What tools, media, resources, or environments are most supportive of learning in different contexts of learner and task?
Chip Bruce
(chip@uiuc.edu)
(ready to use)
Coauthors
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Heather Booth, hbooth@uiuc.edu |
ASK
Subject Areas
| Education, Educational Technology |
Grade Levels
| Preschool, Kinder, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, Vocational, Undergraduate, Continuing |
Unit Keywords
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learning, inquiry, technology, teaching, media, resources, environments, contexts |
Open Directory Category
Rationale of the Unit
The purpose of this unit is to help you develop better ways to find and analyze learning technologies that are most appropriate for a learner in your area of interest.
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Background and Resources
BACKGROUND
Each technology brings with certain affordances, which make some actions easier, and constraints, which make other actions more difficult. This is the "soft determinist" view of technology, articulated well by Raymond Williams:
Determination is a real social process, but never (as in some theological and some Marxist versions) as a wholly controlling, wholly predicting set of causes. On the contrary, the reality of determination is the setting of limits and the exertion of pressures, within which variable social practices are profoundly affected but never necessarily controlled. We have to think of determination not as a single force, or a single abstraction of forces, but as a process in which real determining factors - the distribution of power or of capital, social and physical inheritance, relations of scale and size between groups - set limits and exert pressures, but neither wholly control nor wholly predict the outcome of complex activity within or at these limits, and under or against these pressures' (Williams 1990, p. 130).
READINGS
Williams, Raymond (Ed.) (1990). Television: Technology and cultural form (2nd ed.). London: Routledge
See a video of Richard Lavoie talking about learning disability, which illustrates dramatically how different leraning styles affect one's learning and performance.
One framework you might find useful is a technology taxonomy that attempts to shift the focus from technical features to pedagogical goals:
Bruce, Bertram C., and Levin, James A. (1997). Educational technology: Media for inquiry, communication, construction, and expression.
See also a realaudio overview of the taxonomy.
And a sequel, Roles for new technologies in language arts: Inquiry, communication, construction, and expression.
WEBSITES
Office of Learning Technologies , a federal Canadian office established to help build a culture of lifelong learning, "to raise awareness of the opportunities, challenges and benefits of technology-based learning and to act as a catalyst for innovation in the area of technology-enabled learning and skills development."
International Society for Technology in Education , a nonprofit professional organization "dedicated to promoting appropriate uses of information technology to support and improve learning, teaching, and administration in K-12 education and teacher education."
Learning Technology , an online newsletter of the IEEE Computer Society
The International Journal of Educational Technology (IJET), a new international refereed journal in the field of educational technology.
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Activities and Open-ended problems
OUTSIDE ACTIVITIES
Investigate how information technology tools have been applied to enhance learning in an area you know well. Use web searches, educational software catalogs, sites on educational software, software outlets, etc. to locate these. For example, search on TuCows http://www.tucows.com/ for "learning." You may consider any of various media, e.g., video, the web, CD-ROMs, and standalone devices such as computer-based probes, graphing calculators, Lego/Logo, GPS, and videodisk. Also, see the references below.
Identify one approach that you feel has demonstrated success or strong promise. This could be a technology already present in your workplace which you haven't had the time to investigate thoroughly before. Evaluate this technology for ease-of-use and usefulness. If you find an evaluation checklist that you feel is particularly well-designed or relevant to this task, please share that information with your classmates. You don't have to use any formal checklist or taxonomy. The key thing is to be clear about what you see as the special strengths and limitations of the technology you have chosen.
OPEN ENDED PROBLEMS
Summarize your findings in writing (~1000 words), including tables, diagrams, photographs, etc, as appropriate. You may use any format you choose as a means to organize your comments. The analysis should show that you're able to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of different approaches. A possible structure would be,
- Rationale for the approach taken,
- Related efforts, including those using earlier technologies,
- Technologies employed here,
- Results of use,
- Strengths (affordances) and weaknesses (constraints),
- Future directions.
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Dialogues, Discussions, and Presentations
ONLINE DIALOGUES
Post your analysis on your ePortfolio in the resource area. Share what you learned with the class on the webboard, with a URL pointing to your summary. |
Credits & Acknowledgements
Network science a decade later: The internet and classroom learning. A multi-year NSF-funded study on how internet use supports science education in classrooms.
Linn, Marcia (forthcoming). Computers, teachers, peers. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Repositions technology from information source to learning partner with student and teacher. http://www.clp.berkeley.edu/
McKenzie, Jamie. From now on. A newsletter on internet-enhanced education.
Harvard Education Letter. The digital classroom . A collection of essays addressing critical issues in educational technology.
Healy, Jane. Faliure to connect. Healy reports on a multi-year investigation to study how technology can help or hinder education.
Means, B. (1994). Technology and education reform: The reality behind the promise. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Nickerson, R. S., |
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