Making it ESE to talk

Innovative new web site connects ESE schools

Duncan Smith Crystal Presentations Ltd Duncans@cryspres.com

“How are your very young pupils responding to the exciting new concepts and forms of information technology? How are you managing the time they spend on working with them? And how are you measuring the development of their learning in this area?” Just a few of the kinds of questions we hope to get teachers in the ESE project schools to discuss via the new ESE school web site.

Providing a forum for the discussion of such practical issues is one important aim of the ESE school web site, which became operational on June 1. In addition to this, we would like the web site to become a vehicle for the dissemination of innovative ideas and practice throughout i3net, thereby bringing the schools more closely together in a true sense of partnership.

The labels ‘project school’ or ‘project co-ordinator’ can engender a variety of responses in teachers upon whom the corresponding honour has been bestowed. It may suggest exciting new ideas to assimilate, fresh teaching approaches to try out, and new resources for the classroom, as well as more reporting to do, more scrutiny of my teaching, and more meetings to attend. But another equally important idea — that of partnership. collaboration and mutual benefit — does not always readily spring to mind when the invitation to join a project lands on one’s desk! Yet the success of the projects in the ESE research programme will depend not only on the quality of the innovation proposed and the extent to which teachers can see direct benefits for their own work, but also on how well a working partnership is established and fostered.

One important ingredient of such a partnership is that teachers perceive themselves and their classroom as more than just a ‘human laboratory’ or a simple ‘test bed’ for someone else’s ideas. Clearly, the ESE projects have taken great care to create such a sense of collaborative partnership, of working together towards a shared goal.

The other important dimension of partnership is a commitment to the mutual sharing of knowledge, ideas and experience throughout the network. This is where the ESE web site will play a crucial role. The web site will provide all the schools involved in ESE projects with the opportunity to benefit from the experiences and practice not only of the project to which they belong, but also of all the other ESE projects and working groups. Clearly, the diversity of the projects will generate a considerable body of knowledge, understanding and pedagogical approaches, and those need to be shared throughout the community.

Of equal importance is the fact that the web site will provide a forum through which teachers will be able to contribute directly to each other’s practice by exchanging information, ideas and, most importantly, the outcomes of their work. This depends, however, on the teachers seeing the benefit of such exchanges for their own professional development and, ultimately, for the quality of learning in their classrooms. We hope that both project staff and teachers will support a high-quality educational dialogue, which will also serve as an important archive of the ESE projects.

If the work of project staff and teachers is central to the development of the ESE web site, that does not mean we will overlook another group: the all-important recipients of this work, namely the children. The hope is that the children will eventually contribute to the web site, not only as a means of demonstrating specific learning outcomes and their skills at communicating them, but also for the more general goal of forging links with children in other parts of Europe, in order to learn more about their culture and way of life.

Achieving these goals will require the time, help and goodwill of everyone involved, but the concept and development of the ESE web site provides a wonderful opportunity to support and extend the goals of the i3 community.

ESE schools web site: www.i3net.org/schools/forum