MirandaNet Advisers and co-researchers

Core Team Advisers and Co-Researchers Consultants

Ros Asher

Ros works with organisations to develop creative approaches that can improve learning, performance and life chances. Before becoming freelance, Ros was an Education Director and Project Director at Partnerships for Schools, the company set up to deliver the UK’s Building Schools for The Future programme, where she led the ‘Leading Learning’ programme. She has been a Children’s Services Improvement Adviser at the Department for Education, a Local Authority Chief Officer with responsibility for school improvement, development, inclusion and arts services, and an education adviser in four local authorities. Extensive teaching experience covers a range of schools, colleges, higher education and other education settings. She has worked with public, private, third sector and education industry partners, contributed to BBC and Channel 4 music education projects, and been a visiting university lecturer and external examiner.

Contributions to conferences and training in Europe and the USA include sessions on leadership, creativity, change management, improving learning, curriculum development, music and the arts. Ros’s work with voluntary, community and charitable organisations focuses on increasing educational impact. She was Chair of Trustees for WebPlay and is a Trustee with icould, both organisations incorporating innovative use of ICT to inspire learners. She was a founder Trustee of ‘Music for Life’ a programme now run by the Wigmore Hall and Dementia UK, is a Trustee of the New Mozart Orchestra, and a member of the Cultural Learning Alliance steering group, which champions the power of high quality arts and cultural education for all learners.

Patricia Charlton

Dr. Patricia Charlton, co-founder of Creative Digital Solutions, is a knowledge engineer and a researcher on artificial intelligence, cognitive science, education and technology-enhanced learning. She is the author of several papers on artificial intelligence, education, ubiquitous computing, learning analytics and intelligent context-aware designs.

As well as expert in AI and education, she is a senior consultant in designing resources for teaching and learning for all sectors, evaluating digital learning experiences and designing and executing impact evaluation studies. Patricia, in partnership with education stakeholders, designs, develops and shares innovative and effective teaching and learning experiences.

• Publications and details: https://creatingtodiscover.wordpress.com
• Creative Digital Solutions: http://creativedigitalsolutions.org

Rajvir Cheema

Rajvir Cheema is currently working as a part-time tutor at De Montfort University supporting students with dissertations and placement module. She continues her voluntary work from last year as a mentor at DMU in supporting and guiding students who are currently in process of planning and writing their master’s dissertations. She is also working on an in-depth study as a research assistant funded by the Leicester City Council and led by Sarah Younie as the principal investigator. The research explores using the Eye Gaze Technology as an assessment tool with pupils working at P levels 1-3.
Rajvir has gained a BA and an MA in Education from DMU which has developed her interest and skills in educational research. She has had the opportunity to publish her research on MirandaNet last year and gained a fellowship from the network. The research focused on ‘Engaging young learners through Digital Game Based learning’.

Rajvir aims to continue her interest in education research and explore different aspects of learning. Some key research areas of interest include, technology enhanced learning and use of different technologies to support learners including SEN, English as an Additional language, the curriculum and Assessment.

Jan Lepeltak

Jan was was a senior curriculum developer for ICT at the National Institute for Curriculum Development SLO in Enschede and a professor at the NHL-University of applied science in Leeuwarden (the Netherlands) at the Institute for Education and Communication. For almost 20 years he was editor-in-chief of a Dutch monthly educational magazine on educational technology (COS) and still writes about ICT in several magazines and national newspapers. In 2013 he was a member of the National Organizing Committee of the WorldRoboCup Junior games 2013 in Eindhoven. He is also a representative of NGI (the Netherlands Association for Informatics) in the EU education network CEPIS in Brussels. He is a Senior MirandaNet Fellow and has participated since 1992 in the network. He gave in 2014 several keynotes in conferences about social media, coding and education.
As a freelance consultant Jan continues to do research and development in new pedagogies and ICT. His projects include: e-learning; using social media in small schools; action research; and language development enhanced with ICT. He works as an independent consultant and is founder of LearningFocus.

Sanaa Nusrat

Sanaa has just completed her undergraduate degree in Economics with Mathematics at the University of East London. She has also been engaged in a business project in Bahrain. She began her work with MirandaNet in 2013 when she volunteered to run the team of student stewards in the MirandaNet lounge at BETT13 and 14. She is a valued member of the MirandaNet team as Christina Preston’s personal assistant, organising and running meetings and events; managing the accounts; liaising between consultants and clients; data collection for research projects; and dealing with the unexpected. In the future she will combine this work with post graduate studies that will further her ambitions.

 

 

Atisha Parmar

Atisha Parmar has gained her BA from the University of Northampton in Education and went on to doing her MA in Education Studies at De Monfort University. Atisha gained her fellowship last year on MirandaNet and published an article, which was based on ‘the use of data management systems for e-leadership and school improvement’.

Atisha is currently working as mentor at De Monfort University; in this role she works to support students with their Masters thesis. As well as this Atisha works in the primary education sector as a cover teacher. The primary school she works at leads by example in Leicester represented by their state of the art building, facilities and equipment. Furthermore, she also works closely with Christina Preston and Sarah Younie to provide support with research projects.

Atisha’s aims are to develop her research experiences and contribute towards a variety of educational developments. Technology is one of the key aspects, as it is continuously developing with the demand of society and has a huge impact on the learning and development of the education system. Some key areas of research Atisha has undertaken are the benefits of speech and language, parental involvement and reading, using technology with EAL pupils as well as in-ear coaching.

Malcolm Payton

Malcolm’s is a highly respected educational leader and consultant who delivers effective transformation programmes at a local and national level. His experience includes the direct management of schools as an Executive Head and a Director of Education, the creation of leadership resources used by national agencies in the UK and elsewhere, speaking at conferences and training events in a number of countries.

In this work, Malcolm has been at the forefront of the use of ICT in schools. He has established ICT departments in schools, created communities of practice and led a number of innovative projects at classroom level. As a result of this work, he was seconded to a Professional Advisor role with the Scottish Government for three years, leading the Digital Content programme and helping set up GLOW, the world’s first national intranet for schools. He was subsequently engaged as head of transformation for a large education authority in England and then led the Digital Content procurement programme for the Supreme Education Council in Qatar, working with Qatari schools to create and procure digital content that would support 21st century learning. He was also Head of E-strategy at Becta (the UK agency for ICT in education), where he managed a portfolio of over fifty ICT in education projects.

Joanna Wild

Joanna Wild is digital experience and evaluation consultant and researcher. Currently she works on two projects: 1) ESRC- KEO funded ‘Building Community Knowledge‘ project led by Diana Laurillard from the Institute of Education. University of London, and 2) JISC-funded Digital Student study.

From 2010 to 2013 Joanna was researcher attached to the Academic IT Education Enhancement Team at the University of Oxford.  She has worked in a number of JISC-, HEA-, and ESRC-funded projects in the field of TEL, specialising in digital experience research and evaluation, learning design (LDSE project), Open Educational Resources (OER Impact Study), Open Practice (OER Engagement Study) and Open Access (Open Access at Oxford).

Before joining Academic IT Services she worked first as e-learning course designer and staff developer at the Centre of e-Learning of AGH-University of Science and Technology in Krakow, and then as scientific project manager and educational researcher in the Technology & Knowlege Unit at the Centre for Social Innovation researching in several TEL projects funded by EC FP7 and Lifelong Learning Programme.

Joanna tweets as @askawild