Learning Constellations--a multimedia ethnographic research environment using video technology for exploring children's thinking

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1990.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 249-257).by Ricki Goldman Segall.Ph.D

Videography on the Way to the Analytical Short Film: Managing the ambiguity in interaction regarding video material

This chapter gives a brief overview of research methods using video material, lead by the question how these manage the ambiguity lying in interaction regarding this footage. The argument is put forward that, from a perspective of symbolic interactionism, in order to adequately make assertions regarding video material it is necessary to use video itself as a key statement in scientific discourse

Students' epistemological framing in quantum mechanics problem solving

Students' difficulties in quantum mechanics may be the result of unproductive framing and not a fundamental inability to solve the problems or misconceptions about physics content. We observed groups of students solving quantum mechanics problems in an upper-division physics course. Using the lens of epistemological framing, we investigated four frames in our observational data: algorithmic math, conceptual math, algorithmic physics, and conceptual physics. We discuss the characteristics of each frame as well as causes for transitions between different frames, arguing that productive problem solving may occur in any frame as long as students' transition appropriately between frames. Our work extends epistemological framing theory on how students frame discussions in upper-division physics courses.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review -- Physics Education Researc

Animated Storytelling: Student-Created TALES in Irish-Language Learning

This article examines how digital and animated storytelling can be employed as an instructional methodology to foster communicative, creative and authentic Irish-language experiences in the primary school classroom. Irish is one of Ireland’s two official languages, where Irish is the national minority language and English is the dominant majority language. Students underachieve in Irish compared to other subjects taught at primary level. Poor performance in Irish, particularly in listening and speaking skills, is often attributed to traditional teaching methods and a reduction in Irish-medium teaching, a shortage of language resources, and limited opportunities for using Irish outside the classroom. This research explores how digital storytelling, animation and coding tools can enhance students’ abilities and interest in Irish. The setting for this study is a third-grade classroom in an English-medium primary school over the course of one academic year. It culminates in a practical innovative model called TALES (Technology, Activity, Language Learning, Engagement and Story). TALES integrates all four language skills through the storytelling phase and maps them to four corresponding multimedia skills during the digital recreation phase, developing language and technology skills in the process. TALES externalises student thinking while co-creating shareable learning artefacts, negotiating meaning and deepening learning in the process. It engages students in the meaningful production of the Irish language, and provides them with increased and spontaneous opportunities to speak and write the language through creative writing and digital recreation activities. It supports a curriculum-aligned, student-centred, technology-enhanced, design-based, constructionist and collaborative approach to language learning

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationSecrete/d Pedagogy: Body Languaging and the Navigation of Traumatizing and Traumatized Space in the First-Year Composition Classroom, is an interdisciplinary exploration into the multimodal, multisensory phenomenon of languaging in and for schools. Beginning with an exploration into the forces that move, shape, and texture the writing classroom, this text steps into the phenomena of literacy, language, and the body, paying particular attention to the enfolded and unfolding histories of conquest through practices of language standardization that live within the bodies being schooled. By foregrounding bodily memory, emotion, felt sensation, and somatic stimuli, we can begin to see the role of the body in the design and disruption of language. I claim that the languaging body acts with agentic force within the first-year composition (FYC) classroom, re/citing, re/spawn/ding and trans/forming the inheritances of violence sculpting institutional affect and the standardization of particular linguistic forms. As this dissertation moves into the force of the body in language and expression, the expressions and sensations of the bodies who participated in this multivocal videocued ethnography will move the text as it attempts to answer the following questions: What body languaging practices are occurring within the first-year composition (FYC) classroom? And, how are teacher, students, and researcher making sense of body-based meaning- making resources, or not, within the FYC classroom? Poetry, oration, film, and scene headings will work together to fashion a text held together by the experiences of thebeings (writing students, writing teacher, and researcher) who composed the study. This text will do its best to be reflective and response(able) to the multimodal, multisensory phenomenon this is writing... in and for schools

MOdE - Museo Officina dell’Educazione: uno spazio aperto per la Didattica digitale

