The Impact of ICT on Adolescents' Perceptions and Consumption of Substances

This paper reports the results of a three-month randomized controlled trial to estimate the impact of an Internet and mobile telephone short message service (SMS) intervention on adolescents’ information about substances and rates of consumption. A low percentage of participants logged on to the Web platform, but most participants were reached through e-mails and SMS. It is found that the intervention was able to affect awareness that certain substances are drugs, but no significant changes in consumption habits were found.Randomized trial, Drugs, Smoking, Alcohol

Using technology in service delivery to families, children and young people

This paper provides an overview of how the innovative use of technology can add value to service delivery in organisations working with families, children and young people.Key messages:Most Australians have access to the Internet and use mobile devices to connect from anywhere, at any time. Research suggests that even isolated and marginalised groups are using technology in their everyday lives.For some groups (e.g., young people), technology may be their preferred method of communication.There appears to be a difference between how people are using the Internet (regularly, from anywhere, connecting with social networks, investigating services) and how some organisations are engaging with it (infrequently, in one direction).Technology works best when used to augment or improve existing services for clients, or to offer innovative approaches to existing services.Technology can be used in diverse ways for organisational improvement (e.g., remote access, staff training, professional development) or client services (e.g., online counselling, SMS appointment reminders, access to resources).Using technology does not necessarily involve large monetary investments or reinventing the wheel in terms of policy and procedures. Often it is a matter of adapting and refining existing services and policies to better suit the online world.Incorporating technology into services takes time, and will need continued assessment and refinement to be successful

Web 2.0 technologies for learning: the current landscape – opportunities, challenges and tensions

This is the first report from research commissioned by Becta into Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4. This report describes findings from an additional literature review of the then current landscape concerning learner use of Web 2.0 technologies and the implications for teachers, schools, local authorities and policy makers

How Digital Natives Learn and Thrive in the Digital Age: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students

Strategies for Supporting Student Learning Needs during the COVID Pandemic in Maine and Other States

This study seeks to identify and describe practices that emerged in Maine and elsewhere in the US during the pandemic to support PK-12 students’ learning needs (including academic, social-emotional and mental health needs) through the remote, online or hybrid modalities during this challenging period in education

Strategies for Supporting Student Learning Needs during the COVID Pandemic in Maine and Other States

Maine Educational Policy Research Institute (MEPRI) report based on a study of the strategies and challenges involved in supporting preK–12 students and teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Cyberspace back to the Classroom: Taking Lessons Learned from Teaching Street Law during the Pandemic Back to in-Person Instruction

In spring 2020, when schools around the world were compelled to close their physical doors, educators, administrators and students were forced to re-invent what it meant to teach and to learn. For fifty years, Street Law programs have been dedicated to hands-on, student centered, interactive teaching strategies. Law students, lawyers and teachers have devoted countless hours to creating fun, practical lessons designed to teach young people about practical law that affects their daily lives and also develop the skills they need to use their newly found legal knowledge to improve their lives and their communities. Remote learning upended all the best practices Street Law practitioners had spent half a century building. We had no choice but to adapt and so we did. Law students and Street Law professors re-imagined their programs. Some practitioners immediately converted their programs to distance learning. That fall, I wrote a practice report detailing the experiences of my law students teaching high school asynchronously in spring 2020 and synchronously during that summer and fall and asking whether it was possible to teach interactive Street Law lessons remotely. In that article, I included the best practices that we had developed for our programs in New York City. I wanted to know if practitioners in other parts of the United States and abroad were having similar experiences and results. This paper examines comprehensive reflections from eight law school-based Street Law programs teaching remotely during the pandemic. The reflections include which suggestions worked for them in practice and which ones did not. In addition, as we look to a return to in-person instruction in the fall of 2021, this paper will examine whether there is anything we have learned from emergency remote instruction that we may want to keep. Is it possible that some of our virtual teaching experiences will strengthen our return to the classroom

DemYouth: Co-Designing and Enacting Tools to Support Young People’s Engagement with People with Dementia

There is a growing body of research examining the role of technology in supporting the care of—and relationships surrounding—people with dementia, yet little attention has been given to how this relates to younger family members. We conducted a qualitative study based on a series of 6 codesign workshops conducted with 14 young people who had personal experience with dementia. Initially, our workshops focused on understanding the difficulties that young people face when engaging, interacting and being with people with dementia. Initial analysis of workshop data informed the design of three digital tool concepts that were used as the basis for user enactment workshops. Our findings highlight the young people's desire to be more involved in their family discussions around dementia and a need for them to find new ways to connect with their loved ones with dementia. We offer a set of design considerations for future systems that support these needs and reflect on some of the complexities we faced around engaging young people in this difficult topic of discussion

Changing Social Learning Theory Through Reliance on the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence

This paper examines the trend in the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and related computer-mediated teaching and learning. Implications for social learning theory are examined based on the concept of “cyborg” education through a variety of scholarly and popular media sources with implications for schools and teacher educators. Recommendations for teacher education are posited as the topic of technological mediation between people continues to change in relation to how education will likely need to adapt to provide a prosocial environment through technological mediation, though the social learning itself operates in different ways