Designing Learning Technology

Fri, 30 May 2003

Comment on the Education Technology Plan
From the press release: The U.S. Department of Education today announced that it is calling for broad participation and input from a wide array of education stakeholders in crafting a new National Education Technology Plan, as required by the recently enacted No Child Left Behind law. The department is actively seeking advice from a variety of constituencies in education, especially students, parents, K-12 educators, colleges and university leaders, and business and industry. Individuals and organizations are being asked to identify and communicate to the Department of Education their top issues, priorities, concerns, and barriers that need to be addressed for technology to improve teaching and learning in the 21st century. Interested parties can give their input by visiting the National Education Technology Plan's Web site at http://www.NationalEdTechPlan.org, and clicking on the "Participate in the Plan" link.

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Some Instructional Design pointers
Ed Tech Dev points to a useful reference pages for instructional design theory and practice. My background is in Learning Sciences, not ID, but there is substantial goal overlap between the fields and it's important for me to understand how practitioners in ID approach the design process. It's also the case that some researchers within LS have begun to focus on design principles as a framework for usable knowledge in the field. The ID community has wrestled with design principles for years, and its important that LS learns from their experience.

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More on Florida Testing
Following up on their piece on the impact of Florida's high stakes tests, the NYTimes reports that a decorated kindergarten teacher is stepping down because she feels the pressure of standardized testing reaching all the way down to her classroom.

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Runtime Revolution 2.0 released
Runtime Revolution 2.0, a cross-platform development tool in the HyperCard tradition, is out. This looks like the most promising current xTalk-based development environment, and because it's an accessible, forgiving, interpreted environment, is definitely worth exploring as a platform for project-based ed tech design classes.

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