Il MOdE - Museo Officina dell’Educazione è uno spazio tecnologico innovativo le cui principali finalità riguardano l’esposizione, la conservazione e la valorizzazione degli “oggetti”, espressione delle scienze pedagogiche. Nasce come progetto di ricerca nel 2008, in seno al Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione “Giovanni Maria Bertin” dell’Università di Bologna. Le sue principali azioni sono finalizzate all’allestimento di sale espositive interattive dedicate ai differenti ambiti disciplinari delle Scienze dell’Educazione, a sostegno di un dialogo attivo tra studenti e docenti; alla documentazione e diffusione di best practices educative, pubblicate e rese fruibili all’interno di una specifica area di repository. In questo spazio, i visitatori/utenti possono non solo navigare e visualizzare gli oggetti esposti nelle sale/atelier, ma anche costruire sale personali, le cosiddette sale bianche, con materiali (immagini, testi, audio, video) raccolti, costruiti ex novo e inseriti a partire dai propri vissuti. Una sfida ancora aperta è l’utilizzo dei social network come YouTube e dei sistemi interattivi, che consentono di sfruttare i meccanismi comunicativi della rete aprendo però a interessanti questioni etiche.MOdE - Museo Officina dell’Educazione is a digital museum of the Department of Education Sciences “Giovanni Maria Bertin” of the University of Bologna. It performs activities of scientific study and research, cataloguing with a metadata system, educational provision and mediation, besides the organisation of exhibition events with museums and cultural institutions at the national and international level. All the objects/cultural assets of the museum are thus virtually accessible in line with the European standards of museological cataloguing. The main aims of the MOdE concern the exhibition, preservation and valorisation of the “objects,” expression of the pedagogical sciences. Its main actions are finalised to the setting up of interactive exhibition rooms dedicated to the different disciplinary fields of the education sciences, supporting an active dialogue between students and teachers; the documentation and diffusion of the educational best practices, published and made accessible within a specific repository area

If you could see what I mean : descriptions of video in an anthropologist's video notebook

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1992.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-108).by Thomas G. Aguierre Smith.M.S

Trials and Triumphs: Piloting a Web Conference System to Deliver Blended Learning across Multiple Sites

Barriers to classroom-based education such as high gas prices, inclement weather, and job and family requirements often make travel to campus more difficult for people who want to continue their educations (Fletcher, 2008). The promise of synchronous tools such as Wimba LiveClassroom can provide a cost-effective alternative to a real-time classroom experience by allowing students to attend a class wherever they are, thus allowing a classroom experience despite geographic barriers. Indeed, other reports have also indicated that hybrid learning can result in increased student outcomes when compared to traditional classroom learning (Brunner, 2006; McFarlin, 2008). To attempt to overcome these barriers, a mid-sized public university piloted Wimba LiveClassroom as a platform for a blended class to allow distant students to be able to take advantage of the University’s classes via the Internet. The pilot course, Sociology of Work, was offered at the main campus of a mid-sized public university and simulcast using Wimba LiveClassroom to a student who attended a branch campus about 30 miles away. The nature of the class required that the students be able to view videos simultaneously, participate in discussions, as well as make and react to student presentations. Despite our early and thorough planning, the pilot identified significant technical and organizational obstacles that needed to be overcome on behalf of the faculty member and the support units at the university and the vendor. This project required the successful interaction of the professor, the instructional technology support staff, the networking staff, and Wimba employees, and the computing equipment of the university (both the classroom and the network backbone), the student’s provider, and the student’s home system. Any problem with one element meant that other elements would not work, and with so many parties necessary for success, inevitably there were problems. Video of class sessions and extracts from communications after each class will illustrate successes and frustrations. The paper will conclude with recommendations for future directions of research and suggestions for restructuring technology and organizations to facilitate future success

Using Synthetic Worlds for Work and Learning

Synthetic worlds [Castronova 2005] are graphically-rich, three-dimensional (3D), electronic environments where members assume an embodied persona (i.e., avatars) and engage in socializing, competitive quests, and economic transactions with globally distributed others. Frequently categorized as technologies of play, synthetic worlds range from massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) such as World of Warcraft, to virtual reality environments such as Second Life. Increasingly, educators, researchers and corporations are recognizing these 3D online spaces as legitimate communication media, thereby blurring the lines between work and play, and between reality and virtuality. In this panel, presented at the 2007 International Conference on Information Systems, we explore how the fluid work-play and reality-virtuality boundaries are negotiated and managed in practice. The panelists will rely on their research, conducted in educational, corporate and game environments, to address questions about learning, working and playing in these new media spaces