Designing Learning Technology (archive)

Clever Prototype for Collaborative Video Chats

UNC researchers have a clever prototype for collaborating on computer-based work. Two remote participants share a desktop, and the video feeds are blended with the desktop graphic. As a result, you can physically point (with your finger, not the mouse) at something on screen, and your collaborator can see what you're pointing at.

The other nice thing about the prototype that makes it interesting is its low use of resources -- they're doing this with a couple iSight-class video cameras on Macs.

Comments Removed

I doubt this is a loss: no one was making comments, I wasn't checking for or reading comments, and the comment spambots finally found the comments. All of which leads to their removal. Since the main purpose of the comments was feedback, I added an email link to the lefthand column. Drop me a note if you want to speak your mind.

Educational Researcher 33.4

Contents of ER 33.4 (May 2004). This is not a permalink, it's a link to the most current issue. ER issues don't get a permalink until they go in the archives.

Ecologies of Parental Engagement in Urban Education. Angela Calabrese Barton, Corey Drake, Jose Gustavo Perez, Kathleen St. Louis, and Magnia George.

Must It Be This Way? Ten Rules for Keeping Your Audience Awake During Conferences. Sam Wineburg.

Dissecting the Anatomy of African-American Inequality: The Impact of Racial Stigma and Social Origins on Group Status and College Achievement. Larry L. Rowley, University of Michigan.

Sam's article (pdf) is a must read, but one wonders why ER chose to publish it immediately after AERA.

Cognition and Instruction, Vol. 22, No. 2

Contents of CI 22.2. Abstracts available via the link. Article downloads require subscription.

Inventing to Prepare for Future Learning: The Hidden Efficiency of Encouraging Original Student Production in Statistics Instruction. Daniel L. Schwartz, Taylor Martin.

Paths to Learning Ten-Structured Understandings of Teen Sums: Addition Solution Methods of Japanese Grade 1 Students. Aki Murata.

Children's Understanding of Scientific Inquiry: Their Conceptualization of Uncertainty in Investigations of Their Own Design. Kathleen E. Metz.

SubEthaEdit 2.0

~~Hydra~~SubEthaEdit 2.0 is out. SubEthaEdit is a marvelous (and free) collaborative text editor. At Inquirium, we use it, among other things, to collaboratively take minutes during telecons. It lets all participants edit the same document in real time with no restrictions. It's even been used at conferences during session as a sort of impromptu shared notetaking tool.

ICLS Early Registration ends May 15

Yikes, it's sneaking up on us. Early registration for ICLS 2004 (in Santa Monica this year) closes on May 15. Sign up now, save a hundred bucks.

Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Vol. 41, No. 5

Contents of JRST 41.5. Abstracts available via the link. Article downloads require subscription.

Using situated cognition theory in researching student experience of the workplace. Jennifer Case, Jeff Jawitz.

Teachers' conceptions and misconceptions concerning three natural phenomena. Eve Kikas.

Young children learning about living things: A case study of conceptual change from ontological and social perspectives. Grady Venville.

Folk theories of inquiry: How preservice teachers reproduce the discourse and practices of an atheoretical scientific method. Mark Windschitl.

Informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues: A critical review of research. Troy D. Sadler.

Educational Technology Research & Development Vol. 51, No. 4

Contents of ETR&D 51.4. Abstracts publicly available via the link; article download for AECT members only.

Formative Research on the Heuristic Task Analysis Process. Ji-Yeon Lee, Charles M. Reigeluth.

Optimal Presentation of Graphic Organizers and Text: A Case for Large Bites? Daniel H. Robinson, Stephanie B. Corliss, Angela M. Bush, Stephan J. Bera, Tammy Tomberlin.

Knowledge Management Support for Teachers. John M. Carroll, Chun Wei Choo, Daniel R. Dunlap, Philip L. Isenhour, Stephen T. Kerr, Allan MacLean, Mary Beth Rosson.

Scaffolding Reflection and Articulation of Scientific Explanations in a Data-Rich, Project-Based Learning Environment: An Investigation of Progress Portfolio. Susan M. Land, Carla Zembal-Saul.

An Interactive Online Course: A Collaborative Design Model. Mahnaz Moallem.

East Africa Meets West Africa: Fostering an Online Community of Inquiry for Educators in Ghana and Uganda. R.W. Burniske.

Self-Construal, Facework, and Conflict Styles Among Cultures in Online Learning Environments. Sharon L. Walsh, Ethel Gregory, Yvonne Lake, and Charlotte N. Gunawardena.

