Enhancing Literacy Instruction through Technology

Technology has altered how children experience language. As technology has taken root in society, literacy skills have expanded beyond simply reading and writing print texts to include interacting with digital texts and media. To prepare students to operate in this digital environment, teachers should integrate technology into language arts instruction; however, many teachers feel unprepared to do so effectively. Additionally, some teachers hesitate to implement technology into language arts instruction as a tool because of its supposed negative effects on literacy. Despite beliefs about technology inhibiting reading and writing, teachers can utilize technology to enhance literacy instruction. The digital age has laid the foundation for new literacies, and teachers must build upon it

Mixing the Digital, Social, and Cultural: Learning, Identity, and Agency in Youth Participation

Part of the Volume on Youth, Identity, and Digital MediaHow do youth use media and technology as they learn to be participants in civic and democratic practices? We share two case studies -- one from a media arts production organization and one from a school board youth group -- that revolve around youth-adult interactions in learning environments that offer youth real opportunities to be influential in their respective communities. The cases feature youth and their involvements with digital media, pedagogical approaches, and engagements that enhance their participatory capacities. There are multiple channels through which these interactions happen, some with and facilitated by adults and others created and negotiated by youth. We describe how youth and adults establish learning environments for each other, negotiate the grounds for participation, and explore the possibilities and limitations of social and digital technologies in these processes, supporting the idea that this learning is something that young people do as agents in their development

Children’s digital practices: case studies of children viewing and representing with dgital text

This paper reports on case studies of four primary school children and their digital practices in Hong Kong. The study explored how the participating children view and represent through digital text in the context of their out-of-school technology use. Understanding how these practices extended into their English language classrooms was explicated based on emerging data. The study results identify six aspects of emerging skills acquired by the children. These skills were not extended into the children’s schoolwork – a reflection on the emphasis on uni-modal language learning in the class setting. A detailed examination of the individual skills led to a set of recommendations for curriculum review, suitable pedagogical strategies and classroom learning resources that English Language Educators may utilize to facilitate development of viewing and representing skills through digital text.published_or_final_versio

Collaborative trails in e-learning environments

This deliverable focuses on collaboration within groups of learners, and hence collaborative trails. We begin by reviewing the theoretical background to collaborative learning and looking at the kinds of support that computers can give to groups of learners working collaboratively, and then look more deeply at some of the issues in designing environments to support collaborative learning trails and at tools and techniques, including collaborative filtering, that can be used for analysing collaborative trails. We then review the state-of-the-art in supporting collaborative learning in three different areas – experimental academic systems, systems using mobile technology (which are also generally academic), and commercially available systems. The final part of the deliverable presents three scenarios that show where technology that supports groups working collaboratively and producing collaborative trails may be heading in the near future

Childrens Digital Practices: Case Studies Of Children Viewing And Representing With Digital Text

This paper reports on case studies of four primary school children and their digital practices in Hong Kong. The study explored how the participating children view and represent through digital text in the context of their out-of-school technology use. Understanding how these practices extended into their English language classrooms was explicated based on emerging data. The study results identify six aspects of emerging skills acquired by the children. These skills were not extended into the childrens schoolwork a reflection on the emphasis on uni-modal language learning in the class setting. A detailed examination of the individual skills led to a set of recommendations for curriculum review, suitable pedagogical strategies and classroom learning resources that English Language Educators may utilize to facilitate development of viewing and representing skills through digital text

Introduction to the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm: An Online Course for Librarians

This article discusses the development and delivery of a three-week asynchronous online course in Jesuit history, education, and the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP) for librarians working in Association of Jesuit Colleges and University (AJCU) institutions. Created by two instruction librarians and one instructional designer from a pair of AJCU institutions, the course explores incorporating the IPP—a contemplative learning model—into a one-shot, single class library instruction session. Included is a practical description of the development, revision, marketing, and success of the online course, along with a list of the class contents. Over three course offerings in 2017 and 2018, thirty-one participants discussed readings and videos, and shared ideas about their current teaching practices. They reflected on how the IPP, or at least some elements of it, might become part of their teaching, despite the time and content constraints. Other topics included the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) “Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education,” critical librarianship, and social justice. The intent of the article is to raise awareness of the course for interested librarians and to offer guidance to anyone working to develop an online course related to Ignatian pedagogy and teaching

But a walking shadow: designing, performing and learning on the virtual stage

Representing elements of reality within a medium, or taking aspects from one medium and placing them in another is an act of remediation. The process of this act, however, is largely taken for granted. Despite the fact that available information enables a qualitative assessment of the history of multimedia and their influences on different fields of knowledge, there are still some areas that require more focused research attention. For example, the relationship between media evolution and new developments in scenographic practice is currently under investigation. This article explores the issue of immediacy as a condition of modern theatre in the context of digital reality. It discusses the opportunities and challenges that recent technologies present to contemporary practitioners and theatre design educators, creating a lot of scope to break with conventions. Here, we present two case studies that look into technology-mediated learning about scenography through the employment of novel computer visualization techniques. The first case study is concerned with new ways of researching and learning about theatre through creative exploration of design artefacts. The second case study investigates the role of the Immersive Virtual World Second Life™ (SL) in effective teaching of scenography, and in creating and experiencing theatrical performances

Making training more cognitively effective: making videos interactive

The cost of health and safety (H&S) failures to the UK industry is currently estimated at up to £6.5 billion per annum, with the construction sector suffering unacceptably high levels of work-related incidents. Better H&S education across all skill levels in the industry is seen as an integral part of any solution. Traditional lecture-based courses often fail to recreate the dynamic realities of managing H&S on site and therefore do not sufficiently create deeper cognitive learning (which results in remembering and using what was learned). The use of videos is a move forward, but passively observing a video is not cognitively engaging and challenging, and therefore learning is not as effective as it can be. This paper describes the development of an interactive video in which learners take an active role. While observing the video, they are required to engage, participate, respond and be actively involved. The potential for this approach to be used in conjunction with more traditional approaches to H&S was explored using a group of 2nd-year undergraduate civil engineering students. The formative results suggested that the learning experience could be enhanced using interactive videos. Nevertheless, most of the learners believed that a blended approach would be most effective

A review of the evidence on the use of ICT in the Early Years Foundation Stage

This report reviewed existing evidence on the potential of technology to support the development of educational policy and practice in the context of the Early Years Foundation Stage. Reference is made to the use of ICT by young children from aged birth to five years and its potential impacts, positive and negative on their cognitive, social, emotional educational, visual and physical development

Curricular noticing: A comprehensive framework to describe teachers’ interactions with curriculum materials

Building on the work of Professional Noticing of Children’s Mathematical Thinking, we introduce the Curricular Noticing Framework to describe how teachers recognize opportunities within curriculum materials, understand their affordances and limitations, and use strategies to act on them. This framework builds on Remillard’s (2005) notion of participation with curriculum materials, connects with and broadens existing research on the relationship between teachers and written curriculum, and highlights new are as for research. We argue that once mathematics educators better understand the strategic curricular practices that support ambitious teaching, which we refer to as professional curricular noticing, then this knowledge can lead to recommendations for how to support the curricular work of teachers, particularly novice teachers