Electronics and control technology

Until recently, there was no requirement to learn electronics and control technology in the New Zealand school curriculum. Apart from isolated pockets of teaching based on the enthusiasm of individual teachers, there is very little direct learning of electronics in New Zealand primary or secondary schools. The learning of electronics is located in tertiary vocational training programmes. Thus, few school students learn about electronics and few school teachers have experience in teaching it. Lack of experience with electronics (other than using its products) has contributed to a commonly held view of electronics as out of the control and intellectual grasp of the average person; the domain of the engineer, programmer and enthusiast with his or her special aptitude. This need not be true, but teachers' and parents' lack of experience with electronics is in danger of denying young learners access to the mainstream of modern technology

Parents as teachers: Using parent helpers to guide young children’s technological practice

Technology Education is one of eight learning areas of the New Zealand national curriculum. It aims to develop a broad technological literacy through students participating in learning programmes in which they engage in technological practice and through this practice develop capability, knowledge and an understanding of technology as a domain in its own right. Experiencing and exploring contemporary examples of technological practice is recognised as an effective way of developing technological literacy and, in this study, students visited a chocolate factory in order to find out how to make a chocolate gift for Mothers’ Day. While the value of learning experiences outside the classroom (LEOTC) is well documented in learning areas such as science, there are few studies which explore LEOTC in Technology and specifically those of junior primary students. A key element of this process, and the focus of this paper, is the role that parent helpers play in guiding and supporting students during both visits outside the classroom, and construction tasks within the classroom. It also raises the issue of the preparation and scaffolding parents require to enable them to help students effectively carry out these tasks. The role of a parent helper is a crucial one and the data from this study suggests that the status and time given to this preparation is, at times, varied and can have significant impact on children’s learning outcomes

Evaluating an online learning community: Intellectual, social and emotional development and transformations.

Developing online learning communities is a promising pedagogical approach in online learning contexts for adult tertiary learners, but it is no easy task. Understanding how learning communities are formed and evaluating their efficacy in supporting teaching-learning involves a complex set of issues that have a bearing on the design and facilitation of successful online learning experiences. This paper presents findings of a case study of a semester-long online graduate course designed to facilitate a learning community at a New Zealand tertiary institution. It adopts a sociocultural analytical framework and argues for a multiple developmental analytical approach to evaluating learning that considers lecturer and student intellectual, social and emotional development and transformations. Implications are presented for online lecturers, course designers and institutional administrators

Technology education in New Zealand

Technology is one of the seven essential learning areas included to achieve the knowledge and understanding that all New Zealanders need to acquire (Ministry of Education, 1993). Responsibility for the implementation of these curricula rests with schools which have flexibility in making implementation decisions. Within the national curriculum framework, all curriculum statements must reflect the principles of the national curriculum framework, specify clear learning outcomes against which students’ achievements can be assessed, have learning outcomes or objectives defined over eight progressive levels, and be grouped in a number of strands. The national curriculum framework’s principles relate to learning and achievement, development of school programs, and aspects of social justice and equity

Using an interactive whiteboard and a computer-programming tool to support the development of the key competencies in the New Zealand curriculum

Does children’s use of the software Scratch provide potential for the enhancement of key competencies as they work in pairs at the interactive whiteboard (IWB)? This article looks at how children using Scratch collaborated and managed their projects as they set about designing, constructing, testing and evaluating a game for others to play, a task that provided a sustained challenge over six weeks and beyond. The findings showed that the key competencies of participating, contributing, and relating to others were enhanced by the collaborative use of Scratch at the IWB, and that creative and conceptual thinking processes were sustained. Children became increasingly adept at using Scratch, and some children, previously thought to have poor social skills, began to articulate their understandings to others. While a guiding and scaffolding role was evident in teachers’ actions, close monitoring of group progress and direct input from teachers is required to keep the challenge high but achievable, and to extend children’s knowledge and thinking as they use Scratch at the IWB

Lecturer--student views on successful online learning environments.

