Educational use cases from a shared exploration of e-books and iPads

E-books and e-book readers are becoming increasingly widely available, particularly for the general reader, and there have been many studies on their adoption. However, less is known about their use for educational and academic purposes. We report here on work carried out on e-books and e-book applications using iPads by academic and teaching staff. After considering pedagogical issues and reporting survey results, we identify a spiral of six key use case areas for e-books. This spiral of use cases moves from basic e-book use, through situational reading, e-books and learning, using multiple learning resources, collaborative/group learning, to e-book production. We discuss each of these use case areas and provide guidelines that will be of interest to practitioners and researchers alike

iPad use in fieldwork: formal and informal use to enhance pedagogical practice in a bring your own technology world

We report on use of iPads (and other IOS devices) for student fieldwork use and as electronic field notebooks and to promote active. We have used questionnaires and interviews of tutors and students to elicit their views and technology and iPad use for fieldwork. There is some reluctance for academic staff to relinquish paper notebooks for iPad use, whether in the classroom or on fieldwork, as well as use them for observational and measurement purposes. Students too are largely unaware of the potential of iPads for enhancing fieldwork. Apps can be configured for a wide variety of specific uses that make iPads useful for educational as well as social uses. Such abilities should be used to enhance existing practice as well as make new functionality. For example, for disabled students who find it difficult to use conventional note taking. iPads can be used to develop student self-directed learning and for group contributions. The technology becomes part of the students’ personal learning environments as well as at the heart of their knowledge spaces – academic and social. This blurring of boundaries is due to iPads’ usability to cultivate field use, instruction, assessment and feedback processes. iPads can become field microscopes and entries to citizen science and we see the iPad as the main ‘computing’ device for students in the near future. As part of the Bring Your Own Technology/Device (BYOD) the iPad has much to offer although, both staff and students need to be guided in the most effective use for self-directed education via development of Personal Learning Environments. A more student-oriented pedagogy is suggested to correspond to the increasing use of tablet technologies by student

JuxtaLearn D3.2 Performance Framework

This deliverable, D3.2, for Work Package 3 incorporating the pedagogy from WP2 and orchestration factors mapped in D3.1 reviews aspects of performance in the context of participative video making. It reviews literature on curiosity and engagement characteristics of interaction mechanisms for public displays and anticipates requirements for social network analysis of relevant public videos from WP6 task 6.3. Thus, to support JuxtaLearn performance it proposes a reflective performance framework that encompasses the material environment and objects required, the participants, and the knowledge needed

EVALUATION OF EDUCATIONAL MOBILE APPS FOR TURKISH PRESCHOOLERS FROM GOOGLE PLAY STORE

There are many mobile applications (apps) for learning in Google Play Store. People usually evaluate the apps based on their personal view/criteria, and others have an idea about that app with its rating score and/or user comments. This study, aims to analyze the educational mobile apps objectively by using a reliable rubric tool; REVEAC (Rubric for the EValuation of Educational Apps for preschool Children). This is a descriptive research based on content analysis method. The mobile apps were selected in this study based on their following characteristics: belonging to educational category for children five years old and under; being free, trial or freemium; and having Turkish content. Android apps were selected because of its commonly usage in worldwide. The selected 44 apps have scores from 2.9 to 5 according to Google’s five-star rating system. The selected mobile apps had medium level of rubric scores. The rubric scores ranged from 29 to 66 points with a mean of 43.20 ± 7.89. There was no statistically significant correlation between rubric scores and a) Google Play scores; b) the number of people who voted for the mobile app, and c) how many times the mobile app downloaded. The 39 apps could be categorized as games, and five apps were interactive e-books. The most popular five contents of the apps were; animals, numbers, colors, fruits and vegetables, and shapes. Almost all of the apps were promoting learning through repetitive practices. The study also presented additional notes for the apps in terms of four domain; educational content, design, functionality, and technical characteristics.   Article visualizations

Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning

‘Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning’ presents a range of research projects which aim to explore how to make engagement in learning (and teaching) more passionate. This interactive and experimental resource discusses innovations which pave the way to open collaboration at scale. The book introduces methodological and technological breakthroughs via twelve chapters to learners, instructors, and decision-makers in schools, universities, and workplaces. The Open University's Knowledge Media Institute and the EU TELMap project have brought together the luminaries from the European research area to showcase their vision of the future of learning with technology via their recent research project work. The projects discussed range widely over the Technology Enhanced Learning area from: environments for responsive open learning, work-based reflection, work-based social creativity, serious games and many more

