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ProNews1
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Welcome
to the first edition of Pronett News |
"Welcome to our first edition"
"Getting to know our growing membership"
"Reports,events and progress so far"
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Editorial
How many people keep a back up of their emails? Well, I suspect that
most of us do not and indeed I know of a few people that just keep one
large unsorted inbox! Nevertheless, it is often an interesting task to
go back into previous mail and find former notes and ideas.
Researching back through a rich tapestry of correspondence Pronett
appears to have its subtle origins in the exchanges between myself and
Drs.Ton Koenraad on the potential role of computer mediated
communication (CMC) in supporting teacher trainees whilst on placement.
Our email dialogue relates to work as far back as the International
Conference BITE Conference (Bringing Information Technology to Education)
in 1998 at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. At this
conference, I presented a paper on the role of web based server side CGI
scripts. This was an early web based project which enabled CGI scripts
and allowed placement trainees in Wales to manage personal electronic
reflective journals and portfolios via the internet. Resources and
access were then sparse indeed! Attitudes were often unaccommodating and
often defiant. How things have changed as the Internet has evolved!
Inspired by the potential and possibility of further development in
this field a bid was submitted much later in 2001 for a project which
would address collaborative learning, file management and community
building. The bid was fortunately successful in attracting European
Minerva project funding. The rest is history! So far we have been able
to action and achieve the preliminary objectives and goals of the
Pronett Programme. As we near the end of the beta test it can be
observed that Pronett is providing a splendid opportunity for teachers
and trainees to engage
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positively
with each other.
We can see that, changing the way we work, organize
ourselves and think imaginatively about what we can do is still the
hardest task for all concerned. Indeed changing the "mind set"
and accommodating the needs of the 21st century when it comes
to using technology in education undoubtedly presents teachers and
others with an interesting, formidable and continuing challenge.
In order to meet that challenge we are sure that Pronett will emerge
to provide some of the future innovative tools and collaborative
strategies that will enable trainees and teachers to successfully and
imaginatively manage their work and come up with creative solutions in
their practice. Teachers today, are teaching students who are keen and
eager to work and study in different ways. Students are having greater
exposure, easier access, and experience of networked communities and
online resources than ever before. Central therefore in our mission is
that Pronett will help teachers take on new ways of working. Hence
"Learn to use to Use to learn"
Unfortunately, for many staff, learning to use IT productively and
efficiently is still the first part of the equation in their daily
encounter with technology. So it is that we will always find individuals
who will have large collections of mail in an inbox together with many
other unsorted files in another folder albeit in a completely different
content management system called Pronett! Nevertheless, now is the time
to imaginatively grasp at the opportunities that are presented to us.
So welcome to Pronett, as we invite and look forward to your comments,
views and news in future editions. It is your portal and workspace as
we work together!
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Partner
News: Who is behind the Project? |
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Pronett
Partners offering a reluctant break time pose!
The first time we officially
met, it was in Utrecht, November 2001, and we were in four. One of the
four members, from the Faculty of Education in Ghent (Belgium), has
since left, and three new members have entered in, from the Katholieke
Hogeschool St Lieven (KAHO), in Belgium also. Here you can see us.
Standing, from left to right, the old members: Lluís Quintana (Barcelona),
John Parnell (Cardiff), Ton Koenraad (Utrecht), who is the tallest
and, of course, the coordinator. Seated, Hendryk, Hugo and Bea (St.
Lieven). It is not strange they are not standing up: who can resist
Ton utrecht schedule, whith a rhythm of 7/8 hours per day with scarcely a
break?
The Spaniard Who Came In From
The Heat
The first time we went to
Utrecht, in November 2001, we settled in a small hotel in the
countryside so that I could see that there were some cows left in the
overpopulated Holland. This time, February 2003, we were in a hotel in
centre town, so that I could feel how is life in a town when
temperatures are at 0º or below, and I was really impressed. Young
and old people with the bicycle at hand, some of them without gloves,
wandering through the stands, where the vendors exhibited their fishes,
fresh-freezed, so to say; small children running and making noise.
Nobody seemed to realise that something very dangerous was happening:
the sun was setting, the temperatures were lower and lower: by
Mediterranean standards, the prelude to a disaster.
Now, there is a small item in
our programme that says "12:30 Fresh air". Well: it is fresh,
but nobody seems to be surprised, not even our new colleagues who are
from Belgium and find it very natural to walk near freezed ponds.
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| Portal
News |
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| PRONETT
interim results reported to Brussels.
In accordance with the
regulations of the Socrates Action Programme theinterim results of the
project were reported to Brussels. A one-kilo snailmail post parcel
was sent to the Technical Assistance Office. It containedthree sets of
all the (interim)versions of the deliverables defined in theproject
proposal. Most of these documents can also be accessed in theSocrates
Portal Workspace that was especially created for the occasion.
PRONETT Portal Development
Interim portal
update: Spring Edition
Currently a crew of three is
working on the development and improvement ofthe portal site. The
present collection of Bugs and Feature items has beenanalyzed. This
has resulted in a priority list of improvements.A number of these will
be implemented in an update of theportal site: the spring edition
which, appropriately, was launched on March 21.
The improvements involve
elements such as the Role-options, Language Switch, Visual Editor,
Member Listing, Repaired Bugs (a.o. The Forum facility).
TowardsPronett Portal Version 2.0
Since the launch of the portal
site in December 2002 the membership hasgrown at an approximate rate
of 40 per months. Now that there are more thana hundred active users
it is possible to start collecting user experienceswith and opinions
about the facilities and look and feel of the currentportal. To this
end a questionnaire is being developed.It will be available early
April. Portal members will be asked to fill inonline versions during
the months of April and May.New and additional specifications will be
developed from the analysis
of the results.
