E-LAMP3: The e-Learning and Mobility Project

This seminar will outline progress with the three interlinked ‘eLearning and Mobility Projects’ (E-LAMP) which have set out to give mobile Traveller children laptops and access to the internet so that they can keep in contact with school as well as making use of CD-ROMs, recommended websites and other electronic resources to enhance their learning.   Currently something of the order of 100 Traveller children are using this equipment supported by schools within 10 English LEAs.

The projects have been co-ordinated by the National Association for the Teachers of Travellers (NATT) and have mainly been funded by the Nuffield Foundation and the DfES They have also raised a number of important issues which will be discussed at the seminar.

These include:

• The ‘entitlement’ of Traveller children to have ICT equipment and support 
   
• The viability of school-based approaches to supporting distance elearning, particularly for Secondary age children
• Whose curriculum:  the informal apprenticeship model which is at the heart of Traveller community views of education and tensions with the official schooling curriculum  

Some of these issues have relevance to broader debates about entitlements and schooling for disadvantaged or disaffected pupils, and hopefully the discussion will embrace such broader perspectives.

Ken Marks is currently a Research Associate in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Sheffield. His career has included a mixture of teaching, work with disadvantaged young people and research activity. His current main area of research interest and expertise is focused on the improvement of distance learning facilities for very mobileTraveller children, and over the past nine years he has been involved with a number of European and English projects which have attempted to harness ICT to enhance provision for Fairground, Circus, Gypsy and other Traveller children.