Education Commons^™

Lifelong Learning: A Strategic Analysis Of Education, Iwasan D. Kejawa Ed.D

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Are outdated traditional education, distance education, information technological infrastructure, partnerships and financial resources common problematic issues facing many of the educational institutions in our world today? With this into considerations, are these issues vital in order to stabilize the political and economic embroidery of an institution or organization, and its psychological and sociological awareness? What is it that is to be learned and thought in our institutions and, what really is lifelong education; and how is to be carried out in the society of ours? It is found that education may be the training of the mind to perform desire …

The Challenge Of Chinese Character Acquisition: Leveraging Multimodality In Overcoming A Centuries-Old Problem, Justin Olmanson, Xianquan Chrystal Liu

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

For learners unfamiliar with character-based or logosyllabic writing systems, the process of developing literacy in written Chinese poses significantly more obstacles than learning to read and write in a second language like Portuguese or Cherokee. In this article we describe the linguistic nature of Chinese characters; we outline traditional and new media approaches to Chinese character acquisition; we unpack how multimodal technologies combined with computational linguistics might be used to provide new types of support for Chinese character learning; and we offer a design that incorporates several of these concepts into a digital writing support tool that could work as …

What Does Motivated Mean? Re-Presenting Learning, Technology, And Motivation In Middle Schools Via New Ethnographic Writing, Justin Olmanson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This article offers a critique of the way middle schoolers are often positioned as generalizable objects that can be acted upon to produce measurable increases in motivation and learning. The critique invites a reconsideration and cultural analysis of some of the dominant discourses and perceptions of technology, young adolescence, and the study of motivation. The use of New Ethnographic Writing—a method that performs a cultural critique via extended scenes—connects to the roles and status of motivation, technology, and educational research methods deployed within public schools. Coupled with weak theory, this approach offers a way to understand young adolescents as navigating …

Visualizing Revision: Leveraging Student-Generated Between-Draft Diagramming Data In Support Of Academic Writing Development, Justin Olmanson, Katrina Kennett, Alecia Magnifico, Sarah Mccarthey, Bill Cope, Duane Searsmith, Mary Kalantzis

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Once writers complete a first draft, they are often encouraged to evaluate their writing and prioritize what to revise. Yet, this process can be both daunting and difficult. This study looks at how students used a semantic concept mapping tool to re-present the content and organization of their initial draft of an informational text. We examine the processes of students at two different schools as they remediated their own texts and how those processes impacted the development of their rhetorical, conceptual, and communicative capacities. Our analysis suggests that students creating visualizations of their completed first drafts scaffolded self-evaluation. The mapping …

New Media Literacies, Justin Olmanson, Zoe Falls

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

From Pleistocene-epoch cave drawings to texts produced via movable type, to on-demand video content accessed via personal mobile devices, the means of message production and distribution has expanded from exclusive and local to inclusive and international. During the same period, media have evolved from one-way mono-modal communication to interactive, multimodal, social experiences.

New media platforms provide educators with the means to connect academic literacy with learner literacies. A growing body of new media literacies research highlights some of the ways educators have integrated new media literacies into learning spaces without colonizing learner practices to align solely with conventional literacy goals …

Icontact: The Digital Feedback Process In A University Setting, Kathleen M. Wilson, Laurie A. Friedrich

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This practitioner research in the form of a case study examined the digital feedback process related to teacher growth in learning and instruction. Graduate students fulfilled course requirements utilizing iPad applications to generate assignments, coach undergraduate preservice teachers, and tutor low performing readers. Course instructors provided online written feedback on all written assignments. An analysis of data through the perspective of the formative process allowed four themes to emerge: (a) teacher learning through iContact, (b) immediate digital feedback and enduring learning, (c) creating an affinity space, and (d) transfer with a ripple effect.

The Techno-Pedagogical Pivot: Designing And Implementing A Digital Writing Tool, Justin Olmanson, Katrina Kennett, Bill Cope

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In educational technology, the idea of innovation is usually tethered to contemporary technological inventions and emerging technologies. Yet, using long-known technologies in ways that are pedagogically or experientially new can reposition them as emerging educational technologies. In this study we explore how a subtle pivot in pedagogical thinking led to an innovative education technology. We describe the design and implementation of an online writing tool that scaffolds students in the evaluation of their own informational texts. We think about how pathways to innovation can emerge from pivots, namely a leveraging of longstanding practices in novel ways has the potential to …

Beliefs Of Science Teachers Toward The Teaching Of Science/Technological/Social Issues: Are We Addressing National Standards?, Jon E. Pedersen, Samuel Totten

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

As science educators, we must view the changing nature of society brought on by technology and the global nature of society as an impetus to reexamine the nature of science instruction. We have been bestowed with the responsibility to educate students on a variety of topics that less than two decades ago did not exist. Many of these social issues are controversial in nature and are directly linked to the local, regional, national, and global communities in which we exist. However, including these social issues in the extant curriculum of science has, at best, been limited. This is true even …