Group items tagged

When I think about "infrastructure", I normally think about roads, wires, sewerage and so on. But how about educational technology and instructional design? From reading Don Norman's musings about infrastructure, I realized that if we want our technological implementations to be successfully adopted, very often it's essential to also consider the infrastructure needed to support our tech designs and implementations. Personally, I think infrastructure for education and instructional design need not always be physical things. They could be intangibles such as having to update a database, notify the relevant people in charge, call this person or that to come unlock the computer lab, etc. My mum's been a teacher for 40+ years. She's great. But she really hates the computer. Not because of the learning needed to use Microsoft Word. She's quite fine with it. But it's all the non-Microsoft Word things that she has to do - reboot, turn the computer on, manage the files, etc... - that makes her scream.  "It is time to work on infrastructure. It threatens to dominate our lives with ugliness, frustration, and work. We need to spend more time on the designs for infrastructure. We need to make it more attractive, more accessible, and easier to maintain. Infrastructure is intended to be hidden, to provide the foundation for everyday life. If we do not respond, it will dominate our lives, preventing us attending to our priory concerns and interests and instead, just keeping ahead of the maintenance demands." - Don Norman Food for thought: What are some underlying "infrastructure" (tangible and intangible) that I may encounter in an educational technology project? Are there existing infrastructure that I can take advantage of to minimize time and $? How can we minimize the amount of infrastructure maintenance needed?

How to match the right technology to the right goal for a given meeting

A research paper on how low-tech SMS can be highly effective for certain learning tasks such as teaching social English. And now, there's Whatsapp and other social-messaging platforms that can be an intermediate level between simple text messages that work on any basic phone, to sophisticated native apps that must be programmed for a specific operating system. "As SMS is technologically and functionally very simple, it can be considered to be a relatively primitive  technology. However, viewing it from another angle, we see that SMS ranks very highly in terms of user  convenience. Successful uptake of mobile learning strategy is more likely in the situation when "learning activities can integrate into our lives in an unobtrusive fashion". SMS can deliver information in this unobtrusive fashion more readily than other strategies. SMS, thus, can be regarded as a practical and realistic mLearning technology for use in natural settings at present."

Perhaps we can use this matrix for our workshops as well.

Nice find! I particularly like the concept items on the x-axis and they could be used for evaluating e-learning. The vertical concepts are a bit dated.

Tan, Hu, Wong, Wettasinghe (2003) on Information Technology and Singapore Education, Instructional Framework, Instructional Strategies (Direct Instruction, SDL, Group Work, Computer-Mediated Communication, Constructivist Learning, Learning through Experience) Computer As an Administrative Tool - Blackboard ! Computer As a Presentation Tool - from PPT to Prezi? Computer As a Tutor - engage the learners in higher order thinking Computer As a Cognitive Tool - mindtools Conclusion: To successfully integrate IT into teaching and learning in schools is a challenging task that hinges on a lot of factors, including effective teacher training. Darling-Hammond (1994) describes the new paradigm of teacher learning as a place in which opportunities are provided for "learning by teaching, learning by doing and learning by collaborating." In our attempt to avoid reducing such training into teaching of discrete IT skills, or merely talking about it through lectures, we presented an approach that modeled various pedagogies, including direct instruction, self-directed learning, group work, computer-mediated communication, and constructivist learning. We also provided a holistic technology-enhanced environment, for the trainees to experience the use of the computer as an administrative tool, as a presentation tool, as a tutor, and as a cognitive tool. These strategies are built upon theories and studies of learning, as well as the use of IT in education. The results of the trainees' evaluation of the module indicated a generally positive reaction to the module and the perception that the instructional objectives have been achieved. These are encouraging indicators of the effectiveness of our instructional strategies, which we will build upon for further improvement in the subsequent delivery of the module.