Educational Researcher Vol. 33, Issue 3

Here's the contents of ER 33.3. A couple notes about linking to current issues of ER. ER does not make archival links available until an issue is no longer current. So this link will break when the next issue comes out, but it's pretty easy to navigate from the current issue to find back issues. The second note is that abstracts are not available online, but the entire articles are freely downloadable as .pdf files. So links below are to .pdf files.

Collective Efficacy Beliefs: Theoretical Developments, Empirical Evidence, and Future Directions. Roger D. Goddard, Wayne K. Hoy, and Anita Woolfolk Hoy.

Researching English Language Literacy Development in Schools. Margaret R. Hawkins.

An Interview with Gene V. Glass. Conducted by Daniel H. Robinson.

Book Review: Color and the Academy. William G. Tierney, James T. Minor, and Kristan M. Venegas.

Cognition and Instruction Vol. 22 Issue 1

Contents of C&I 22.1. Subscription required to download articles.

Observational Learning and Its Effects on the Orchestration of Writing Processes. Martine A. H. Braaksma, Gert Rijlaarsdam, Huub van den Bergh, Bernadette H. A. M van Hout-Wolters.

Analogy Use in Eighth-Grade Mathematics Classrooms. Lindsey E. Richland, Keith J. Holyoak, James W. Stigler.

What's So Good About Problem-Based Learning? Noel Capon, Deanna Kuhn.

Students' Coordination of Knowledge When Learning to Model Physical Situations. Andrew Izsak.

Marian Koshland Science Museum

Hey, there's a new science museum in DC! The Marian Koshland Science Museum just opened. Here's the overview.

Opening April 2004, the Marian Koshland Science Museum will feature state-of-the-art exhibits that present the complexities of science in an engaging and accessible way to the general public. Best enjoyed by visitors ages 13 and older, the museum will explore current scientific issues at the core of many of the nation's public policy decisions, as presented in reports by the National Academies.

Sounds interesting, and that they may try to go into greater depth than museums that cater to younger visitors. I wonder if that will change the amount of time visitors spend at each exhibit, which is normally quite low.

And it'll be really interesting to see their treatment of "current scientific issues at the core of many of the nation's public policy decisions," given this administration's disregard for scientific findings when making public policy decisions.

Science Education Vol. 88, Issue 3 (May 2004)

Contents of Science Education 88.3. Subscription required to download articles.

Emotion metaphors and emotional labor in science teaching. Michalinos Zembylas.

The practical epistemologies of the classroom: A study of laboratory work. Per-Olof Wickman.

Explanation-driven inquiry: Integrating conceptual and epistemic scaffolds for scientific inquiry. William A. Sandoval, Brian J. Reiser.

Using concept mapping for assessing and promoting relational conceptual change in science. Xiufeng Liu.

Inquiry in science education: International perspectives. Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, Saouma BouJaoude, Richard Duschl, Norman G. Lederman, Rachel Mamlok-Naaman, Avi Hofstein, Mansoor Niaz, David Treagust, Hsiao-lin Tuan.

Are language-based activities in science effective for all students, including low achievers? Léonard P. Rivard.

Difficulties in learning the introductory magnetic field theory in the first years of university. Jenaro Guisasola, José M. Almudí, José L. Zubimendi.

Exploring visuospatial thinking in chemistry learning. Hsin-Kai Wu, Priti Shah.

Journal of the Learning Sciences, Vol. 13, No. 2

As promised, I'm starting to post current journal listings. We're starting off with JLS 13.2. Links connect to abstracts and detailed citation information. From there, you can download a PDF of the article if you or your institution subscribe.

The Real Story Behind Story Problems: Effects of Representations on Quantitative Reasoning. Kenneth R. Koedinger, Mitchell J. Nathan.

The Bystander Effect: A Lens for Understanding Patterns of Participation. James M. Hudson, Amy S. Bruckman.

Learning by Seeing by Doing: Arithmetic Word Problems. Sylvia Weber-Russell, Mark D. LeBlanc.

Re-Assessing School Standards. Timothy Koschmann.

Beyond Rhetoric? Three Books and the Educational Standards Debate. Marshall S. Smith, Gayle S. Christensen.

Standards and Equity. Chandra Muller.

Educational Standards: Mapping Who We Are and Are to Become. Thomas S. Popkewitz.

Standards, Standards, Standards. William Ayers, James O'Brien.

Basecamp

Inquirium has been evaluating a variety of solutions for collaborative project management. The goal is to find something that's easy to use and makes it easy for clients and our internal project team to keep track of progress, milestones, to dos, etc. Basecamp (found via Boing Boing) is worth a close look: the interface is clean, and it seems designed to integrate nicely with other online tools.

