Technology and Education Research Group

Two group members have recently had research contributions reviewed and accepted:

Giselle has a poster accepted for the 10th Higher Education Academy-ICS Annual Conference (University of Kent at Canterbury, 25th August - 27th August 2009). It is titled:

Using drama to introduce ethics to Technology students and practitioners.

Steve has a paper accepted for publication in New Technology, Work and Employment (with co-authors M. Martinez Lucio & P. Trevorrow). It is titled:

Making networks and (re-)making trade union bureaucracy: a European-wide case study of trade union engagement with the internet and networking.

Congratulations to both!

On Thursday 21st May we had a joint meeting with the Society and Information Research Group (SIRG). This was to help us to see what the two groups had in common and how we might work together.

The people there from TERG were: Karen, Jon, Giselle, Wendy, Steve and Helen (by phone).

The people from SIRG were: Chris, Ian, David, Allan, Hazel and Clem (by phone).

It was a good meeting, with interesting discussions around two papers about social perspectives on Technology:

Kling, R. (2000) Learning about information technologies and social change: The contribution of social informatics. Information Society, 16 (3), 217-232.

Williams, R., and D. Edge. (1996) The social shaping of technology. Research policy 25, no. 6 : 865–899.

After the discussion of these papers we talked about how we would like to work together in the future. We decided:

• to have further joint reading meetings 
• to have an ‘awayday’ in July to share our research ideas and research writing
• to see if we can gain funding for a residential ‘writers retreat’ in late August
• to plan possible funding bids
• to consider strategies for the REF 

Ian will be setting up a ‘meetomatic’ page to set a date for the July awayday. Karen will investigate the possibilities for the writers retreat (probably located in the Peak District, to minimise travel for the ‘Northern branch’ (Wendy, Clem, Steve and Helen).

The Journals page now has some information about impact factors. This may be useful when considering where to publish your research.

There are also a couple more journals listed on the page.

Paul Herring, part-time PhD student, has a paper accepted for presentation at the ALT-C conference in September. The paper is titled:

Investigating a ‘virtual tutor’ approach for improving the communication skills of children with autism.

It is co-authored with Roger Jones and Kieron Sheehy (from the Faculty of Education and Language Learning). Paul is supervised by Roger, Kieron and Karen.