Pamela McLean (BA, Cert Ed) lives in London. Her background is in teaching . Her special interests are how people can collaborate effectively through the Internet, and how ICT (Information and Communication Technology) alters our opportunites for learning and affects the roles of teachers and learners.

Collaboration and Life Long Learning

She believes we all need to be life long learners now, in order to keep up with our rapidly changing world -  so her interest in learning systems in the 21st century is relevant to all aspects of life, not just to "education". Her approach to online collaboration is to see collaborative projects as opportunites for shared learning - ie project based "learning by doing"- where the product and the process are both of importance..

Thanks to the OU

She graduated through the UK Open University which gave her a lasting love and appreciation of alternative approaches to educational opportunity. Even more importantly, it gave her the confidence and skills to be a self directed learner, making the most of the Internet. (She observes that all young chldren are obsessive self-directed learners - but most of us loose our confidence, or interest, along the way.)

Rural Nigeria

She has been connected with projects in rural Nigeria since 2000. Her involvement there began through a Nigerian friend Peter Adetunji Oyawale who was living in London and wanted help with a project "back home".This means her links tend to be people-to-people, rather than organisation-to organisation.

ICT in education

Her innovative work with ICT in education began back to the 1980s (under the name of Pamela Fiddy).  Her publications include a series of children's books for A & C Black "Computers at Work" co-authored with Dick Fox-Davies. Micro-Computers in Early Education co-authored with David Wharry - in the Longman Micro-guides series, the IT Poster Series and Teacher Guides sponsored by IBM and Techmedia. co-authored with Roz Plasted, and a regular column in Educational Computing. She was a contributing author and software designer for the Good Housekeeping Early Learning Software Series and was  active on the lecture circuit including presentations at the 1981 micro-computer show, CAL 81 and 83, Educational Computing Conference 1982, the International Conference on Children in an Information Age in 1985 and 1987 and many events organised by MUSE (Microcomputer Users in Secondary Education) and MAPE (Micros And Primary Education)

ICT for rural teachers in Africa

Her experience of computers in schools came to the fore again in 2004, when John Dada asked her to run an ICT training course for rural teachers (on one of her regular "working holidays" in Nigeria). This became the Teachers Talking project (with an annual online celebration). In 2007 she presented a Teachers Talking course in Kenya, through COL (the Commonwealth of Learning).

Dadamac

With hindsight Teachers Talking was the start of the collaboration that subsequently bacame Dadamac. Working closely with John in Nigeria made it possible for Pam to act as John's eyes and ears back in London; to speak for him in various situations, and in effect to act as a London office for his work in Nigeria. Doing a combination of online work based in the UK, and "field work" with John, established the communication channels, strategies and networks which Pamela  now shares with others through Dadamac.

Other interests

Her current interests are reflected on the dadamac website, through her postings to Dadamac's Posterous and on Twitter @pamela_mclean. Some of her previous interests and connections over recent years can be seen on an earlier personal blog LearnByDoing.