Towards a Conceptual Framework of an Educational Web Portal

Technology plays an important role in everyday life of K-6 students born in the digital age. In the past several decades, educational institutions have made substantial investments in technology infrastructure with the aim of enhancing student learning, increasing student achievement, and helping students acquire digital literacy skills early on in their education. However, to fully leverage web-based technologies for student learning and communication inside and outside of school, teachers must be prepared to effectively plan, develop, and integrate technology into the curriculum-based activities of their classrooms. Educational web portals with resources for teaching, learning and communicating, can help teachers create a “connected” classroom environment that extends student learning well beyond the school’s brick-and-mortar boundaries. This article delineates a framework of an educational web portal for an elementary school classroom. Three inter-related dimensions comprise the framework: 1) web portal structure, 2) web portal impacts, and 3) web portal development strategy. This framework is of value to educators and school administrators interested in integrating web portal technologies into the educational and social infrastructure of their schools

Exploring the Learning in Service-Learning: A Case of a Community-Based Research Project in Web-Based Systems Development

Service-learning integrates coursed-based academic learning with community service. This form of experiential learning is becoming more prevalent in higher education as academic institutions strive to enhance student learning while providing meaningful service to the community. This study investigates the impacts of service-learning in a junior-level IS web development course on student learning outcomes. The study also explores the use of community-based research in web-based systems development. The study\u27s context is a project to develop a web-based system for an elementary school classroom. Our findings propose an integrated, multidimensional concept of student learning that links the academic with personal and interpersonal learning outcomes. The academic dimension of student learning includes domain-specific and general academic knowledge and skills. The interpersonal dimension of student learning encompasses communication, collaboration and leadership skills, and the personal dimension consists of self-knowledge and personal efficacy. The service-learning strategy of community-based research promotes student learning and transforms the student into an engaged and active learner. Furthermore, community-based research is an effective approach to supplement the software development methods of prototyping and joint application development in a web-based systems development project. The study\u27s findings provide a framework for structuring effective service-learning experiences in the systems development domain of an Information Systems curriculum

Technical Expert, Pair-of-Hands or Collaborator: What Determines the Role Choices of IS Specialists?

Effective working relationships between information systems (IS) specialists and their business clients are an essential organizational asset. They contribute to customer satisfaction, IT project success, and IS specialist credibility. In turn, high quality IS-client relationships are influenced by the roles IS specialists adopt as they interact with clients on IS implementation tasks. IS specialist roles may be classified as “technical expert”, “pair-of-hands” and “collaborator”, where these terms are defined as in the consulting skills literature. Prior research has shown that the technical expert and pair-of-hands roles contribute to low quality IS-client working relationships, while the collaborator role contributes to higher-quality relationships. Therefore, the influences on--, IS specialists’ role choice is a topic of great theoretical and practical importance. This paper looks for such influences originating in the institutional context of IS work. In recent years, there has been a significant shift in the employment status of IS specialists. Many now perform IS work as external consultants rather than as employees of the organizations for whom the IS work is performed. Therefore, the context more likely to influence IS specialist role choice is that of the specialist’s employer rather than that of the client organization (when the two differ). Our findings show that the human resource management policies and service climate in the IS specialist’s employer are strongly associated with the IS specialist’s role choice. This finding has important implications for IS personnel theory and practice

The Adoption and Integration of Web Technologies in K-6 Education

Technology plays an important role in the everyday life of children born in the ‘digital’ era. The ability to use web technologies in the K-6 educational context opens up new opportunities for teaching and learning. This study investigates the adoption and integration of a web technology into a second grade classroom. The study utilizes a community-based research method to assess the technology adoption decision and the skills, knowledge, and resources needed to effectively utilize this digital medium in the classroom and beyond. The study’s context is a collaborative effort between the academic researchers and an elementary school teacher to develop and implement a classroom web site. This project is a pilot to the school-wide implementation of web sites in grades K-6. Our findings suggest that the factors for web site adoption and integration include the alignment of the site’s purpose with the teacher’s needs, the use of rapid application development strategy for web design, the development of a comprehensive teacher’s training program for web content management, and the use of collaborative tactics for web site implementation. Web technologies have a potential to enrich the students’ educational experience and home-to-school communication. However, there are social and technological challenges for planning, designing, and diffusing web technologies into the elementary schools. The findings of this study have implications for the elementary school educators interested in developing and integrating classroom web sites for teaching, learning, and communicating with their community

Preiser-Houy et al. The Adoption and Integration of Web Technologies in K-6 Education ABSTRACT The Adoption and Integration of Web Technologies in K-6 Education

Technology plays an important role in the everyday life of children born in the ‘digital ’ era. The ability to use web technologies in the K-6 educational context opens up new opportunities for teaching and learning. This study investigates the adoption and integration of a web technology into a second grade classroom. The study utilizes a community-based research method to assess the technology adoption decision and the skills, knowledge, and resources needed to effectively utilize this digital medium in the classroom and beyond. The study’s context is a collaborative effort between the academic researchers and an elementary school teacher to develop and implement a classroom web site. This project is a pilot to the school-wide implementation of web sites in grades K-6. Our findings suggest that the factors for web site adoption and integration include the alignment of the site’s purpose with the teacher’s needs, the use of rapid application development strategy for web design, the development of a comprehensive teacher’s training program for web content management, and the use of collaborative tactics for web site implementation. Web technologies have a potential to enrich the students ’ educational experience and home-to-school communication. However, there are social and technological challenges for planning, designing, and diffusing web technologies into the elementary schools. The findings of this study have implications for the elementary school educators interested in developing and integrating classroom web sites for teaching, learning, and communicating with their community