The following are currently members of the group:

Dr Norbert Pachler (convenor) is a Reader in Education at the Institute of Education, University of London where he is the Co-Director of the Centre for Excellence in Work-based Learning for Education Professional. His research interests include foreign language pedagogy, teacher education and development, and new technologies in education and he has published widely in these fields. He is currently co-editor of the Language Learning Journal (Routledge), associate editor of the London Review of Education (Routledge) and editor of Reflecting Education (WLE Centre).

Dr Ben Bachmair is Professor of pedagogy, media education and instruction technology at the University of Kassel, Germany. His areas of specialism are: everyday life, media, mass communication and education, cultural historical analysis of mass communication and subjectivity, media literacy in everyday life, media and learning, media socialization and media reception, media education in Europe, protection of children from harmful media content. He led the German association of media education and has published widely in these fields.

Dr John Cook (PhD MSc BSc CEng MBCS CITP FHEA) is Professor of Technology Enhanced Learning and formerly Manager of the Reusable Learning Objects CETL at London Metropolitan University. He has published extensively in the area of e-learning, having a specific interest in four related areas: user generated contexts, mobile learning, ICT leadership and innovation, and informal learning. He sits on the Editorial Boards of Association for Learning Technology –Journal (ALT-J) and ‘Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development’. His review work for conference and journals is wide-ranging and includes various UK research councils and Government Departments, the Science Foundation of Ireland and the European Commission. He was Chair/President of the UK’s Association for Learning Technology (2004-06).

Gunther Kress is Professor of Semiotics and Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. Professor Kress' work addresses questions of meaning in their interrelations with social and cultural organisation. In his professional location, the focus of his work is on learning and on the necessary shape of curricula and forms of pedagogy in a globalising world. His conceptions around representation and communication include all the modes through which a culture represents itself and in which meanings are made, as well as the dominant media and their social effects. In this he has focused on the visual mode, for instance, as much as on language and literacy, within a broad, socially founded semiotics. His recent books include Multimodal Discourse, Before Writing: Rethinking Paths to Literacy, Literacy in the New Media Age, and Reading Images: The Grammar of Graphic Design.

Judith Seipold is an associate at the WLE Centre, IoE London, and a PhD student at the University of Kassel. Her current research is on mobile learning as agentive and meaningful activity in school and everyday life. Judith focuses on the transformation of informal contexts and their structures in terms of formal learning, by means of m-learning projects in school and the use of mobile phones and their applications in everyday life. Further on, her research interests are related to offer and use of children's television, protected pc use in elementary school and media literacy in everyday life.

Klaus Rummler is an academic and project manager and PhD student at the University of Kassel. His current research focus is on the 'At-risk learners'' use of mobile technology and the implications for media education in the perspective of Cultural Studies. Central questions are e.g. 'What are the patterns of mobile media usage of male adolescents from low socio-economic segments', 'What are the 'at-risk learners' specific strategies of successful meaning-making with mobile technology outside school'.

Elisabetta Adami is a PhD student in English Studies at the University of Verona and is currently doing a Special Research Programme at the Institute of Education, London. She is investigating the prompt-response relation in video-interaction on YouTube, with a focus on the multimodal patterns of regularity and variation in the semiotic practices and in the resources used for meaning making. Her interest is on how interactants attune and construct cohesion and topic-relatedness in the interaction, while maximally differentiating their contributions, in a genre where communication relies heavily on shared knowledge and is highly motivated by an understood challenge for differentiation.

Carl Smith (MA, PGDip) is a developer for the Reusable Learning Objects CETL at London Metropolitan University. His recent work has concentrated on exploiting the various ways that computer based modeling can be used in the design, construction and generation of RLOs (Reusable Learning Objects) and MLOs (Mobile Learning Objects). His primary research involves the investigation of these micro forms of learning from the point of view of their units of construction - to see across the whole range of constituent parts, schemas and key narratives involved in their successful development and application. His other research interests include visual literacy, pattern recognition and mixed reality. His previous projects include the Cistercians in Yorkshire Project, Palace of Darius, and Materialising Sheffield. He has previously worked at the Humanities Computing departments at Glasgow and Sheffield University. Further information about his work is available at: http://www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk/developers/smith/

Associate members

Claire Bradley is a Research Fellow at the Learning Technology Research Institute at London Metropolitan University. She has a Masters degree in Interactive Multimedia from The Royal College of Art. For the past 12 years she has worked on a number of UK and European research projects involved in eLearning, online communities, multimedia and in the general application and evaluation of digital technologies in teaching and learning. Her recent work focuses on mobile learning. She has co-authored a number of journal articles and papers in these areas.

Dr Theo Hug is Associate Professor of educational sciences at the University of Innsbruck and coordinator of the Innsbruck Media Studies research group (http://medien.uibk.ac.at). His areas of interest are media education and media literacy, e-education and microlearning, theory of knowledge and philosophy of science. He has published widely in these fields. In his recent work he is focussing on media generations, media communities, didactics of microlearning, and the interfaces of medialization, education and knowledge dynamics. He is also co-founder of the Yocomo mobile trainings systems (www.yocomo.at).

Christoph Pimmer is a research fellow at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland and a PhD Student at the University of Zürich. He has worked on several projects in the field of technology enhanced learning and mobile learning. His current research interest comprises work-based mobile learning with a particular focus on mobile learning in clinical settings.