Contact
Biography
Tony is a member of the Learning Sciences Research Institute in the School of Education. He teaches about ICT, leadership and learning on the MA Learning, Technology and Education, MA Educational Leadership and MA in Education courses. He is a tutor on the Scoool of Education's innovative PostGraduate Certificate in Education International (PGCEi) course, and is a supervisor for a number of MA dissertations and PhD and EdD students. He represents the School on the Faculty IT User Group.
He is also the School of Education's contact with The Association for Information Technology in Teacher Education (ITTE), of which he is a past Chair and former member of the national executive. He is also a MirandaNet Fellow. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Technology, Pedagogy and Education.
Tony's recent research can be found under the research tab. Over the years he has also worked on a number of national evaluations for BECTa/DfES. Details may again be found under the research tab.
Tony had 16 years full time classroom experience as a teacher of geography and humanities at secondary level, including being for several years Head of Humanities Faculty in a large comprehensive school, before he took up a two-year seconded position as Advisory Teacher for Humanities and whole curriculum issues. He subsequently took up his current position at the School of Education.
Teaching Summary
I teach on a variety of courses, including various MA courses, and the new online international PGCE (PGCEi). I designed, and am the tutor on, the online 'Leading Learning' Module, which is part of… read more
Research Summary
My main research interests are in the field of educational ICT, including: new technologies and teacher professional development; ICT in teacher education; ICT and pedagogy. Over the years I have… read more
I teach on a variety of courses, including various MA courses, and the new online international PGCE (PGCEi). I designed, and am the tutor on, the online 'Leading Learning' Module, which is part of the School of Education's MA in Education (Flexible).
Current Research
My main research interests are in the field of educational ICT, including: new technologies and teacher professional development; ICT in teacher education; ICT and pedagogy. Over the years I have conducted more than 150 interviews with teachers about aspects of their use (or not) of new technologies, so I have an on-going interest in 'talking with teachers about technology'. Some other, recent research, in collaboration with Tim Denning (Keele University) and Chris Higgins (Oxford Brookes) has included data mining from journal article abstracts using latent semantic analysis.
Past Research
Much of my research has led to conference papers which have been presented at a range of international conferences including those of the British Educational Research Association (BERA), The American Educational Research Association (AERA), The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), The Association for Information Technology in Teacher Education (ITTE) (UK) and the Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE) (USA).
Three recent projects have been:
- Web 2.0 Technologies for Learning at Key Stages 3 and 4. This was a Becta-funded project undertaken by LSRI in association with IoE (London) and MMU. As I result I presented a paper on teachers in the study at the European Educational Research Association Conference (2007, Goteborg)
- Teachers as Users of Technology: Exploring a Conceptual Framework of 'Clusters of Purposeful Learning Activity' funded by TDA and undertaken with Avril Loveless (University of Brighton), Tim Denning (Keele University) and Chris Higgins (Oxford Brookes), in association with ITTE. I presented a paper at AERA 2010 (Denver) and co-presented a related paper at ECER 2010 in Helsinki. A journal article is in press at the Curriculum Journal.
- Learning Vocabulary from Reading Books on Mobile Devices: an Evaluation of ELMO. Undertaken with colleagues in LSRI under contract to Sharp Labs Europe, in collaboration with colleagues at University of Tokushima, Japan. I was project manager. Paper presented by Prof. Mike Sharples at mLearn 2009 (Orlando). A journal article on which I am lead author is under consideration for publication.
National evaluations have included:
- a national evaluation of e-portfolios across educational sectors.
- the technical evaluation of the National Grid for Learning 'Pathfinder' LEAs
- the evaluation of the National Pilot for Online Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for Science Teachers
- evaluation (with Tim Denning at Keele University) of the Government-funded KS3 Online Courses initiative
- member of the team which carried out the ImpaCT2 evaluation of the impact of networked technologies on learning
- member of the team led by Professor Colin Harrison which undertook the evaluation of the DfEE/NCET 'Multimedia Portables for Teachers Pilot.'
- case study work for the NCET/GA publication 'Using IT to Enhance Geography: Case studies at Key Stages 3 and 4'