The first MASH IT UP Osaka08 will be held on Sunday, January 27th in Osaka. If you are interested in attending, please contact me or even leave a response here. Our batting order is as follows:

Collaboration
1. Mark de Boer (Module 6)
2. Vick L. Ssali (Graduate)

In the classroom
3. Joe Siegel (Module 3)
4. Dale Brown (Graduate)
5. Mike Post (Module 3)

Dissertations
6. Michael Iwane-Salovaara (Diss.)
7. Matthew Walsh (Diss.)
8. Steve Herder (Module 6)

It'll certainly be worth the time and price of a shinkansen or train ticket to be a participant in this unique collaborative community. We hope to see you there!

Steve Herder

Happy new year Mark and all.
You and I will be specifically presenting on Collaboration or coordination, and I am sure it will be nice to exchange some ideas on the theme, even nicer to hear other MASHERS' views on the same.
Steve will be willing to join in the preparatory exchanges on this and other topics.
I will be summarising my outline very soon, and I look forward to (all) your input.
Vick.

Hey everybody,
I am making a powerpoint presentation by myself for the first time for MASH Osaka 08. The advice I have received about presentation and audience expectations has been really helpful as I revise my slides. The useful feedback I have gotten: be consistent with font/background choices, use a theme throughout, stay away from jargon if possible, make sure everything on the slides (punctuation, pictures, numbers, ect) has a purpose. These observations will (hopefully) help make my slides more stimulating, clear and organized.

Also have a question for any techies out there. I am using Open Office Impress and was wondering if anyone knows how to put borders on slides and/or pictures?

Thanks, everybody, for this opportunity and your help.

Happy New Year everyone!
I will be presenting on the concept of collaborative reflective teaching within the MASH community. The idea of using tools such as Skype or iChat (and now the Bham MASH site) to collaborate and learn how to use our MA's to professionally develop is important for a number of reasons. One, it helps us develop further than we could do on our own, two, it creates a community that we can use to generate more theory and three, it makes us as Bham students a more powerful force to be reckoned with in the academic community.
Using the activity theory as the basis for my arguments, I will show that the 'community' in which we learn, can evolve or transform into an entirely self-sustaining system. I will also very briefly touch on how the web site was designed around this concept.

Joe,

I downloaded OpenOffice on my MAC but couldn't find an answer for you. So I checked with THE man (Joshua) and confirmed that Presentation DOESN'T have border options for pictures. It only has "shadow". Sorry about that. We'll have to upgrade you to PowerPoint or convince you to buy a MAC.


Looking forward to your next batch.


Steve