Education Commons^™

Exploring The 'Tool Metaphor' For Using Digital Technology In Teaching Students With Autism Spectrum Disorders (Asd), Roselyn M. Dixon, Irina Verenikina

Rose Dixon

Since computer technologies entered the educational domain, a number of metaphors have been introduced in the literature to explain this newly emerged phenomenon to educators in familiar terms. This chapter explores the ways that the conceptualisation of educational technologies as a teaching 'tool' can assist our understanding of the implementation of a new digital technology, the interactive whiteboard (IWB), in teaching children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The tool metaphor relates to a socio-cultural concept of a tool mediated purposeful human activity as a unit of analysis in educational research (Vygotsky, 1978). The activity model (Engestrom, 1991) was adopted in …

‘Digital Play’ Is Here To Stay … But Don’T Let Go Of Real Lego Yet, Irina Verenikina

I. Verenikina

Playing with building blocks such as Lego has been an established part of early childhood education for many years. Educators and theorists agree that building blocks or constructive play provide a wide range of avenues for enhancing learning and development in the early years, but the increased availability and accessibility of mobile digital technologies has seen children more frequently engage in virtual or “digital” play, often leaving behind traditional forms of play with physical objects in physical spaces. So what might children lose – or gain – during this transition from physical to digital play? Lego, the best known producer …

The Digital Technology In The Learning Of Students With Autism Spectrum Disorders (Asd) In Applied Classroom Settings, Kathleen Tanner, Roselyn M. Dixon, Irina Verenikina

I. Verenikina

This paper describes a research study that is a stepping stone to further research on the affordances of digital technologies in the learning of students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The study is framed around the modern understanding of technologies as cognitive tools for learning based on the theory of social and cultural mediation of children’s development and learning (Vygotsky, 1978), together with Activity Theory (Engestrom, 2001). The study focuses on the day-to-day reality of the use of computer and other digital technologies to assist the classroom learning of children with ASD. A series of observations, semi-structured interviews with teachers …

Exploring The 'Tool Metaphor' For Using Digital Technology In Teaching Students With Autism Spectrum Disorders (Asd), Roselyn M. Dixon, Irina Verenikina

I. Verenikina

Since computer technologies entered the educational domain, a number of metaphors have been introduced in the literature to explain this newly emerged phenomenon to educators in familiar terms. This chapter explores the ways that the conceptualisation of educational technologies as a teaching 'tool' can assist our understanding of the implementation of a new digital technology, the interactive whiteboard (IWB), in teaching children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The tool metaphor relates to a socio-cultural concept of a tool mediated purposeful human activity as a unit of analysis in educational research (Vygotsky, 1978). The activity model (Engestrom, 1991) was adopted in …

A Pedagogy Of Persistence: Access Through Arrangement In The Age Of New Media, Jennifer Kontny

Theses and Dissertations

Fostering access in our writing classrooms has been a centrally important goal in the field of rhetoric and composition since the social turn in the 1980s. As a means of creating classroom spaces that help students gain access to new identities and ways of being in the world, those in our discipline have long privileged pedagogies that focus on invention. This dissertation traces the work of those in diverse areas of the field in order to show our wide-spread favoring of invention (or creativity, discovery, and the "new"). Unfortunately, I argue that the attention we have paid to invention has …

There Is An App For That: Uses Of Print And Digital Materials In The Lives Of Three Preschoolers, Rebecca Hickman Mccraw

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic study examined the uses of print and digital materials in the lives of three preschoolers over a five-month period of time in the children’s home and community contexts in the southeast region of the United States. The research question asked: What can I learn about the literacy practices of three preschoolers as they use print and digital materials in their worlds? The children were the primary focus of the research, but adults (specifically, the children’s mothers) also served as informants. Grounded in sociocultural theory and informed by constructivist and media theories, the study is important because, while we …

Parental Perceptions Of The Influence Of Digital Media And Technology On Children's Reading Habits At Home, Kurt W. Johnson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study explored how parents from six participating families in Northern Utah felt about the influence of technology and media on their children’s reading at home. Each family was interviewed about their feelings, filled out a survey about the amount of technology devices in the home, and took photographs of the areas in the home where their children read or used technology. Additionally, each family kept a journal recording the technology and reading activities their children participated in over a 1-week period