ALT-C 2012 Abstracts

This is a PDF of the abstracts for all the sessions at the 2012 ALT conference. It is designed to be used alongside the online version of the conference programme. It was made public on 7 September 2012

Using ODL and ICT to develop the skills of the unreached: a contribution to the ADEA triennial of the Working Group on Distance Education and Open Learning

Innovation in technology is occurring at rapid pace thus shrinking the distances and making information and knowledge more than ever accessible to everyone irrespective of where the person resides. This paper consists of four main articles. The first one deals with technological trends. The second one focuses on the deployment and use of open and distance education mode in rural areas by documenting initiatives that embrace information and communication technologies (ICTs). Due to challenges faced in rural areas only a few success stories/cases currently exist and some of these are cited in this article. The challenges faced in the deployment of ICT enhanced ODL have been highlighted as well as the potential of developing and delivering effective and relevant ODL programmes in rural areas in order to ensure that issues of educational equity and social exclusion rural communities are adequately addressed. ICTs in ODL are perhaps the greatest tool to date for self-education and value addition to any community’s development efforts, yet poor rural communities particularly in Africa do not have the necessary awareness, skills or facilities to enable themselves to develop using ICTs. Inadequate ICT infrastructures in rural areas remain a major source for the digital divide in Africa and for under-performance of distance learners. The third one analyses the support provided to ODL learners who often encounter difficulties in completing their studies through the distance education mode due to loneliness, uncertainties and de-motivation. ICT has not been able to sufficiently support distance learners in overcoming those obstacles efficiently. An investigation regarding those learning supports has been conducted in ten distance learning institutions, along with an intensive literature review with the aim of understanding the high percentage of dropout rates of distant learners. The learners’ interactions have been scrutinized through content analysis of their synchronous exchanges, during a completely online course. After taking into account the limited technical and human resources in Africa, a technological virtual environment along with a pedagogical framework has been proposed with the aim of giving adequate educational support to them. The fourth article has explored The Open University (UK) and its efforts to use new technologies to deliver online courses to difficult-to- reach learners in prison environments. The case study analysed here is an international course (called, B201- Business Organisations and their environments) which also touches an African cohort of learners. The implications for designing and delivering online ODL to the complex unreachable environments of prisons anywhere, and particularly in Africa, have been discussed

Rethinking Pedagogy: Exploring the Potential of Digital Technology in Achieving Quality Education

(First Paragraph) The Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) is UNESCO’s Category 1 education Institute in the Asia-Pacific region devoted to education for peace and sustainable development, as enshrined in SDG Target 4.7. UNESCO MGIEP promotes the use of digital learning platforms where teachers and students can co-create and share a highly interactive learning experience. With the rise of the internet, there has been a proliferation of online content and digital resources intended to support teaching and learning, albeit widely varying in quality. Digital education media and resources, if carefully designed and implemented, have a significant potential to be mobilized on a massive scale to support transformative learning for building sustainable, flourishing societies

The Effect of eBook Reading on Overall Literacy Development

This study examined the effect of eBook reading, in contrast to traditional print reading, on developing overall literacy in lower elementary school students. It focused on student motivation, phoneme awareness, word recognition, and comprehension as they pertain to student achievement. This research study is important since it investigated a unique way to implement technology to assist both early and struggling readers. The study was designed to examine the effect of using an eBook application (Raz-Kids) instead of the traditional reading curriculum to engage the students through the interactive activities. The study involved 106 lower elementary school students in a private, Christian school with 96 students completing all assessments required for the quasi-experimental static-group comparison research design. This research study used the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey and the STAR Reading Enterprise assessment to evaluate student progress after incorporating the Raz-Kids application into their current reading program for a six-week period. A MANOVA was used to analyze all of the research data pertaining to motivation to read as it pertained to academic and recreational reading, phoneme awareness, word recognition, and student comprehension. The analysis indicated that there was not a statistically significant difference between the scores of students who participated in the treatment group and those in the control group. Data was collected through these assessments and analyzed using SPSS statistical software