A sociocultural perspective on negotiating digital identities in a community of learners

Three dimensional virtual world environments are becoming an increasingly regular feature of the education landscape, providing the opportunity for richly graphical augmented and immersive learning activities. Those who participate in these experiences must mediate through an avatar, negotiating and managing the complexities of this new variation of digital identity alongside their more familiar identity as learner and/or teacher/facilitator. This chapter describes some key moments in the construction of our own digital identities as a lecturer and a student in the Open University’s community in Second LifeTM. We explore our experiences in relation to the impact of trust and consistency from a sociocultural perspective, privileging the role of social interaction and context where meaning is socially produced and situationally interpreted, concluding that social interaction is pivotal to any meaningful identity development that takes place. The chapter ends with thoughts for future issues surrounding digital identity in relation to lifelong learning

Console game-based pedagogy: A study of primary and secondary classroom learning through console videogames

The main focus of this research project was to identify the educational benefits of console game-based learning in primary and secondary schools. The project also sought to understand how the benefits of educational gaming could transfer to other settings. For this purpose, research was carried out in classrooms in Scotland to explore learning with games played on games consoles, such as PlayStation, Xbox, and Wii. Interviews were carried out with school leaders, classroom teachers, and students in 19 schools and followed up by a series of lesson observations in four of these schools. Findings include significant impact on students’ performance and engagement, as well as strong support from participating teachers and school leaders

Web 2.0 Tools in Biomedical Education: Limitations and Possibilities

The use of Web 2.0 technology is rapidly being integrated into undergraduate and graduate education, which dramatically influences the ways learners approach and use information. Knowledge transfer has become a two-way process. Users no longer simply consume and download information from the web; they create and interact with it. Several theoretical frameworks were developed in order to discuss the possibilities of integration of Web 2.0 tools in Pharmacy, Medicine, Allied Health, Nursing and many other biomedical areas. Other studies have started gathering qualitative and quantitative evidence of the importance of Web 2.0 tools in the learning process. By performing the integrative review, this paper will provide an overview of current research in biomedical education, and elaborate on some of the potential opportunities and challenges that these applications present. We hope to give our contribution to ongoing research in this promising area.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio