Educational innovation, learning technologies and Virtual culture potential’

Learning technologies are regularly associated with innovative teaching but will they contribute to profound innovations in education itself? This paper addresses the question by building upon Merlin Donald's co‐evolutionary theory of mind, cognition and culture. He claimed that the invention of technologies for storing and sharing external symbol systems, such as writing, gave rise to a ‘theoretic culture’ with rich symbolic representations and a resultant need for formal education. More recently, Shaffer and Kaput have claimed that the development of external and shared symbol‐processing technologies is giving rise to an emerging ‘virtual culture’. They argue that mathematics curricula are grounded in theoretic culture and should change to meet the novel demands of ‘virtual culture’ for symbol‐processing and representational fluency. The generic character of their cultural claim is noted in this paper and it is suggested that equivalent pedagogic arguments are applicable across the educational spectrum. Hence, four general characteristics of virtual culture are proposed, against which applications of learning technologies can be evaluated for their innovative potential. Two illustrative uses of learning technologies are evaluated in terms of their ‘virtual culture potential’ and some anticipated questions about this approach are discussed towards the end of the paper

Social technologies for online learning: theoretical and contextual issues

Three exemplars are presented of social technologies deployed in educational contexts: wikis; a photo-sharing environment; and a social bookmarking tool. Students were found to engage with the technologies selectively, sometimes rejecting them, in the light of their prior conceptions of education. Some students (a minority in all the studies) were unsympathetic to the educational philosophy underpinning the technology’s adoption. The paper demonstrates, through an examination of in-context use, the importance of socio-cultural factors in relation to education, and the non-deterministic nature of educational technology. The academic study of technology has increasingly called into question the deterministic views which are so pervasive in popular discourse and among policy makers. Instead, socio-cultural factors play a crucial role in shaping and defining technology and educational technology is no exception, as the examples in the paper show. The paper concludes by drawing out some implications of the examples for the use of social technologies in education

Harmony and Technology Enhanced Learning

New technologies offer rich opportunities to support education in harmony. In this chapter we consider theoretical perspectives and underlying principles behind technologies for learning and teaching harmony. Such perspectives help in matching existing and future technologies to educational purposes, and to inspire the creative re-appropriation of technologies

Educational Technologies. Analysis of Master dissertations carried out in Portugal

Acknowledging the importance scientific research may have in terms of the foundation, orientation and evaluation of the use of technologies in an educational context, it is only natural that there should also be greater knowledge on the research carried out in this particular field. This is what we set out to achieve in a recent conference held in Portugal on the theme Research in Education (1). Using the theme of the conference itself – Research in Education between 1960 and 2005 – as our basis, we decided to focus on what has actually been the object of research in our country within the framework of Educational Technology. We realised, at a very early stage, that there were hardly any studies in this field before Portuguese universities took on a more active role, nor in the field of educational technologies, particularly after the appearance of the first Masters courses at the University of Minho in 1987. Even though we are not aware of any in-depth study to characterise scientific research developed in Portugal in this area, several Portuguese authors have referred to this issue in some way or another (Abrantes, 1981, 1998; Blanco & Silva, 1993; Caldas, 2001; Fernandes, 1969;Ponte, 1994; Silva, 2000). On the other hand, since we have stated that a considerable part of research, in this particular field, focuses precisely on this academic qualification, we have decided to construct our analysis around this aspect. Therefore, in this article we present the result of the studies on Masters dissertations carried out in Portugal, with a view to furthering understanding of the studied themes, their theoretical and methodological frameworks, and to finding out where they are carried out, who does the research, what the collection techniques are and the type of data analysis used, just to mention some of the aspects around which our analysis is centred. This is an exploratory analysis within a restricted context, however, we hope that it may contribute to the acquisition of more profound knowledge regarding research practices in this specific field of Educational Sciences in Portugal

Semantic web learning technology design: addressing pedagogical challenges and precarious futures

Semantic web technologies have the potential to extend and transform teaching and learning, particularly in those educational settings in which learners are encouraged to engage with ‘authentic’ data from multiple sources. In the course of the ‘Ensemble’ project, teachers and learners in different disciplinary contexts in UK Higher Education worked with educational researchers and technologists to explore the potential of such technologies through participatory design and rapid prototyping. These activities exposed some of the barriers to the development and adoption of emergent learning technologies, but also highlighted the wide range of factors, not all of them technological or pedagogical, that might contribute to enthusiasm for and adoption of such technologies. This suggests that the scope and purpose of research and design activities may need to be broadened and the paper concludes with a discussion of how the tradition of operaismo or ‘workers’ enquiry’ may help to frame such activities. This is particularly relevant in a period when the both educational institutions and the working environments for which learners are being prepared are becoming increasingly fractured, and some measure of ‘precarity’ is increasingly the norm

What are the affordances of information and communication technologies?

The paper examines the notion that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have affordances that epitomize the features of our late modern age (Giddens, 1991) and explores whether these affordances (Salomon, 1993, p. 51) can be used to facilitate particular approaches to educational practice. It argues that a clear articulation of these affordances would enable us to understand how these technologies can be most effectively used to support learning and teaching. We believe that any one affordance can be considered to have both positive and negative connotations and the paper draws on social and educational theory to provide an initial taxonomy of these affordances

AISR Connections, Fall 2011 (2011-2012 Orientation Issue)

Yearly publication of AISR Connections for 2011-2012. Issue includes: FACT Program Incorporates iPads Classroom Technologies & Videoconferencing Jefferson Digital Commons Posts Half Million Downloads The mission of Academic & Instructional Support & Resources (AISR) is to strengthen the educational, research and clinical activities of the Jefferson community by providing knowledge-based information, developing and managing instructional technologies and content, supporting and managing campus classroom technologies, and providing leadership in scholarly communication and publishing

Policies and People: A Review of Neoliberalism and Educational Technologies in P-12 Education Research

Accountability regimes, value added, vouchers—it is difficult to ignore the evidence of market-based rationalities in global discourses around education. Such rationalities rely heavily on Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) for their propagation and maintenance under the guise of educational technologies, or ed-tech. The purpose of this literature review is to examine educational research focused on the role ICTs have played in the neoliberalization of education across the globe. The author contends that future inquiry needs to substantiate the broad claims about the pernicious effects of neoliberalized educational technologies by engaging more directly with those most affected: teachers and students