks and signals of the Midlands railway system!

UKLA website

I have been working with Nikki Gamble and Liz Chamberlain for the last few months on the new UKLA website, which has been launched today! We are really pleased with it and are delighted with the excellent work that Bellamy Studio has done on developing the site. There are bound to be teething problems, so if you notice anything that needs amending, do use the 'contact us' section of the site to let us know. We hope to develop the site further over the forthcoming months so that additional features for UKLA members are added. Again, any ideas for features/ links you would like to see added, let us have them. In the meantime, do visit the site and look around!