Parents talked about how their childhood experiences influenced them to create rules for technology and as well as …

Art In The Age Of Networks - Networks As A Way Of Thinking, Rabeya Jalil

Higher Education Resources

The theme-based and material-based units (with lessons and lesson sequences) propose a curriculum for one academic semester in an undergraduate visual arts school (for sophomore, 2nd year, or junior, 3rd year students). However the lessons could be modified and tailored to any age group developmentally. This curricular framework aims to foster collaboration (within individuals, materials and disciplines), explore networked pedagogy and networks in pedagogy as a collaborating force through and with the visual arts and explore the materiality of the code and the digital media. The course also engages with new media theory and literature, investigates the materiality of the …

Big Data Visualities, Ron Wigglesworth

High School Resources

Make sense of abstract Big Data numbers by creating concrete, static or kinetic images/visualities which communicate or translate the meaning of the numbers to a human scale of understanding. The subject of the visualities should be created in each student’s artist voice, with the freedom and empowerment to express their own social, economic, political and ecological concerns so his/her work has personal meaning and strength of concern. Employ art hand skills in 21st century postmodern art by using Big Data to illustrate interdisciplinary social justice concerns in visualities, created to move a viewer to action.

Digital Marketing Plan, Mary Lawlor

Assessment & Feedback Cases

Semester 1: Prepare a digital marketing communications plan for the Irish Times Newspaper. Competition for prize money. The groups present their proposals to the Irish Times at the end.  Semester 2: Google Adwords competition: partnered with DIT’s Hothouse companies to prepare Adwords plans – group plus individual elements. Peer reviewed, and competition.

‘Digital Play’ Is Here To Stay … But Don’T Let Go Of Real Lego Yet, Irina Verenikina

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Playing with building blocks such as Lego has been an established part of early childhood education for many years. Educators and theorists agree that building blocks or constructive play provide a wide range of avenues for enhancing learning and development in the early years, but the increased availability and accessibility of mobile digital technologies has seen children more frequently engage in virtual or “digital” play, often leaving behind traditional forms of play with physical objects in physical spaces. So what might children lose – or gain – during this transition from physical to digital play? Lego, the best known producer …

Digital Storytelling: Capturing The Stories Of Mentors In Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience, Lisa Kervin, Samantha Mcmahon, Sarah Elizabeth O'Shea, Valerie Harwood

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Digital stories are often considered in terms of artistic forms, as teaching and learning tools, and for their emancipatory capacity to capture the stories and experiences of marginalised social groups. This case joins the recent move to reconceptualise the digital story by positing it as a useful research method that generates rich multimodal narrative data. As a new method in social science research, it seems, at least so far, to raise more questions than it answers. Such methodological questions might include the following: What 'type' of digital story to use? How do you analyse, theorise and/or account for the overall …

Digital Media, Catherine Barry-Ryan

Assessment & Feedback Cases

Students produce a short (3 to 4 minute) group (4/group) video production, detailing a biochemistry concept. The group decides the choice of content during the initial meetings and storyboarding of the idea(s). The content must address, in some way, a biochemical concept related to TFBC2001. This concept could be the basis of an important biochemical experiment, a creative explanation of a biochemical hypothesis, addressing a biochemical misconception, or exploring a biochemical model. The video can contain any form of multimedia (video, sound, audio, animation etc.) but it must be visual, engaging and creative.

Proprioception And Literacy In The Digital Realm, Paul Michael Rappoccio

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Drawing on research in the fields of neuroscience, reading cognition, and the history of writing, the author explores the condition of reading today. Rather than accepting the apocalyptic pronouncements that the Internet is "dumbing down" current readers, the author argues for a more nuanced understanding of the effects of digital media. He argues that the literacies needed for the new digital realm are not new, but are literacies developed over thousands of years. The author argues for the need of more education and instruction in the use of digital media, and that the digital realm requires new proprioceptive (spatial awareness) …