TIC 2008 Proceedings First Contact: Boldly using technology to teach dance across the Atlantic Divide Pauline Brooks Dance Department, Centre for Sport, Dance & Outdoor Education Liverpool John Moores University First Contact was an international collaborative research project in dance between two universities -- one situated in Liverpool, UK the other in Philadelphia, USA. It sought to enable students to work with peers from 3000 miles away by communicating via web-cam and email. Students worked together to create a short dance works for sharing with others, exploring together how technology could expand their learning network. The key aims of the project were: • To investigate how web-cam and e-mail technology could be used in teaching and if it would engage students in the use of technology for their own learning. • To use technology on a shared international dance project that encourages the development of collaborative international links and the practice of networking among university students. • To explore the potential for such technology to broaden networks for staff to research in learning and teaching with ICT. Students assisted lecturers in the evaluation of the project via focus group discussions, in order to inform collaborative dance projects in the future using technology. Reflections, student evaluations and advice from the project are shared in this paper with peers so that they too can ‘boldly explore new horizons’, and be part of the next generation of explorers in H.E. who use technology to facilitate collaborative international learning and teaching. Key Words: ICT, web-cam, video streaming, dance, global collaborative learning communities. Introduction Information and communication technology (ICT) has had a tremendous impact upon many of the ways in which we live our lives over the last two to three decades. In 1980 Papert wrote that the obstacles for computers entering people’s every day lives would not be economic, and he saw that computers would soon be ubiquitous just as televisions sets were then. In 2003 the UK Department for Education and Skills (BECTA 2003) noted that 98% of young people used computers, and that 68% of all UK households had Internet access. Yet recent research indicates that the transformation of education within Higher Education (HE) has been one of ‘gradualism rather than revolution’ (Kirkup and Kirkwood, 2005:185) or more to the point, that it has been a somewhat ‘thwarted innovation’ and that education has undergone far less change than had been previously anticipated (Zemsky and Massy, 2004; Oliver, 2002). There appear to be two camps in terms of the use of ICT within education. Firstly those who see it as ‘a polishing tool’ for students to use to revise, improve text and produce professional presentations and for teachers to provide a package of knowledge and instruction (John and Baggott La Velle, 2004; Kirkup and Kirkwood, 2005). Secondly, those whom Nipper (1989) predicted would become the “‘third generation’ …of educationalists ‘characterised by a greater emphasis on the use of communication technologies to facilitate dialogue between the participants in the educational process and with the establishment of on-line learning communities” (Kirkup and Kirkwood, 2005:187). These ‘third generationalists’ see the potential for ICT to have an educational enabling potential, where ICT is a ‘useful tool’, a ‘powerful apparatus’ that provides a possibility ‘for changing the nature of the classroom and its traditional format’ (John and Baggott La Velle, 2004:316). In 2003 the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva produced a Common Vision of the Information Society which included in its first phase a ‘desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and people to achieve their full potential…’ It agreed nine key principles to ensure that everyone can benefit from the opportunities that ICT can:- • Improve access to information and communication infrastructure technologies as well as to information and knowledge • Build capacity • Increase confidence and security in the use of ICT’s • Create an enabling environment at all levels • Develop and widen ICT applications 1