Education Commons^™

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) in schools is now an intrinsic part of students' learning, both inside and outside the classroom. The adoption and impact of ICT on teaching practice and learning outcomes has been a source of keen interest among government policy makers, school leaders, teachers and researchers worldwide. Research in this field has principally centred on pseudo-scientific comparative studies conducted mainly in the United States and the United Kingdom, with a focus on academic achievement. Few empirical studies have been conducted in Australia, or worldwide, that focus on student attitudinal outcomes framed within a design-based …

The call for quality research into the effectiveness of learning technologies is a common feature in much of the related literature and the broad question of how schools use technology to transform and improve the quality of student learning is one main area of concern. Projects like DECStech have flagged the need for research into student learning outcomes and the changes 'attributable to the use of learning technologies across the full spectrum of learning areas'. This three-year study involves nine schools that received support to embed ICTs throughout mainstream curricula and affords a unique opportunity to measure change. The resulting …

The existence of the World Wide Web clearly provides new horizons for educational research. In particular, one aspect still in its infancy, is the use of the Web to access individuals as research subjects, which is emerging as a major, new research tool. This paper discusses the processes involved in developing online surveys and how these may be administered to participants in a research study however dispersed they may be, provided there is access to the Internet. Although there are distinct advantages in using the Internet as the interface between researcher and researched, there are difficulties too, and these are …

The DECStech 2001 Learning Technologies Project was developed with the major aim of maximising the uptake of purposeful use of technologies to improve student learning outcomes through using a network of nine Discovery and Global Discovery schools. One of the strategies developed to achieve this was the development of an online survey which measured and tracked changes in students' attitudes regarding school, self-esteem and the use of technology in learning. The survey was administered annually over a three-year period to all students in years 5 to 10 in the nine participating schools. This report provides a summary of the data …

This paper briefly describes the path along which current geometry curriculum has come and provides insight into the direction that it may be heading. Software has the potential to take student and teacher out of the world of pen and paper deduction into the universe of interactive investigation. By posing, investigating and extending problem situations, an environment can be established in which students and teachers can recognise the power and usefulness of mathematics.

This paper investigates the effectiveness of technology- based instruction in secondary mathematics, by comparing students' achievements resulting from technology-rich assignments with those achievement resulting from equivalent assignments presented in traditional format. In addition, the development of the technology- rich assignments, from traditional paper- based instruction and within existing curricula, provides an example of the relative ease of integrating technology into the curriculum. Within the context of mathematics, issues of attitude towards computers, motivation and gender differences are examined.