Michael Hartley's Profile

After many years as a secondary school teacher, Head of Department and ultimately a senior manager in a Comprehensive school, I moved in to SEN to work with pupils with severe and profound learning difficulties.  This involved me in not only teaching but developing ways for staff and pupils to use technology as a tool for communication.  My experience in SEN, whilst challenging, confirmed a long held belief  that ‘no child is ineducable’.

Initial involvement with Ultralab was as one of 40 UK Advisory Teachers managing the Tesco Schoolnet2000 Project.  The Project aimed to encourage through action research, the recording online of the observations of children and young people from all over the United Kingdom, concerning their lives, local environments, schools, family life (past & present) and their visions for the future.  This was a ground-breaking project which went on to become the biggest educational project of its kind in the world and subsequently, entered the Guinness Book of Records.

In 2000 I  joined the Talking Heads Project, working with Headteachers across England,whilst simultaneously researching the practice of online facilitation and engagement in a virtual environment.  Our findings are included in Ultralab’s reports published by Ultralab and NCSL. Talking Heads is now part of the National College for School Leadership's online provision.

In 2002, the 'online community of practice' model developed with Talking Heads was adapted for Scotland.  This involved introducing and piloting the Heads Together Project for Headteachers all over Scotland and provided the opportunity to research the impact of the project on:

•  supporting the development of existing Scottish Headteachers Management skills
• supporting Scottish head-teachers in their day to day role by providing them with a mechanism for mutual support, the potential solution of problems and the sharing and creation of new ideas
• reducing the isolation of head-teachers in small or remote schools
• raising the ICT skills of participating head-teachers
• making participating head-teachers aware of the potential role of ICT for
  management and administration, learning and teaching.

Over a period of four years, the Talking Heads and Heads Together Projects involved providing an ever-widening range of improvements and arenas for the use of online learning communities in enhancing educational opportunities:

·        International Conference on Behaviour

·        International Conference on Inclusion

·        Setting up of an Online Community of Practice for educators from Gaelic and Welsh medium schools.

Following the successful handing over of the Heads Together Project to Learning and Teaching Scotland in 2004  I moved to the Ultraversity project.  This involves tutoring undergraduates undertaking a radical, work-based honours degrees in Learning, Technology and Research.   This has enabled continuity of my interest in researching into the potential for a community-based approach to eLearning, in particular the impact of the Ultraversity degree on the lifelong learning needs of the participating students.