Education Commons^™

Learning To Teach With Technologies What Pre-Service Teachers Say About Their Experiences, Kathryn Moyle

Professor Kathryn Moyle (consultant)

It is the intention of the Australian Government, that over the next five years, as a result of the Digital Education Revolution, all secondary schools in Australia will have achieved computer to student ratios of one-to-one. This investment in infrastructure brings with it many challenges. Two of these facing Australian educators are: In what ways can advantage be made of such a significant investment in schools’ infrastructure?; and What preparation do pre-service teachers require to enable them to meaningfully include technologies in their classroom activities? To provide some insights into these two questions, this paper draws on data collected from …

National Conversations: Listening To Students’ Views Of Learning With Technologies, Kathryn Moyle

Professor Kathryn Moyle (consultant)

The Digital Education Revolution is a key policy plank of the Rudd government. It is intended to develop students’ capabilities to learn with technologies. Little Australian research though, has focused upon the views and expectations of students about their learning that includes technologies. This paper draws on the findings from the 2008 research project, Listening to students and educators views of learning with technologies. This Australian national research project, funded by the Department for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) set out to listen to and analyse what Australian students in primary and secondary schools, in vocational education and training …

Use Of Writing With Symbols 2000 Software To Facilitate Emergent Literacy Development, Howard P. Parette, Nichole Boeckmann, Jack J. Hourcade

Jack Hourcade

This paper outlines the use of the Writing with Symbols 2000 software to facilitate emergent literacy development. The program’s use of pictures incorporated with text has great potential to help young children with and without disabilities acquire fundamental literacy concepts about print, phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, vocabulary development, and comprehension. The flexibility and features of the software allow early childhood professionals to create a variety of early literacy tools for the classroom, including worksheets, storybooks, and interactive activities.

Using Clicker 5 To Enhance Emergent Literacy In Young Learners, Howard P. Parette, Jack Hourcade, Jenny M. Dinelli, Nichole M. Boeckmann

Jack Hourcade

Best practices in emergent literacy instruction for young children acknowledge and facilitate the smooth progression between children’s early engagement with print materials and subsequent fuller literacy mastery. In so doing, model programs target five key emergent literacy skills. The rapid rise in the breadth and depth of educational technology, including computer software, is offering early childhood education professionals new and powerful tools in teaching early literacy. This paper offers a brief review of best practices in emergent literacy, notes the growth of technology in this instruction, and examines the potential contributions of one specific software program, Clicker 5, in helping …

Using Microsoft® Powerpoint™ To Support Emergent Literacy Skill Development For Young Children At-Risk Or Who Have Disabilities, Howard Phillips Parette, Jack J. Hourcade, Nichole M. Boeckmann, Craig Blum

Jack Hourcade

In the 21st century, “Digital Children” (Edyburn, 2002) are growing up in a world rich with technology, including cell phones, iPods, email, PalmPilots, Web sites, discussion boards, chat rooms, the Internet, and electronic toys and learning games (Siraj-Blatchford & Whitebread, 2003). Young children whose families use technology acquire knowledge of and skills in language and literacy in part through exposure to technology in the home (Jewitt, 2006). For example, McGee and Richgels (2006) observed that many young children become aware of the existence of print and its use by their families in their daily lives through screen presentations on the …

Connecting People With Online Resources: The Instructional Architect, Mimi Recker, Andrew Walker, Heather Leary, M. Robertshaw

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

The National Science Foundation (nsf.gov) has funded a large initiative to catalog collections of high-quality online resources into the National Science Digital Library (nsdl.org). The mission of the NSDL is to help improve education for all teachers and students. The purpose of this module is to help you find high-quality online resources, learn strategies for incorporating them into a free software tool called the Instructional Architect, and use these projects in an instructional situation. In this module, you will learn to access online resources and to use tools to help solve instructional or learning problems or issues that you currently …

Structuring And Scaffolding Learners’ Verbal-And-Visual-Thinking, Yukari Makino, Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

In attempting to understand how learners might be supported in developing their multiliteracies, the authors reflected on the educational activity of creating visual products with technology from the perspectives of structuring and scaffolding. This paper presents a case study of two sets of activities that were implemented among university students in Japan. In the preliminary study, the students used a theoretical tool for creating visual products with the help of structures, but scaffolding by the teacher was spontaneous. In the main study, on the other hand, while the students used the same theoretical structure, the scaffolding by the teacher was …

A Study Of Effective Evaluation Models And Practices For Technology Supported Physical Learning Spaces, Ian Pearshouse, Brett Bligh, Elizabeth Brown, Sarah Lewthwaite, Rebecca Garber, Elizabeth Hartnell-Young, Mike Sharples

Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

The aim of the JELS project was to identify and review the tools, methods and frameworks used to evaluate technology supported or enhanced physical learning spaces. A key objective was to develop the sector knowledgebase on innovation and emerging practice in the evaluation of learning spaces, identifying innovative methods and approaches beyond traditional post-occupancy evaluations and surveys that have dominated this area to date. The intention was that the frameworks and guidelines discovered or developed from this study could inform all stages of the process of implementing a technology supported physical learning space. The study was primarily targeted at the …

Skills For The Knowledge Economy: The Trajectories Of Technology-Based Skills Development Within Young People’S Own Contexts, Anne-Marie Chase

Dr Anne-Marie Chase