Thursday, April 15, 2010

Collaboration?




I still keep a few curriculum publications going. Earlier this year I did this on writing sci-fi stories, but the one above which Scholastic just brought out has a different history. It's based on my original ideas, developed at a primary school in Rotherham, but it's been updated by Pam Dowson. So it's only right and proper that it acknowledges the joint authorship. What does seem a bit strange though is that I've no idea who Pam is and, as far as I know we've never met! That's rather different from other things I've jointly and collaboratively written, which have involved lots and lots of discussion. I'm not complaining, I love collaboration but although this is clearly a joint enterprise I don't think it involved any real collaboration!

4 comments:

TC said...

Hello Guy - Pam Dowson here! You're right - it wasn't what you would normally call a collaboration, but I merely answered the call! I suppose I assumed you didn't want to/were unable to update the book yourself - maybe Scholastic are the people to ask about this one...

(Incidentally, I've been a primary teacher for nearly 30 years and now teach English and Professional Studies on the primary PGCE at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education)

Guy Merchant said...

Hi Pam, how lovely of you to leave a comment. Thank you. My post wasn't intended as a moan, in fact I love what you've done, I was just reflecting on the vagueness of the idea of collaboration!

I just felt I couldn't do it - it was time consuming and the invite came just after the death of my brother. I couldn't face it. So I gave Scholastic the go ahead to recruit someone else to the project. They chose well, and you've obviously put your experience to good use.

TC said...

Thanks for your response, and I'n glad yu think the update was OK. I now have to do something for them on what they're calling Media Literacy, so maybe I need to follow up some of your other posts!

Pam

Guy Merchant said...

Oh! I'm glad that's on their agenda. Good luck - do you know about the Media Literacy conference in the autumn?