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Introduction
Help to the Portal
A Hands-on Tutorial on the use
of the portal facilities is being developed. We are currently in the
final stages of testing the Dutch version. A UK-version will be
available in the first week of April.
Utrecht to organise EduZope
NL Meeting
Since we are using Zope
technology in the Pronett project we have joined the EduZope
community. We have also been approached by and have contacted
other people and projects that use this technology. Among these
contacts is the Innovative Technology for Collaborative Learning and
Knowledge Building (ITCOLE)
project. This project publishes Future Learning Environment (Fle3), a
web-based learning environment based on Zope. We are currently looking
into the possibility of offering this software for computer supported
collaborative learning (CSCL) as one of the EduTools within Pronett.
Contacts with several other Dutch parties, among which the project CodeName
Future, have resulted in the initiative to start an NL branch of
the EduZope Community. An invitation for a meeting at Archimedes
Lerarenopleiding on april 9 has been published in the Plone
community site.
Local News
Utrecht: Faculty of Education
Pronett reported to Project
Monitor Group
The interim results of the
project were
presented to the Utrecht Project Monitor Group. In a one hour
session, also attended by the Pronett core partners and invited guests,
comments and feedback were solicited from the members of the Project
Monitor Group. Issues discussed included the results of the literature
study, the portal design and development, the Utrecht version of the
implementation strategy and evaluation and dissemination approaches. A
summary is available here.
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Socrates
Minerva Programme. |
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| Further
News |
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PRONETT
and local implementation
Earlier this year the
management at Archimedes Teacher Education asked ICTcoordinator
Dirk van der Veen to start the implementation process of Pronett.
On Februay 13 a plan to this effect was presented to the Board of
department coordinators.
The proposed strategies
were adopted and green light given to
the execution of the first phase of the plan. Pilotsinvolving some 6
departments will be carried in which the portal will be used
for various purposes. See the news item below for more information.
PRONETT Portal used for blended learning arrangements.
Since March 2003 a number
of teacher educators in the Modern Language Department
have started to experiment with the possibilities the portal offers.
Two teachers have been using their personal workspaces to support
the MFL pedagogy courses they offer. They
have introduced three groups of students
preparing to become teachers of English and French as a foreign
language to the portal facilities.The course folders they designed
include elements as last minute announcements,
a forum on educational design issues, online documents and a
section for relevant literature and links. The portal folder
sharing functionality has proven to
be very effective to facilitate collective activities
such as giving peer feedback to assignment results and contributing
to the links collection. It also supports the controlled distribution
of files. An example in this respect is the Pronett version of
the WebQuest template that students who do not have access to HTML-editors
can copy from the file exchange folder and edit in their own workspace.
Furthermore, as some course assignments involve collaboration,
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the
local role functionality also helps individual students to share
specific personal folders with peers. An
example of a course Home Page is availabe here.
Action research is being carried out to
evaluate the experiences. An abstract of the planned report of the
results has been submitted to the EuroCALL
conference 2003.
PRONETT Portal supports a student conference on
internationalisation .
Pronett will also be
introduced to some 120 students attending the Utrecht based, 3-day
conference Teacher in Europe on the meaning and surplus value of
internationalisation in education. Shared
and personal workspaces will be offered
to support collaboration on assignments and pre- and postconference
activities.
PRONETT and local dissemination
The Pronett Portal was presented
at Archimedes Lezingen Dag, a one-day symposium for students and
colleagues, management and in-service teachers from regional affiliate
schools.
The Pronett Portal was
also presented at NewEducation@HvU
2003. This one-day
symposium is dedicated to the role of ICT in the innovation of learning
and teaching in higher education. The event is for all the faculties
and employees of the Hogeschool van
Utrecht. It is organised every other
year by the HvU-KennisPlatform, an ICTexpertgroup of the Hogeschool.A
two page article featuring the Pronett project is to appear in the
April Issue of Online,
the magazine for staff at Archimedes Teacher Education.
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| Tips
and Tricks |
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beta testing of the portal in Cardiff and Utrecht started in early
December. It wasn’t long before the bugs and features collector
began to fill up with all manner of reports, faults and misunderstood
concepts and procedures. Some admittedly were to do with our portal
programming and other reported errors reflected common access issues,
browser and operating platform conflicts. However, individuals soon
found a use for "my network places and web folders" on their
Personal computers and wanted more information on this useful approach to file
transfer.
Using web folders is a more
challenging user technique of employing the WebDav protocol. If you go
to your "My computer icon" and open it, you will see an icon
with the words my "web folders", in XP, it is called "my
network places", it will allow you to create a short cut to your
Pronett workspace folder. The wizard will also help you to create new
shortcuts to shared folders and resources on your network, Web, and
other FTP
servers. In simple terms, the Add Network Place Wizard will help you
create a new folder for storing your files online at Pronett. Just
follow the wizard and help menu.
A word of caution. It is not
easy to set up initially as some users have experienced difficulty
with IE6 and XP in authenticating web folders with Pronett. We would
very much welcome any feedback if you have resolved such problems. We
know web folders work with IE6 and NT, 2000 and millennium editions.
Anyway, have a go at transferring files to your workspace and let us
know how you get on!
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Cool and
calm beta testing in the lab at Utrecht
"As the Pronett
Portal is fully Web-based you can access your workspace where ever you
are. And all you need for editing your materials is the Browser". |
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John Parnell
Editor
PRONETT Newsletter
Cardiff University, Wales
Cardiff School of Social Sciences
Professional Programmes Office
Glamorgan Building
King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WT
South Wales
United Kingdom
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Positive Evaluation of PRONETT project.
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