While many are enthusiastic about the promises of online learning as a flexible form of learning, others are cautious and concerned with the quality of teaching and learning rendered in such environments. In response, this article reports on the findings of a study conducted to better understand the issues related to the nature of learning in online environments and how learning in such environments can be successfully facilitated. Ten online lecturers and their students were surveyed at the Faculty of Education, University of Waikato. Successful online teaching and learning was characterised as a social interactive process such as that embodied within learning communities. Teaching practices and responsibilities associated with four lecturer roles were crucial to this process-pedagogical, managerial, social and technological. Considering these multiple roles is argued to be a productive framework in enabling online lecturers to understand and act on each role's required responsibility, tasks and practices and adapt them to their particular teaching context

Developing an online learning community: A model for enhancing lecturer and student learning experiences

This paper reports on a study aimed to better understand teaching and learning in an online learning environment through the development of a learning community to facilitate successful learning experiences. To achieve this aim, a qualitative interpretive methodology was adopted to case study an online lecturer and his 14 students’ experiences in a semester long fully online asynchronous graduate course in a New Zealand tertiary institution. Based on the findings, a model for understanding and developing an online learning community for adult tertiary learners is proposed. In accord with sociocultural views of learning and practices, the model depicts successful online learning as a mediated, situated, distributed, goal-directed and participatory activity within a socially and culturally determined learning community. The model informs our understanding of appropriate conditions for the development of online learning communities and has implications for the design and facilitation of learning in such contexts

Laptops for teachers: An evaluation of the TELA scheme in schools (Years 1 to 3)

The purpose of this evaluation is to investigate the impacts of the Laptops for Teachers Scheme: TELA (referred to from here as the TELA scheme) on teachers’ work over a period of three years (2006, 2007, 2008) and to record emerging changes in laptop use. This evaluation report presents findings from the three annual cycles of national focus groups and questionnaires with Years 1 to 3 teachers in New Zealand primary schools. In this evaluation, two methods of data collection were used: first, three focus groups were held with teachers in face-to-face meetings and second, a questionnaire was sent to teachers in a range of schools. The focus groups allowed teachers to talk about changes in their use of the laptop over the three years. Focus groups were held in the Taranaki, Wellington and Marlborough areas. The questionnaire asked teachers about various aspects of their laptops experience, including school support for laptops, professional development, their use of laptops at home and in school, and their goals for future use. In this final report, questionnaire results are presented together with the results from the focus groups held over three years

Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South

Slave Communities Winthrop Jordan, Christopher Morris, and Michl Wayne count among the prominent scholars who have written noteworthy studies on the slave society of Mississippi\u27s Natchez District. That region is also the focus of Anthony E. Kaye\u27s important work, Joining Places: Slave...

An Interface between science and law: What is science for members of New Zealand's Environment Court?

This study investigates the interface between science and law with reference to models of science described by members of New Zealand's Environment Court. The aim of the research is to identify differences and consistencies between the members of the Court in the way that they articulate their understanding of science and of scientific evidence. This research also aims to locate those individual models of science within a wider philosophical discourse concerning the nature of science. The research adopts a qualitative and interpretive approach that focuses on understanding the detail of contextual interactions arising from interviews with eight Environment Judges and 13 Commissioners. The interview group comprised all of the judges of the Court during the research period (1999 - 2000) and all but one permanent Commissioner. The analysis of interviews show a wide range of views concerning the scope and nature of science. Criteria significant to each individual's model of science have been identified as a series of micro themes. Those micro themes differ between individuals as to the combinations of criteria significant when locating the boundary between science and non-science. The analysis of interviews also identifies three macro themes that describe whether and how individuals differentiate science, technology and expertise. That analysis identifies a group of interviewees, comprising both judges and commissioners, that equates science with expertise without distinction as to any knowledge component or process considerations. The analysis of interview responses adopts a boundary-work approach that identifies how individuals locate the boundary between science and non-science through their articulation of the micro themes significant to their model of science. The study contributes to the discourse concerning the relationship of science and law within modern society. That discourse commonly addresses the appropriate legal framework to assess questions involving scientific expertise and invariably describes the legal process and the role of expert and decision maker within that process. However, that discourse rarely articulates the meaning of the terms science, scientist, or technology, assuming that science is a self-evident concept, its meaning having universal application and acceptance. This research challenges that approach and identifies wide differences in the models of science held by individual decision makers and differences in their expectations of evidence from expert witnesses. Aside from the implications of the research results for the discourse concerning the relationship of science and law, this research also has practical implications for the evaluation of expert scientific evidence within an adversarial system of law, and for expert evidence before the Environment Court. Suggestions to improve communication both within the Court and between the Court and parties appearing before it are made with a view to identifying consistent and fair expectations of experts and their evidence