"Computer-mediated communication" refers to communication between people that occurs through the medium of the computer, and includes email, instant messages, chat rooms, newsgroups, and blogs. Learning sciences researchers have made great progress in understanding how CMC can be used to connect learners together, and to allow learners to connect with society at large.
We use the acronym WILD to refer to Wireless Interactive Learning Devices. WILD are powerful and small handheld networked computing devices. The smallest handheld computers fit in one hand easily. The user interacts with the device either by touching the screen with a pen-shaped stylus, or by typing with both thumbs on a small keyboard known as a thumb-pad keyboard. The largest are the size of a paperback book and have a keyboard that is large enough to type on with all ten fingers. Their low price point and high usability has captured the imagination of educators and learning scientists. The
Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is an emerging branch of the learning sciences concerned with studying how people can learn together with the help of computers. As we will see in this essay, such a simple statement conceals considerable complexity. The interplay of learning with technology turns out to be quite intricate. The inclusion of collaboration, computer mediation, and distance education has problematized the very notion of learning and called into question prevailing assumptions about how to study it.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Gerry StahlTimothy KoschmannDan Suthers
The days of desktop dominance are over. Mobile has swiftly risen to become the leading digital platform, with total activity on smartphones and tablets accounting for an astounding 60 percent of digital media time spent in the U.S. The fuel driving mobile’s relentless growth is primarily app usage, which alone makes up a majority of total digital media engagement at 52 percent. In this report we let the numbers and charts do most of the talking, as the story of today’s app landscape is told through the visualization of comScore’s mobile data.
Knowledge building, as elaborated in this chapter, represents an attempt to refashion education in a fundamental way, so that it becomes a coherent effort to initiate students into a knowledge creating culture. Accordingly, it involves students not only developing knowledge-building competencies but also coming to see themselves and their work as part of the civilization-wide effort to advance knowledge frontiers. In this context, the Internet becomes more than a desktop library and a rapid mail-delivery system. It becomes the first realistic means for students to connect with civilization
What are our youth using their mobile phones to do? They text message, play games, listen to music, and take pictures, and that's only the beginning. Teenagers are the ones establishing the rules of this new mobile culture ad hoc. To them, the mobile phone is not a device for making phone calls, but rather, a 'lifeline' to the social network and an instrument for coordinating their everyday life. Can this tool, that has seemingly ensconced itself into youth culture, become a tool for informal science learning? This paper will summarize findings that have been collected as part of the Science
In this article we examine educational assessment in the 21st century. Digital learning environments emphasize learning in action. In such environments, assessments need to focus on performance in context rather than on tests of abstracted and isolated skills and knowledge. Digital learning environments also provide the potential to assess performance in context, because digital tools make it possible to record rich streams of data about learning in progress. But what assessment methods will use this data to measure mastery of complex problem solving -- the kind of thinking in action that
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TEAM MEMBERS:
David Williamson ShafferDavid HatfieldGina Navoa SvarovskyPadraig NashAran NultyElizabeth BagleyKen FrankAndre RuppRobert Mislevy
New technologies, such as multi-touch tables, increasingly provide shareable interfaces where multiple people can simultaneously interact, enabling co-located groups to collaborate more flexibly than using single personal computers. Soon, these technologies will make their way into the classroom. However, little is known about what kinds of learning activities they will effectively support that other technologies, such as mobile devices, whiteboards, and personal computers, are currently unable to do. We suggest that one of the most promising uses of shareable interfaces is to support learning
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jochen RickYvonne RogersCaroline HaigNicola Yuill
This article draws from the literature on self-determination and Universal Design for Learning principles to set forth the theory that students identified as having learning disabilities may be environmentally disadvantaged and their learning difficulties exasperated by the traditional classroom learning environment. Alternatively, the digital learning environment found in simulation video games is designed so participants can be autonomous, self-directed, goal-oriented and successful. These are, coincidentally, the salient features of a technology-enhanced learning environment designed with
Evidence for the present study derives from a sample of 574 middle-grades students that participated in the River City Project (RCP) in academic year 2006-07. Central to the RCP is an open-ended video-game-like learning innovation for teaching inquiry-based science and twenty-first century skills. Results of investigation into the students' neomillennial learning styles revealed that, on average, students who (1) prefer creating and sharing artifacts through the Internet are well-suited for learning about disease transmission and scientific problem solving skills in the RCP; and (2) students
This paper examines the benefits and obstacles to young people's open-ended and unrestricted access to technological environments. While children and youth are frequently seen as threatened or threatening in this realm, their playful engagements suggest that they are self-possessed social actors, able to negotiate most of its challenges effectively. Whether it is proprietary software, the business practices of some technology providers, or the separation of play, work, and learning in most classrooms, the spatial-temporality of young people's access to and use of technology is often configured
Technology designers are faced with the challenge of accounting for the breadth of children's experiences in their interactions with technology, even as the field of human-computer interaction has maintained a primary focus on "use" as the main interaction paradigm. To address this challenge, I propose that designers account for children's relationships with technology by considering six facets of interactional constructivist development: embodied, situated, dynamic, intentional, social, and moral. To support this proposal, I first review the intellectual development of interactional