Angela McFarlane
Research Interests
ICT in Education, learners, learning and new technologies, e-Learning and the educational use of games software
Biography
Professor of Education & Director of Learning Technology at the University of Bristol since October 2000, previously Director of the Centre for Research in Educational ICT, Homerton College, Cambridge, and Director for Evidence and Practice, Becta.
Angela McFarlane has designed and directed a number of highly successful educational software development projects.Content has included science, language and health education and the resulting interactive resources all became commercially successful products.
The latest of these – CommuniCAT – won a European Educational Software Award.A series of multimedia activities for young learners based on popular games software metaphors has found markets on three continents including South East Asia. In contrast, her development work has included a web-based tutorial system for post-registration nurses relating to research methods.
Angela's research has addressed the role of digital technologies in education, and has included work with national evaluation projects in the UK, and an international review with the OECD.
She is an experienced writer and lecturer.Santillana, the major Spanish educational publisher, invited Prof McFarlane to present their 2001 annual lecture, and have created a collection of her work translated into Spanish to mark this event. She has given public lectures at national events in the UK and beyond, including the BETT exhibition keynote and the Barcelona City Education lecture.
Angela regularly contributes to international conferences and edited a special issue of Assessment in Education on Assessment for the Digital Age in November 2003. Other recent work includes a review of computer games and learning for Nesta Futurelab with John Kirriemuir.
Angela has been a school science teacher, and worked for the government agency for educational technology. In between she ran a self-funding R&D unit in Cambridge, returning to Bristol in 2000. Her edited book – ICT and Authentic Learning, has become a key text in teacher education in the UK and beyond.
