Education Commons^™

The New Writing Series, Spring 2016, The University Of Maine Honors College

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

In its thirty-fourth consecutive semester of programming, the New Writing Series will host six readings featuring four poets (John Keene, Prageeta Sharma, Divya Victor, and John Yau) and two fiction writers (Emily Fridlund and Joanna Walsh).

These writers are all highly active across the full spectrum of literary activity. They are editors, publishers, and anthologists; translators and tale-tellers; art-makers and trail-blazing scholars.

The New Writing Series brings innovative and adventurous contemporary writing to the University of Maine's flagship campus in Orono on selected Thursdays at 4:30pm.

Caught In The Tractor Beam Of Larger Influences: The Filtration Of Innovation In Education Technology Design, Justin Olmanson, Fitsum Abebe, Valerie Jones, Eric Kyle, Lyrica Lucas, Katie Robbins, Guieswende Rouamba, Xianquan Liu

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

While emerging technologies continue to emerge, research into their use in learning contexts often focuses on a subset of educational practices and ways of using technologies. In this study we begin to explore the extent to which educational designs are influenced by larger societal and education-related factors not usually explicitly considered when designing or identifying technology-supported education experiences for research study. We examine patterns within and between factors via a content analysis across ten years and 19 different journals of published peer-reviewed research on technology-supported writing. Our findings have implications for how researchers, designers, and educators approach technology-supported educational design …

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 …