A creative approach to educational computing : Key incidents in a typical life cycle

This auto-ethnographical narrative traces the history of an educational computing professional. Christina Preston describes her experience of computers began in the 1950s as her father was a computer professional. After graduating, she developed her skills as a journalist and short story writer for women’s magazines at the same time as teaching English, Drama and Media studies in London secondary school. Her late introduction to computers through her own children was typical of UK teachers in the early nineteen eighties who suddenly found that they were expected to train in Information Technology and to teach the subject as part of the curriculum although this had not been included in their teacher training. Christina Preston is now the chair of the international industrial and government funded MirandaNet Fellowship, which is a community of practice for teachers, advisors, teacher educators, software designers and ICT policy makers. In this ethnographical study she uses her women’s magazine writing skills to recreate her own experiences in a way that will help advisers and teacher educators to understand how the history of many teachers who are middle aged in 2006 has affected their attitude to computers and their willingness to use them in classrooms. Critical incidents include her introduction to mainframes as a child, her own children’s experiences, her first ICT training, the first lesson she give and her authorship of educational software. The unexpected death of her daughter opens her mind to the potential of computers in democratic participation and active citizenship between local, regional and national community.2nd IFIP Conference on the History of Computing and EducationRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Developing Educational Software: a professional tool perspective

The selection, and use of educational software and its impact in schools are still controversial issues. In this paper we present an alternative conceptualisation of educational software based on considering the software as an instrument for teachers’ professional performance. We review previous work in the areas of the design, development and evaluation of educational software and of the process of educational innovation. The review of these four areas converges to demonstrate the need for knowing and considering the context of use of educational software and for understanding users' perspectives about its roles and possibilities and hence supports a consideration a perspective on educational software which sees it as a professional tool for teachers performance of their teaching role

Gaining insight into educators' understanding of digital technologies: three models for the analysis of multi-dimensional concept maps

The thesis explores the hypothesis that an analysis of a Multi-dimensional Concept Map (MDCM)\ud provides educators and researchers with different and possibly richer and broader insights into\ud understanding of an issue — in this case that of digital technologies in education - than written\ud responses alone. 'Multi-dimensionality' refers to the characteristics of multimodal hand-drawn or\ud digitally produced concept maps, namely multi-layering and (remote) multi-authoring.\ud Forty-eight pairs of concept maps were collected, in three case studies based in England and South\ud Africa, all focusing on gaining insights into educators' understanding of the use of digital\ud technologies in teaching and learning. The three groups of educators were undertaking one-year\ud courses about using computers in classrooms, underpinned by three different perspectives on\ud learning. information transmission, constructivism and social interaction.\ud This study of pre- and post-course concept maps aims to answer the Research Question:\ud How does multimodal concept mapping provide insights into\ud educators' understanding about digital technologies?\ud Both benefits and challenges were evident in the use of the three different methods of analysis that\ud were used. Given the relatively low numbers, a qualitative analysis of scores is revealing whereas a\ud quantitative analysis is unreliable; 'words', where they are used, provide a useful insight; a more\ud encompassing semiotic analysis revealed some underlying 'positions' that surprised even the map\ud makers themselves. A key methodological finding was that in social interaction contexts, concept\ud maps are most valuable used as scaffolds for conversations between participants within\ud `communities of practice' to promote shared insights into professional understanding of digital\ud technologies.\ud The findings were influenced by the four different roles assumed by the researcher: as an objective\ud judge of data; as a community mentor; as an active community member; and as a researcher and\ud community member inviting other members of that community to be co-researchers. The\ud researcher learnt, as the project progressed, that the danger of becoming too close to the 'subjects'\ud to be objective about the data was outweighed by the richness of the insights when the map makers\ud engaged with the researcher and with trusted colleagues in analyzing the meaning of their pairs of\ud concept maps

A creative approach to educational computing : Key incidents in a typical life cycle

This auto-ethnographical narrative traces the history of an educational computing professional. Christina Preston describes her experience of computers began in the 1950s as her father was a computer professional. After graduating, she developed her skills as a journalist and short story writer for women’s magazines at the same time as teaching English, Drama and Media studies in London secondary school. Her late introduction to computers through her own children was typical of UK teachers in the early nineteen eighties who suddenly found that they were expected to train in Information Technology and to teach the subject as part of the curriculum although this had not been included in their teacher training. Christina Preston is now the chair of the international industrial and government funded MirandaNet Fellowship, which is a community of practice for teachers, advisors, teacher educators, software designers and ICT policy makers. In this ethnographical study she uses her women’s magazine writing skills to recreate her own experiences in a way that will help advisers and teacher educators to understand how the history of many teachers who are middle aged in 2006 has affected their attitude to computers and their willingness to use them in classrooms. Critical incidents include her introduction to mainframes as a child, her own children’s experiences, her first ICT training, the first lesson she give and her authorship of educational software. The unexpected death of her daughter opens her mind to the potential of computers in democratic participation and active citizenship between local, regional and national community.2nd IFIP Conference on the History of Computing and EducationRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Technology to provide educational practitioners with the expertise they need

