Early morning presentations at conferences, meetings with key educators and potential partners from the US and UK and visits to vastly contrasting educational facilities filled a recent three-week international sojourn for CORE Education Director Research Dr Vince Ham.
Vince attended one of the world’s largest educational research conferences (14,000 delegates) – the American Education Research Association conference at the Denver Convention Centre. While there he presented a formal paper on professional learning in teacher education (and managed to score more than 40 attendees at an 8.15am – 10.30am session on the last day of the conference!); attended sessions; and held informal discussions with US academics and teacher educators about CORE Education activity and products (especially Educator Tours, ICT professional development, EPS and CORE conferences).
Still in the US, Vince attended the Pacific Circle Consortium Conference at Southern Oregon University (SOU) and co-presented a paper on professional learning in teacher education. While at this conference, he had more discussions about CORE Education with Pacific Rim educators and various SOU representatives. The next PCC conference is to be held in Christchurch, New Zealand, mid-August, 2011.
Moving on to London, Vince met with various prospective partners and held workshops and meetings to support the sub-contractor undertaking research on CORE Education’s EPS pilot in UK.
Vince visited Sawyers Hall College, the high school running CORE Education’s EPS pilot programme. Final data gathering for the research report on pilot has been gathered, and a report will be presented to a conference of UK principals in June.
“The evaluation of the pilot has provided some excellent insights into the usefulness of the EPS in the UK context. Overall it was a very successful experience for Sawyers Hall College who are now using the feedback from the survey to help inform planning for the future.” Vince says.
A visit to Colchester’s new Imagine IT Teaching and Business training centre was a chance to “see and play with some of the latest new technologies for teaching and learning in a ‘classroom of the future’ setting,” he says.
At a dinner meeting with two Directors of UK sister organisation CORE Education UK, Vince heard about the implications of the change of UK government and the new Coalition’s education policies.
He also ran a seminar at Middlesex University for local ICT and education consultants, received an update on a CORE Education project with Macmillan Cancer Research and visited a Local Education Authority that has transformed its school achievements by involving the community, and saw an interactive teaching museum dedicated to the ‘free schools’ movement in late C19th and early C20th London.
“The contrast with the Imagine IT centre (the classrooms of the past versus the classroom of the future) made for interesting reflection!” he says.
Playing with a multitouch screen table at the Essex Imagine IT centre
Playing virtual football on the interactive floor at the Essex Imagine IT centre
The C19th classroom at the Ragged Schools Museum, Tower Hamlets, UK
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