December 6, 2005 Calibre of Hatter Technology Seminar participants impresses World ORT president World ORT President Sir Maurice Hatter has been impressed by the quality of the participants in this years World ORT Hatter Technology Seminar. The week-long Seminar, which attracted 16 ORT teachers from Argentina, Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine, France, Israel and South Africa, was the fourth annual gathering of ORTs international educational talent to be held at ORT House, London. Sir Maurice, the Chairman and owner of IMO Precision Controls Ltd, which supplies electro-mechanical components to industries in 140 countries, has funded the Hatter Technology Seminar since its inception. The Seminar provides us with an opportunity to ensure that ORT remains a world leader in the teaching of technology, a subject which is very dear to my heart, he said. I have been very impressed by the outstanding intelligence of the participants. Its been a pleasure to meet them and to hear first hand their views on the teaching of this subject in our schools. And I have been thrilled to see what a pool of talent we have in ORT schools and how skilled our teachers are in bringing out the best in their students, making our schools some of the finest in the world. Hatter Technology Seminar participants at work. The theme of this years Seminar was Assessing Creativity in Technology Education and took in issues such as the assessment of design innovation, the formulation of consensus regarding assessment standards, assessment criteria and gender differentiation in technology classes and the use of assessment as a tool to make decisions in teaching and learning. Among the aims of this Seminar, said World ORTs Research and Development Coordinator, Dr Osnat Dagan, were the sharing of knowledge about the use of assessment in technology education in general and in assessing creativity in ORT schools internationally, increasing participants knowledge of assessment methods, and fostering students design capabilities. Sir Maurice Hatter (seated, centre) with Seminar participants. This years seminar featured presentations by two experts from Goldsmiths College, University of London: Professor Richard Kimbell, whose roles include being course tutor for the Colleges MA Technology in Education programme and for doctoral students, and Professor Kay Stables, whose research interests include the imaging, modelling and metacognitive aspects of childrens designing. The professors presented material they had developed as part of a British government-funded research project assessing innovation in the context of design and technology in schools. Professor Stables demonstrated how activities could be created for young learners that enabled them to perform creatively and innovatively. Professor Kimbell showed how the work that results from these activities could be assessed. I produced some of the students work for the participants in the Seminar and, using a rubric that we developed, we could show them how they could get a very good indication of the quality of the design innovation in an objective way. Professor Kimbell, who has collaborated with ORT specialists in Israel and South Africa, paid tribute to the Hatter Technology Seminar. I was involved in last years Seminar as well, Professor Kimbell said. Its a brilliant concept. ORT is in an interesting position because it has people with parallel concerns operating in completely different educational systems. There is loads of potential for cross fertilisation of ideas. World ORT, founded in 1880, is the worlds largest Jewish educational and vocational training non-government organisation with some 270,000 students Jewish and non-Jewish in 58 countries.