ITTE '04 Chester

Drive up the A1, through Sherwood Forest, through Peak district, Jodrell Bank radio telescope, Chester.

Greek Pasta

Cherry Scones

Professor Stephen Heppell

Caroline Walker-Greaves, Sunderland University

This should have been about the term 'creativity' and what students knew about it and how broadly conceived it is.  Caroline had some interesting stories and ideas, but she needed to show a clearer theoretical position and consider how lecturers and students could work iteratively to learn together more about this slippery word and concept, through reflecting on their research findings and conceptualisations.

Hugo Kremer

A simple account of an attempt to link three university courses through online community.  Main problem seemed to be lack of shared context.  Ten days was not enough. On the other hand 30 minutes was too much!

Donna Russell

A panel with one person - a fast talking Kansas lady, at her best when explaining activity theory, which I think I now have a handle on - I will be going to the next session she is doing to make sure!

Beef tomato stuffed with couscous

Chicken pie

Trifle

Lovely evening, got dizzy circulating Chester

Evening of socialising with Roberta Weber, Helena Gillespie, Pete Bradshaw, Jonathan Furness, Suresh , Richard Millwood

George Koutromanos and Margaret Cox

Too much statistics and not enough story, but this study of 175 teachers gave 'solid' background to the notion that teacher empowerment is vital to actual development if the use of ICT - CPD is just not enough.

A session which described several small scale research projects where local schools were given tablet PC's to use in both primary and secondary contexts. An evaluation of these research projects were given:

- pupils found using the stylus a very tactile experience.

- wireless networking meant that pupils could share their work during lessons

- tablet machines encouraged collaboration

- teachers were more creative with their use of ICT in lessons

- handwriting recognition was very successful.

Discussion followed about the issues that pupils faced... including practical concerns, battery life, handwriting recognition, reliability. Brainstorm session about the creative use of the tablet in teaching and learning.

Donna Russell

This made sense to Richard (a bit), who had asked the speaker the day before to tell how all this activity theory analysis worked - she essentially presented the papers in the wrong order. If she had done this one yesterday, yesterday's one would have made mores sense. She discussed some teachers involved in some curriculum development using the activity theory framework, noting the 'contradictions' and telling their stories based on the same 'instrument' of analysis. Her intention was to look for patterns, but it all comes across as being diverse and complex, just as you would expect, and pattern didn't seem to emerge. Nevertheless the structured analysis was interesting, because it made you look at each of the system components that the activity theory proposes.

Margaret Talboys, QCA