Who we are
As technology became more widely integrated in educational systems during the last decade, a greater demand for dedicated support arose with teachers and this initiated the birth of ICTO social sciences in 2005. UvA also saw the great potential of technology for educational purposes and assigned ICTO the task of promoting it in its education.
ICTO is an abbreviation for ICT (Information and communication technology) in het onderwijs, which means education in Dutch. Our team currently consists of six student assistants, each supporting a different section of social sciences, and one team leader.
Nynke [team leader]
I am a political scientist with my roots in New York city, heart in the tropics and living with my two sons in Amsterdam. From developing an e-learning platform in the 1990’s to online capacity building and knowledge sharing amongst international professionals in the first decade of the Millenium, I have now landed within Amsterdam academia, the faculty of Social Sciences at the UvA, still focusing on using technology to facilitate learning and knowledge sharing.
Maarten [Interdisciplinary Social Sciences]
My name is Maarten Remijn and I’m in my third and last year of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (ASW). In the summer of 2010 I have joined the ICTO team and I will specialize in Evasys in order succeed Juan Carlos, who will be abroad for several months. I will be supporting ASW in particular and I will also be working on masterclasses to help teachers to use concrete ICT tools. Of course I will also be widely employable in order to support the education successfully.
Marcel [Political Science]
I joined the ICTO family as a student-assistant for Arjan Sas in 2008, who was then the temporary team leader for the ICTO team. Ever since that day I have been the contact person for Political Sciences. Other than the regular responsibilities like Blackboard, filming and such I am responsible for the web classes that we run. I am currently working on my bachelor in Sociology.
Pepijn [Sociology]
I’ve been filming lectures since September 2007 with my mate, Marcel, for the first year sociology students. In December 2007 I was able to join the ICTO team formally, and so I did. Other than the usual stuff (like Blackboard) I am heavily invested into the lecture filming process. My love for videolectures started in 2006, when I discovered that video.google.com hosted a wealth of riveting lectures from world famous speakers. Right now videolectures within the university are mainly a service offered to students to help them with exam preparation and such, but my ultimate dream is to release (part of) these videos into the wilds, so that the public – who ultimately finance the work of academics – can profit from the knowledge produced in the university.
Titus [Human Geography, Planning and International Development]
Since May 2010 I am part of the ICTO team social sciences. My special interest go out to Web applications, usage, fixing and building like Content Management Systems and other tools that can be in support of education and knowledge sharing. I prefer the usage of open source software as an IT specialist and from a moral or ideological perspective. The last four years I have worked in the IT department of a public library. Last but not least I am the contact person for the Human Geography, Planning and International Development department (GPIO) and study Political Sciences since 2004.
Former Employees:
Bart [Anthropology]
Bart has been part of the ICTO team as of October 2007. At that time he still was an undergraduate student in Political Science at the UvA. As he finished this programme, he started a Master’s programme in Public Administration at the Leiden University. This in turn was followed by a Master’s programme in Business Studies at the UvA, which he is currently finishing writing his thesis.
Bart now works for KLM.
Elgin [Graduate School of Social Sciences]
Since March 2009 I am part of the ICTO team social sciences where I function as designer, web builder, fixer and supporter for the Graduate School of Social Sciences. I am currently writing a thesis on hacker communities and I hope to finish my master’s in Sociology quite soon.
Elgin is now teamleader of ICT in education and research of Communication Science at the Univeristy of Amsterdam.