The book brings together researchers, technologists and educators to explore and show how technology can be designed and used for learning and teaching to best effect

Using digital technologies to support continuing professional development

This chapter outlines different forms of teacher Continuing Professional Development (CPD) that you may have access to and introduces ways that digital technologies can be used to support you to develop your professional knowledge. We consider a range of strategies for supporting your learning as it is your responsibility, as a teacher, to keep your professional knowledge and practice up to date. While digital technologies can be used to support teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD), teachers also need CPD in how to use and appropriate digital technologies for their own pedagogic practice. The previous chapters in this book focus on your pedagogic practice. In this chapter we focus on the use of digital technologies to support your CPD. Objectives At the end of this chapter you should be able to • understand what CPD opportunities are available to you now and be motivated to join relevant professional organisations; • engage in the forms of continuing teacher education outlined in this chapter if you are not already using them; • set up your own regional, local or school based organisations where you can share your experience and knowledge with a view to growing collaborative professional development; • develop an understanding about the opportunities to access research through quick and easily available routes; • understand how to deploy relevant digital technologies to improve your own professional practice

Learning Alone or Learning Together? How Can Teachers Use Online Technologies to Innovate Pedagogy?

Much discussion of online learning, or e–learning, has been pre– occupied with the practice of teaching online and the debate about whether being online is ‘as good as’ direct face-to-face teaching. The authors contributing to this paper, members of the MirandaNet Fellowship professional community of practice, describe an incubation period since 1992 through which they trace the emergence of new teaching and learning theories and practices based on their varied elearning projects. We outline the development of theory and practice that and under five headings: technologies for knowledge sharing; pedagogical theories underpinning collaborative online learning; roles for communities of practice (CoP) members in online debates; the impact of MOOCs on elearning; and, the role of MOOCs in schools. A key conclusion looking across all the findings is that professional collaboration and knowledge sharing is powerfully supported when the teachers, as learners, belong to a community of practice. Keywords: MOOCs, COOCs, SPOCs, professional development, elearning,virtual learning platforms, learning theory, pedagog

CPD, knowledge services and research

Teachers CPD – an international problem The absence of a strong publicly stated knowledge base allows the misconception to continue that any smart person can teach. (Fullan, 1993 p. 111) There is the need to strengthen the connection between teachers’ practice and educational research, whereby the latter informs professional practice. This requires the development of a coherent strategy for teachers to engage with educational research, which can be achieved through teachers’ continuing professional development. This argument has been reinforced by recommendations in an OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) examination of educational R&D in England (OECD, 2002) and internationally (OECD, 2009). According to OECD TALIS research (2009), no country has a good solution for the provision of up-to-date continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers. For the purposes of this chapter we identify four main purposes of CPD: 1 CPD initiated by government for whole sector change 2 CPD provided by subject associations 3 CPD initiated by schools for within school change and 4 CPD self-directed: initiated by the individual teacher for personal professional development

Opening the Black Box of Family-Based Treatments: an artificial intelligence Framework to Examine therapeutic alliance and therapist Empathy

The evidence-based treatment (EBT) movement has primarily focused on core intervention content or treatment fidelity and has largely ignored practitioner skills to manage interpersonal process issues that emerge during treatment, especially with difficult-to-treat adolescents (delinquent, substance-using, medical non-adherence) and those of color. A chief complaint of real world practitioners about manualized treatments is the lack of correspondence between following a manual and managing microsocial interpersonal processes (e.g. negative affect) that arise in treating real world clients. Although family-based EBTs share core similarities (e.g. focus on family interactions, emphasis on practitioner engagement, family involvement), most of these treatments do not have an evidence base regarding common implementation and treatment process problems that practitioners experience in delivering particular models, especially in mid-treatment when demands on families to change their behavior is greatest in treatment - a lack that characterizes the field as a whole. Failure to effectively address common interpersonal processes with difficult-to-treat families likely undermines treatment fidelity and sustained use of EBTs, treatment outcome, and contributes to treatment dropout and treatment nonadherence. Recent advancements in wearables, sensing technologies, multivariate time-series analyses, and machine learning allow scientists to make significant advancements in the study of psychotherapy processes by looking under the skin of the provider-client interpersonal interactions that define therapeutic alliance, empathy, and empathic accuracy, along with the predictive validity of these therapy processes (therapeutic alliance, therapist empathy) to treatment outcome. Moreover, assessment of these processes can be extended to develop procedures for training providers to manage difficult interpersonal processes while maintaining a physiological profile that is consistent with astute skills in psychotherapeutic processes. This paper argues for opening the black box of therapy to advance the science of evidence-based psychotherapy by examining the clinical interior of evidence-based treatments to develop the next generation of audit- and feedback- (i.e., systemic review of professional performance) supervision systems