Margaret J. Cox (Co-Founder of Edusummits)
During the writing of the International Handbook for Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education in 2008 by Springer, the 18 Section Editors considered ways in which the reported research which would be published in the handbook might also reach policy makers and practitioners. Everyone agreed at the final editors’ meeting in Paris in 2007 that a follow-on World Summit bringing together researchers, practitioners and policy makers could help broaden the global impact of the International handbook and reduce the usual risk of policy makers and practitioners ‘reinventing the wheel’. A group of the editors formed a founding committee which organised the first Edusummit2009 held in The Hague in The Netherlands in June 2009. 70 leading researchers, policy makers and practitioners, working in groups, defined action steps for policy makers building on the work published in the Handbook on ICT in Primary and Secondary Education.
Since that first Edusummit, there have now been 4 subsequent summits in Paris (2011), Washington (2013), Bangkok (2015) and recently in Borovets. Bulgaria in September 2017. Several ITTE members have been regular contributors to these Edusummits and other members might be interested in contributing to the next one to be held in Quebec in September 2019. Meanwhile many of the working group papers will be of interest to ITTE members such as the Ebook produced by Edusummit2015 entitled Technology Advanced Quality Learning For All with articles from all nine working groups including “Advancing mobile learning in formal and informal settings”; “Professional development for policy makers, school leaders and teachers”; “Addressing gaps and promoting educational equity”; “Assessment as, for and of Learning” and “Advancing understanding of the roles of CS/Informatics in the curriculum” led by ITTE members Dr. Mary Webb and Prof. Margaret Cox.
Even the Edusummit steering committee manages to take a break sometimes. Below is a photo of some Steering committee members relaxing at Guildford (Surrey, UK) Operatic Burns night taking a break from planning the Edusummit2013 meeting held later in the year in September in Washington DC. From left to right at the table: Prof. David Gibson (USA, now at University of Curtin, Australia and co-Chair of Edusummit2015 in Bangkok); Prof. Mike Searson (USA); Joan Hounsome (Guildford Opera); Assistant Professor Jo Tondeur (Belgium); Prof. Margaret Cox (King’s College London, Founder and Steering committee member and co-chair for Edusummit2019, Lifelong Fellow of ITTE); Dr. Mary Webb (King’s College London; and Leader of Working group on Computer Science in the school curriculum and ITTE member); and finally Professor Joke Voogt (Founder and Steering Committee member of Edusummit, Co-Editor of the International Handbook); Professor at University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands). Prof. Gerald Knezek of the University of North Texas (also Steering Committee member of Edusummits) took the photo!
Similar policy documents have been produced at the most recent Edusummit2017 and the groups are in the process of writing up more extensive reports. For example: TWG3: ‘Professional development for technology-enhanced Learning leaders’ focussed on the “professional development for school leaders with an emphasis on how to provide effective technology enhanced instruction from the perspective of a culture of learning. Learning technologies should support curriculum in ways that are not otherwise possible. Rather than focusing on the technology, learning activities should meet instructional goals and involve technology when it enhances the learning. Often teachers conceptualize integration as technological rather than primarily as curricular (Hutchison & Reinking, 2011). However, the focus should be on the learning and the curriculum, not the technology.”
ITTE members who feel that these numerous and well substantiated reports might support their ITT work, research or PhD supervision can find all the reports of the five EDusummits as well as download individual chapters of the 1st Edition of the International Handbook from the Web. The 2nd edition is currently being written and will be published in 2019. Any ITTE members interested in getting involved in the Edusummits can find Group Leader details on the websites.