Image attribution: CC Flickr: EganSnow
I am in the second term of my MA entitled ‘Leading Innovation and Change’ at St Mary’s University College in Twickenham. This module is called ‘Research Methods for Project Enquiry’ and requires I choose a pilot project as a test bed for my ultimate project in the second year. No problem, except I am not sure what to do. As Head of ICT, both discrete and across the curriculum, I have a great opportunity to take one strain of my role and use my MA to focus on it to greater depth. Great, but I cannot decide what to do. I thought people I work with online (you) might be able to help me decide. My choices are all the usual ed tech suspects. Here’s a basic list:
- VLE. We use Moodle at the moment. I could do various aspects of this:
- Choosing a new VLE. I failed to share the VLE decision with my colleagues and pupils. I could do a project that documented the process of including the opinion of all parties into the decision-making process as we evaluated the more costly solutions of Frog and Open Hive and an improved Moodle.
- Training teacher(s) to use Moodle and evaluating the impact it has on their teaching and learning.
- Implementing and evaluating the impact of using a VLE to deliver and assess teaching and learning.
- The use of various technologies to engage pupils and improve teaching and learning:
- cameras
- web2.0 tool(s)
- voting systems
- podcasting
- Our recent inspection identified an area for improvement in our Library by providing more opportunities to access independent learning using ICT. This could lead to an interesting line of inquiry examining independent learning as well as how ICT can be used to promote and support this within the context of my school.
- Using an online service in the classroom. Possibilities:
- Edmodo
- Twitter
- Blogging (posterous, wordpress multi-user)
- Collaborative mind-mapping
- Google Apps for Education
- Developing a Professional Learning Network as teaching CPD.
So, you can see there are lots of possibilities and I would like your help in choosing one to focus on. What do you think would be worthwhile? What would be of interest to you? What would be most useful to the development of educational technology?
Any ideas, thoughts and comments most welcome. All my work will be shared online via this blog.
