How to teach digital reading?

This paper offers a discussion of the knowledge, skills, and awareness involved in digital reading. Reading, in this paper, is used in the broader sense to include deriving meaning from media on a digital screen. This paper synthesises key ideas from existing studies and presents a taxonomy for the teaching of digital reading. The taxonomy includes the development of: 1) the knowledge of linear and deep reading strategies; 2) basic and critical information skills; and 3) a multimodal semiotic awareness. The goal of this paper is to unpack the specific knowledge and skills for digital reading which will support educators, including classroom teachers and librarians, on the aspects to pay attention to as students engage in digital reading. This paper argues that, in addition to equipping students with the knowledge of reading strategies and information skills, an awareness of how the various semiotic modes make meaning is fundamental to effective digital reading

Share - Publish - Store - Preserve. Methodologies, Tools and Challenges for 3D Use in Social Sciences and Humanities

Through this White Paper, which gathers contributions from experts of 3D data as well as professionals concerned with the interoperability and sustainability of 3D research data, the PARTHENOS project aims at highlighting some of the current issues they have to face, with possible specific points according to the discipline, and potential practices and methodologies to deal with these issues. During the workshop, several tools to deal with these issues have been introduced and confronted with the participants experiences, this White Paper now intends to go further by also integrating participants feedbacks and suggestions of potential improvements. Therefore, even if the focus is put on specific tools, the main goal is to contribute to the development of standardized good practices related to the sharing, publication, storage and long-term preservation of 3D data

Improving Hybrid Brainstorming Outcomes with Scripting and Group Awareness Support

Previous research has shown that hybrid brainstorming, which combines individual and group methods, generates more ideas than either approach alone. However, the quality of these ideas remains similar across different methods. This study, guided by the dual-pathway to creativity model, tested two computer-supported scaffolds – scripting and group awareness support – for enhancing idea quality in hybrid brainstorming. 94 higher education students,grouped into triads, were tasked with generating ideas in three conditions. The Control condition used standard hybrid brainstorming without extra support. In the Experimental 1 condition, students received scripting support during individual brainstorming, and students in the Experimental 2 condition were provided with group awareness support during the group phase in addition. While the quantity of ideas was similar across all conditions, the Experimental 2 condition produced ideas of higher quality, and the Experimental 1 condition also showed improved idea quality in the individual phase compared to the Control condition

Digital technologies in support of students learning in Higher Education: literature review

Digital technologies are an integral part of Higher Education teaching, revealing a set of technologies chosen to integrate formal learning contexts, and therefore being used by students in support of learning. This paper presents a literature review mapping the digital technologies set for higher education students to use in formal education contexts, over the last five years between 2012 and 2017. Results show a pattern of technologies reflecting teacher’s choice for methods combining face-to-face and at distance learning, frequently in relation to the adoption of flipped classroom methods. Mapping the digital technologies used by students, showed a pattern of three most used in a total of nine types identified. Institutional Learning Management Systems mainly support a wider access to information and learning materials, followed by technologies that promote publishing and sharing content related to class activities, and a broad range of technologies categorized under ICTs. The overall impact of use of technologies in students learning process and outcomes revealed to be positive, used with the intention to promote students’ active engagement and participation in the learning process inside and outside the classroom walls. The data also revealed digital technologies to support more transmissive ways of teaching, facilitating students individually to Access, share and publish information, and significantly lesser used to promote collaborative and cooperative learning

The impact of technology: value-added classroom practice: final report

This report extends Becta’s enquiries into the ways in which digital technologies are supporting learning. It looks in detail at the learning practices mediated by ICT in nine secondary schools in which ICT for learning is well embedded. The project proposes a broader perspective on the notion of ‘impact’ that is rather different from a number of previous studies investigating impact. Previous studies have been limited in that they have either focused on a single innovation or have reported on institutional level factors. However, in both cases this pays insufficient attention to the contexts of learning. In this project, the focus has been on the learning practices of the classroom and the contexts of ICT-supported learning. The study reports an analysis of 85 lesson logs, in which teachers recorded their use of space, digital technology and student outcomes in relation to student engagement and learning. The teachers who filled in the logs, as well as their schools’ senior managers, were interviewed as part of a ‘deep audit’ of ICT provision conducted over two days. One-hour follow-up interviews with the teachers were carried out after the teachers’ log activity. The aim of this was to obtain a broader contextualisation of their teaching

User-Generated Tagging and Segmentation of Video Records of Practice: A Tool for Meaning-Marking.

The field of teacher education is consciously shifting its focus to be more “practice-oriented” and increasingly using video as a way of examining teaching practice. However, questions remain about how educators make sense of video and what types of tools and supports are needed. This exploratory study examines the potential of user-generated segmenting and tagging of videos of teaching practice as a tool for marking what educators find salient about teaching and the language they use to describe those phenomena. Data was collected in a teacher education program where video was used extensively for the purposes of learning about and improving teaching practice. There were two participant groups: pre-service teachers (n=6) and teacher educators/educational researchers (n=8). Each participant watched the same 8-minute video of practice and applied segments and tags to the video. The data included segments and tags created by each participant, interviews, and questionnaires; themes in the data were uncovered using content analysis. Interview data was used to interpret participants’ meaning in order to accurately categorize the tags. Using tag gardening strategies, hierarchal and networked tagging language was visualized. Findings indicate that user-generated segment and tag data of video records of practice can provide insight into what participants pay attention to and the language they use to describe that meaning making. This study uncovered three tensions that influenced participants’ segmenting and tagging behavior: findability versus nuance, concerns with being critical, and the need for a social context and community of practice. Educators’ specific and unique needs, purposes, and culture directly affected what participants marked as salient and what tagging language they used, resulting in some misleading segment and tag data. This work provides insights into the design of segmenting and tagging video tools and online communities of practice that support educators’ use of video. This research is particularly relevant to teacher education professionals and designers of tools that support educators’ use of video records of practice, laying the groundwork for further research on using and designing video annotation tools that support the work of teaching and aggregate data about how educators are making sense of videos of teaching.PHDEducational StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116765/1/jrsteine_1.pd

Mindful Assessment in Support of Student Learning.

This article takes a critical look at inherited assessment practices, and explores alternative, more mindful approaches. Rather than just measure student performance levels at the end of a unit, educative assessment should provide information that can actually help improve student performance. Mindful assessment is an embodied, affective, and cognitive experience that undergirds and celebrates the entire learning process. We propose and provide examples of dialectical evaluative practices that invite students into, guide students through, and take students beyond learning in the classroom in ways that honor their agency as whole persons