Designing Learning Technology

Tue, 10 Dec 2002

Radio post #142
A new report from the Pew Internet and American Life project examines email at work.

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Mon, 09 Dec 2002

Radio post #141
In the midst of California's state budget crisis comes news that the Oakland school district is broke and is asking for a $100M bailout. The article touches on several reasons for the crisis, including the loss of students to charter schools and distant suburbs, fiscal mismanagement, and the expense of implementing reforms by hiring experienced teachers and reducing class sizes.

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Radio post #140
Business Week reports that the software industry is taking usability more seriously.

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Tue, 03 Dec 2002

Radio post #139
Ken Hay's Virtual Reality Solar System project makes the local news. Ken's been working on the use of VR in education for years, and is also doing some interesting work on how to best use digital video to support educational research.

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Radio post #138
Ed Week notes a new report recommending that the government promote randomized trials methodologies within education research. Randomized trials may work well for medicine, where treatments and outcomes are fairly simply defined, but presuming that the only means to achieve "scientific-based" research is this clinical model is missing much of what is hard, interesting, and important about educational research. The latest issue of Educational Researcher has several related articles about the nature of scientific research in education. David Berliner's piece in particular (available as a PDF) is worth reading; he does a good job of explaining why science is more than one method and how the nature of educational research limits the usefulness of randomized trials.

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