Internet Environments for Science Education

The KIE book is finally out! Internet Environments for Science Education describes the research behind the Knowledge Integration Environment (KIE) project and its primarily offspring WISE. There's also a chapter by yours truly discussing the CILT Synergy Research project, which overlapped with WISE and sought to apply knowledge integration principles to the design of new water quality curricula in WISE.

Here's the back cover blurb from Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar.

Mining the ambitious and prolific program of research conducted by Professor Linn and her colleagues, E. Davis and P. Bell, this volume offers a broad range of intellectual and material resources for supporting the design, enactment, and evaluation of inquiry-based science teaching to advance students' scientific concepts and reasoning. It is distinguished by its principled treatment of the affordances of technology in interplay with the rich, dynamic, and complex contexts of classroom communities.

More on Software Marketing

Joel recommends this book: The Product Marketing Handbook for Software.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again ... nobody knows more about marketing in the shrinkwrapped software industry than Rick Chapman, and the new fourth edition of his book is the only place you can go to find a complete encylopedia of just about everything there is to know about marketing software. There's really nothing else that compares and if you're trying to market software you really have to read this book.

Online Marketing 101

Ars Technica has a nice article on online marketing strategies. The ideas are useful for anyone trying to drive more traffic to a web site, or trying to sell software online.

Electric Company Archive

Via Boing Boing, a pointer to a site featuring audio and video from the 70s-era kids' show The Electric Company. I remember watching this and Zoom. (Zoom appears to be back on the air in a new, post-90s version.)

Amazon Going After Google

This is interesting. Looks like Amazon wants to get into the search business. There are a few relatively new Google competitors that I've been exploring -- this Tech Review article describes most of them -- and it'll be interesting to see how things shake out. Google's been the unquestioned top dog for a few years now.

Tracking Journals

I'm going to start posting new journal issue table of contents as they appear for the journals listed on my sidebar. This is primarily for myself; I'm finding that I'm falling behind in terms of tracking new publications and storing them here is a good way to remind myself of what I need to be reading. Hopefully this will be useful to others, since most journal publishers aren't offering RSS feeds of their content. (Erlbaum at least will send me email when new issues come out, but it doesn't look like Wiley will even do that.) I'll get the current issue contents posted later this week.

Google to Search Academic Archives

When Google started indexing PDF files as well as web pages, its ability to find academic papers went up significantly. But the signal to noise ratio was still really high. I've found that if I'm looking for a specific paper and know a short phrase or quote from that paper, I can find it very fast, but using Google for more general lit searches did not work well. Now comes news that Google is working with universities to provide a means to search custom archives of scholarly materials. That's exciting!

Virtual Schools Facing Challenge in Florida

Wired reports on issues surrounding the continued funding of virtual schools in Florida. I was a bit surprised to learn that the program is not supplemental; rather, students attending the virtual school do not attend an actual school. So it seems like structured home schooling. This is a different model than the one I'm familiar with, Virtual High School, which offers students courses that are not available at the local school. I much prefer the supplemental model, because students benefit so much from face to face interaction with students and teachers.

CILT Knowledge Network shutting down

The CILT Knowledge Network, a repository of people, places, syllabi, and references for the learning technologies community, is shutting down. Its leadership is encouraging community members to migrate over to LESTER. Here's the announcement.

To continue to develop a knowledge networking resource for the learning sciences, CILTKN is joining forces with LESTER (Learning Science and Technology Repository) run by Rice University under the direction of Dr. Lisa Spiro. LESTER is a resource for the learning sciences and technology community to locate and interact with innovative research projects and researchers. LESTER is planning to integrate several of CILTKN's features, including its syllabi collection, online bibliography, listing of research projects and centers, and bulletin board for collaborations. LESTER will not continue CILTKN's email forwarding service.

Evolution Notes

Two notes touching on evolution and science education. The Panda's Thumb is a new weblog that is "dedicated to explaining the theory of evolution, critiquing the claims of the anti-evolution movement, and defending the integrity of science and science education in America and around the world." Also, Ron Anderson has a new book out, Religion and Spirituality in the Public School Curriculum.

My new book, Religion and Spirituality in the Public School Curriculum, has been released by Peter Lang Publishing. It deals with the broader context within which evolution is taught and the intellectual work all students do in integrating the understandings they acquire through various epistemologies.

HyperCard: 1987-2004

It's official. In its day, HyperCard generated a phenomenal amount of passionate development within the educational community. Sure, a lot of the stacks folks built weren't very good, but some were, and some of these were built by folks who would never have approached software design through traditional programming languages. HyperCard hit a sweet spot -- an interpreted, accessible scripting language, persistent database, and easily editable UI -- that still hasn't been replicated save by the second- and third-generation xCard clones. RIP.