Activities

Computer Science and ICT Education

Although not an incurable conference goer living out of a suitecase, I try to attend one or two conferences a year in the area of computer science education as well as general educational research. In the past I have attended the BERA annual conference, the EDEN ODL conference, and all editions of the ITiCSE conference.

I am also regularly invited to review papers submitted to the following conferences:

• The ACM SIGCSE annual USA conference.
• The ACM SIGCSE annual European conference (ITiCSE)
• The IEEE annual FIE (Frontiers in Education) American conference.

ICT-related projects

Since June 2000 I have jointly co-ordinated (together with my wife Valerie Sollars) an ECML (the European Center for Modern Languages in Graz, Austria) project about ICT and Young Language Learners.

The main objective of this project is to use the Internet to build communities of young language learners (8-10 years old) who publish their stories, poems, etc. on the Web. The project involves primary schools from some 20 European countries. You can take a look at the site these children are building at stars.ecml.at. Choose either the English or the French track. The site should be up until July 2002 - after that the project will enter a recap phase and the site will be closed down (I hope to send all concerned a copy on CD for all their hard work!)

In connection with this project I was invited by the Council of Europe to report on ICT in Language Learning during the European Year of Languages closing conference in Brussels in December 2001.

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Summer 2003: Now that project has been concluded and a publication reporting the outcome will be launched at the Karl-Franzens University in Graz, Austria in October 2003.

After that I will start co-ordinating a new Europe-wide project concerning the pedagogic application of weblogs (see here).

Meanwhile, I'm also a partner in a Grundtvig 2 project about the use of ICT in teacher training.

National IT examination boards

In the past I have chaired the examiners' and markers' panels of the Computing Secondary Education Certificate (local O-level equivalents) and Intermediate Certificate (midway between O- and A-Levels). For the last couple of years I have opted out, although I still sit on the respective Syllabus panels and act as paper reviser.

Boards

I was departmental rep on the B.Ed. Board of Studies for a number of years, and currently represent the department on the Faculty Board. I did my stints on the Dissertations Committee, various ICT committees, etc. Currently I am also a member of the committee responsible for computerising the University's administrative structures.