Affective issues in learning technologies: emotional responses to technology and technology's role in supporting socio-emotional skills

This paper focuses on some of the author's research studies over the past thirty years and places these in a wider context to reflect on research into affective issues in learning technologies over this period, and to consider whether and how the issues uncovered by research have changed as technologies have developed over time. Three issues are given particular attention: firstly the reasons for learners' use or lack of use of technologies for their learning; secondly adult learners' attitudes towards using technology for learning and thirdly how technology might support socio-emotional development and expression in children. The discussion of these issues is framed by two of the author's research projects. For the first two issues this is an early study of students' perceptions and attitudes towards using computers for tutorial learning in 1980. The factors that influenced the students' use of the computer tutorials are discussed (including access, assessment and anxiety about using computers) and also the extent to which some of these factors persist for many learners using (or not using) technologies today. The discussion of the third issue draws on a series of studies conducted in the 1990s to investigate whether educational technology could support children and young people's emotional expression and communication and development of socio-emotional skills. Finally the paper considers how these kinds of issues have been taken forward and how they are represented in contemporary research and suggests that trust is an important factor in using learning technologies

Affective issues in learning technologies: emotional responses to technology and technology's role in supporting socio-emotional skills

This paper focuses on some of the author's research studies over the past thirty years and places these in a wider context to reflect on research into affective issues in learning technologies over this period, and to consider whether and how the issues uncovered by research have changed as technologies have developed over time. Three issues are given particular attention: firstly the reasons for learners' use or lack of use of technologies for their learning; secondly adult learners' attitudes towards using technology for learning and thirdly how technology might support socio-emotional development and expression in children. The discussion of these issues is framed by two of the author's research projects. For the first two issues this is an early study of students' perceptions and attitudes towards using computers for tutorial learning in 1980. The factors that influenced the students' use of the computer tutorials are discussed (including access, assessment and anxiety about using computers) and also the extent to which some of these factors persist for many learners using (or not using) technologies today. The discussion of the third issue draws on a series of studies conducted in the 1990s to investigate whether educational technology could support children and young people's emotional expression and communication and development of socio-emotional skills. Finally the paper considers how these kinds of issues have been taken forward and how they are represented in contemporary research and suggests that trust is an important factor in using learning technologies

Workshop on NASA workstation technology

RIACS hosted a workshop which was designed to foster communication among those people within NASA working on workstation related technology, to share technology, and to learn about new developments and futures in the larger university and industrial workstation communities. Herein, the workshop is documented along with its conclusions. It was learned that there is both a large amount of commonality of requirements and a wide variation in the modernness of in-use technology among the represented NASA centers

Mobile Learning Revolution: Implications for Language Pedagogy

Mobile technologies including cell phones and tablets are a pervasive feature of everyday life with potential impact on teaching and learning. “Mobile pedagogy” may seem like a contradiction in terms, since mobile learning often takes place physically beyond the teacher's reach, outside the walls of the classroom. While pedagogy implies careful planning, mobility exposes learners to the unexpected. A thoughtful pedagogical response to this reality involves new conceptualizations of what is to be learned and new activity designs. This approach recognizes that learners may act in more self-determined ways beyond the classroom walls, where online interactions and mobile encounters influence their target language communication needs and interests. The chapter sets out a range of opportunities for out-of-class mobile language learning that give learners an active role and promote communication. It then considers the implications of these developments for language content and curricula and the evolving roles and competences of teachers

Towards new information resources for public health: From WordNet to MedicalWordNet

In the last two decades, WORDNET has evolved as the most comprehensive computational lexicon of general English. In this article, we discuss its potential for supporting the creation of an entirely new kind of information resource for public health, viz. MEDICAL WORDNET. This resource is not to be conceived merely as a lexical extension of the original WORDNET to medical terminology; indeed, there is already a considerable degree of overlap between WORDNET and the vocabulary of medicine. Instead, we propose a new type of repository, consisting of three large collections of (1) medically relevant word forms, structured along the lines of the existing Princeton WORDNET; (2) medically validated propositions, referred to here as medical facts, which will constitute what we shall call MEDICAL FACTNET; and (3) propositions reflecting laypersons’ medical beliefs, which will constitute what we shall call the MEDICAL BELIEFNET. We introduce a methodology for setting up the MEDICAL WORDNET. We then turn to the discussion of research challenges that have to be met in order to build this new type of information resource

Is there language teaching after global English?

This study documents a case of language education decline, and the role that distance-teaching expertise, allied with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) experience, can play in alleviating the problem. In the United Kingdom a number of factors have led to a crisis in the teaching and learning of European Languages Other Than English (ELOTE). One of the main determiners is the dominance of English as a lingua franca for Continental Western European countries, and another the political reluctance of the part of British governments to engage fully with the European Union. In the country where English is the mother tongue, the position of ELOTE is particularly critical. After quantifying the decline in demand for these languages, I will look at different ways in which language-teaching professionals have attempted to fight back, and I will focus on the benefits that may be derived from a strategy that combines ICT capacity with distance-learning methodologies, using the UK Open University (UKOU) as an example. The lessons drawn by that institution in different discipline areas over two decades will be applied to languages

The discourse of Olympic security 2012 : London 2012

This paper uses a combination of CDA and CL to investigate the discursive realization of the security operation for the 2012 London Olympic Games. Drawing on Didier Bigo’s (2008) conceptualisation of the ‘banopticon’, it address two questions: what distinctive linguistic features are used in documents relating to security for London 2012; and, how is Olympic security realized as a discursive practice in these documents? Findings suggest that the documents indeed realized key banoptic features of the banopticon: exceptionalism, exclusion and prediction, as well as what we call ‘pedagogisation’. Claims were made for the exceptional scale of the Olympic events; predictive technologies were proposed to assess the threat from terrorism; and documentary evidence suggests that access to Olympic venues was being constituted to resemble transit through national boundarie

Beyond Orality and Literacy: Letters and Organizational Communication

We draw on communication theories to study organizational communication from a literacy perspective. We suggest that the current debate over the capability of new media to foster the sharing and development of ideas and allow the expression of emotions, which presupposes face-to-face communication as the ideal form of communication, disappears once we switch the focus from the medium to the modality – written versus oral communication. An analysis of personal and organizational letters illustrates the role played by written communication throughout human history, in exchanging ideas and supporting emotionalOrality and Literacy; Online Interactions; Communicative Practices; Letters; Organizational Communication

Narrative vignettes and online enquiry in researching therapist accounts of practice with children in schools : an analysis of the methodology

This article reviews a research methodology which uses a qualitative, narrative approach to online, in-depth analysis of vignettes. The research sought to investigate the ways in which dramatherapists, based in different countries, understood the nature of therapeutic change in their work with children. The article describes the approach to the generation of data through the internet by a combination of vignettes, aMSN messenger and email. It reports on the approach taken to the analysis of data with samples from the findings. Participants kept a diary of their response to the research and the article draws on this within its analysis of the methodology