A very interesting journal essay that points out how info overload is not a new problem, but one that has existed ever since the first books. The writer examines how people in the previous centuries used the then-new technology of printing to help them handle the "plague of books" that was overwhelming their libraries. He then reminds us, that at the core of it all, it is not the technology itself that enables and empowers learning, but an ecology of human-tech interaction that helps us learn more effectively in today's Toffler-esque world. A fascinating read indeed. A more readable PDF version: http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/archives/Spring2012/Wellmon_lo.pdf

Emerging tablet technology where one of the capabilities of microsoft's SmartGlass technology links tablets to their game console features in E3 event. You can view the demo video here if reading the article is not your choice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKXB9dhmkyw

Woopid is site that lets users watch video tutorials about all things technology. It is an easy to navigate site with hundreds of videos on using software and hardware products on all major computer platforms. A great site for technology trainers, teachers introducing basic computing functions to students, or just anyone who wants to learn something new.

Nice find! ETs, keep this in mind as we look for free or more open resources.

My instructor from Penn State U shared his thought on the podcast. "I was very intrigued by his reference to Alan Kay when he talked about how the tools shape us via our interactions with them. Kay was (and is) most definitely one of the most visionary and original thinkers when it comes to technology and its applications. To be sure, this point about how the tools shape us is a very good one to emphasize. Tools are not innocuous things and metacognitive awareness can help both teachers and learners think about how their perceptions of ideas, concepts, etc are influenced by the tools they use to express their understandings of these things that they encounter." P/S Apologies for the poor editing by Rachel (first time using Audacity)

For the game team. Today we're announcing premium features for gaming with Flash Player 11.2. These will allow game developers to publish advanced games with console quality experiences to Flash Player. We're also excited to announce that we are collaborating with Unity Technologies to enable Unity customers to publish web-based 3D games, like Madfinger's Shadowgun, to Flash Player using the premium features from directly within Unity's tools.

NIE is mentioned in this article talking about mobile technology in schools. And the platform chosen was Windows.... The National Institute of Education of Singapore is assisting teachers with the development of customized curriculum in English, Science and Chinese that leverages the benefits of mobile, Internet-connected, learning devices and provides students with new learning opportunities that are not possible with paper and pencil. We co-design technology enabled lessons with the teachers and provide professional development to teachers that enable them to enact lessons using smartphones. It is critical to empower teachers to orchestrate the transformed classroom to support students' personalized learning," says Professor Looi Chee Kit of the National Institute of Education. All smartphones are equipped with MyDesk, a next-generation mobile learning platform tailored to leverage the capabilities of Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. MyDesk enables each student to access his or her assignments, relevant websites that contain podcasts, textual material and video clips and educational applications, such as concept mapping, drawing and animating, to practice both self-directed and collaborative learning.

As we move forward in education and the world continues to grow technologically it is incumbent upon the institutions that educate our children to make social media and technology available and a part of their learning every day.

interesting on how mobile technology is bringing us :)

Like your comment about how the iPads don't become the focus of the learning. That's a thought that's been on my mind recently - the importance of the perception of "seamlessness" in tech usage. That's probably one of the most important reasons a technology gets adapted - no matter how cumbersome it seems at first (e.g. learning how to drive a car) - because the normal usage of the technology doesn't hinder the intended task at hand. (That's why once you learn to ride a bike, you don't think so much about the bicycle itself as you think about moving faster.) Think Donald Norman in "The Design of Everyday Things" has a term for this: affordability. So I guess, my thought on the usage of the iPad (and any new tech at hand): The learning of the new tech need not be intuitive. But the everyday usage has to seamlessly flow with the given task at hand - so that the tool and the user become "one" with the task. (Just like how a user fumbles with a pair of chopsticks at first, but once he masters it, his chopsticks "become" part of his fingers.) Then such seamless technologies get seamlessly adopted as "cognitive-multipliers".

Some research in the British Journal of Educational Technology that is relevant to some of our initiatives.

A more serious digital divide is when people think that digitizing content makes it elearning. Richard explains the right way to reimagine learning so that learning is powered by technology

Great resource page for IDs and ETs.