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This article discusses peer apprenticeship learning (PAL) as situated within networked learning communities (NLCs). The context revolves around the diffusion of technologically-mediated learning in Singapore schools, where teachers begin to implement inquiry-oriented learning, consistent with 21st century learning, among students. As these schools have in past practices excelled in performance-driven pedagogies suitable for passing examinations, redesigning curricular resources, assessment, and pedagogical practices towards inquiry-based learning was not insignificant. These teachers required convincing and also significant degrees of apprenticeship. The authors document PAL in action for teachers' epistemic change occurring within networks of teachers from across schools. The article delves into PAL processes, expanding the theory (see Hung, 1999) beyond students to teachers and beyond dyad pairs to communities of teachers. Through PAL situated in NLCs, the article argues that epistemic learning can be diffused across schools, and is an appropriate scaling mechanism, seeing that teacher capacity to enact 21st century learning is key. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the controversies and value in the use of technology for learning. It proposes that as a teaching tool, technology also opens up new possibilities for teachers to design meaningful learning experiences for their students. The appropriate use of technology promises to deepen the learning of traditional literacy, numeracy, and the mastery of subject knowledge. More importantly, technology provides opportunities for the development of 21st century competencies. Jointly, they form the complementary competencies for students to become future-ready. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology-savvy teachers are often the "go to" staff members in schools for their colleagues' technology issues. These teachers are seen as leaders within their schools with respect to technology and often do not understand their peers' difficulties when bringing technology into the classroom. Understanding both the reasons teachers may be reluctant to incorporate technology and ways to address their concerns can only add to the learning environment and professionalism within K--12 schools. This article summarizes the barriers commonly experienced by teachers regarding the integration of technology into their classrooms, with the purpose of assisting teachers to become leaders within their schools to help other teachers meaningfully incorporate technology into their curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most classrooms in the U.S. are composed of students with different learning styles and experiences as well as different achievement levels (Ferguson, 2001). Personalized learning is a unique way of students' learning determined by their own learning style, pace, and needs. Focusing on individual differences, personalized instruction aims to accommodate a variety of students to help them achieve mastery learning and performance (Ferguson, 2001). It is hard to promote students' personalized learning if there is no support for teachers' personalized instruction. The flexibility that technology brings to personalized instruction can help teachers contextualize their teaching practice for student diversity and student accountability for learning (Smith & Throne, 2009). However, the availability of technology itself does not promise effective technology integration for personalized instruction. There is a need for professional development that helps teachers learn to utilize technology for personalized instruction (Fok & Ip, 2006). In this article, the authors propose design guidelines for teacher professional development that aims to promote personalized instruction using a recommendation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that there is no universal way to measure implementation fidelity, instructional designers developing instructional innovations may find themselves faced with the challenge of determining the extent to which teachers' implementation of an instructional model is faithful. This article contends that a faithful implementation is one in which the intent of the design is realized. Based on their research, the authors discuss key issues in designing and implementing new instructional designs, and they offer recommendations to enhance fidelity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes instructional theory that supports post-industrial education and training systems-ones that are customized and learner-centered, in which student progress is based on learning rather than time. The author discusses the importance of problem-based instruction (PBI), identifies some problems with PBI, overviews an instructional theory that addresses those problems, and describes the roles that should be played by the teacher, the learner, and technology in the new paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital video is used to capture and assess a wide range of everyday classroom teaching practices. Generally, these applications are informal in nature and considered either risk-free or risk-neutral by teachers. Increasingly, however, captured video can be scrutinized and assessed by others to determine the presence and/or quality of specific teaching practices. The recent emphasis on teacher accountability, standards-based teaching, documentation of teacher progress, and performance evidence has spawned interest in and pressure for increased use of captured video for external assessment. Several problematic issues have surfaced related to video assessment of teacher practice. Building from the authors' ongoing program of research, this article identifies current and emerging assessment issues and identifies issues in video assessment of teaching practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video has become a popular tool for professional development. Yet, little is known about how to design video-based learning environments that are productive for teacher learning. The author has used video for teacher learning in the context of a video club. In video clubs, teachers meet together on a regular basis to view and discuss video segments that come from their own classrooms. Such environments raise important design issues particularly related to facilitation, including how to select a clip that will afford worthwhile discussions, how to establish norms for viewing and discussing video from one's own and colleagues' classrooms, and how to focus the discussions on important dimensions of teaching and learning. In this article, the author offers a framework for facilitating video clubs, specifically highlighting the role of the facilitators in the meetings themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the learning contribution of networked mobile learning devices in education. According to the author, highly mobile devices can make important information available to teachers in real-time, anywhere in the classroom, and in the form of easy-to-read graphical displays that support classroom decision making. In addition, by supporting important teaching activities, teachers can create a high-performance classroom that supports teachers and the art of teaching, and makes it easier for teachers to do hard things very well.

The article suggests strategies and tools for making better use of the information and knowledge resources available in the teaching profession. The amount of information continues to increase at a fast rate, teachers are finding that traditional methods of organization are not compatible with the vast amount of digital resources available. Therefore, teachers need a knowledge management tool that can integrate multiple types of resources, flexible, can easily be searched, and has a user-friendly interface.

The article discusses the role of technologies which facilitate the mobility in demand-driven learning situations. Learning on demand through mobile technologies has opened up the channels for interaction flexibilities. Learning was bound to formal tradition settings in which e-learning has made gradually available instruction to the workplace. Teacher-education is one example of learning in which wireless and mobile technologies can make a difference in the current conventional methods for professional developments. With mobile learning technologies, individual learner need to be constrained to any particular location place and it also help to re-define the kinds of learning modes and available possibilities.

The article features the Digital Imaging Trek, a model that provides a constructive architecture for students and teachers to build and publish rich sources of digital images, blogs, and digital video through a concentrated focus of experiential educational projects, devised at the School of Technology at Johnson& Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. The model prescribes that off-the-shelf digital image media with valid means to capture a subject experience. Furthermore, the goal of Digital Imaging Trek in the field of education is discussed.

The article features the literature on systemic change and student voice, and makes several arguments in support of student voice. It elaborates that the systemic change process is weakened in the absence of student voice and stands a great chance of failing. It also argues that engaging students in student-voice activities strengthens their developmental and social skills and that new teachers can benefit from listening to students by gaining deeper insight into their learning needs. The article also offers important questions and practical strategies and activities for working with students in an educational change process and serves as a call for research documenting the process of involving students in educational systems change and design.

This article informs that defining instructional design (ID) expertise is a difficult, but important, task that has significant implications for ID educators. The first major task of the problem-solving process is "problem finding." This involves being able to articulate a clear and concise representation of the problems in a particular situation. Experts combine the information available about the design situation with their own knowledge and experience to articulate a coherent representation of the situation in the form of one or two central issues, using their own words, or words taken from other resources. Experts interpret the available information, describing the issues in terms of abstract conceptual principles that underlie the given situation. In contrast, novices take the available information at face value, describing issues in terms of the concrete surface features of the given situation, often in terms of what specific people did "right" or "wrong." Experts focus on what they know. They make inferences based on given information and suggest possible scenarios, often in the form of testable hypotheses or if-then statements.

The article focuses on various factors which impact collaborative learning. Today's society is characterized by increased professional specialization, changes in marketplaces and new technology for communication and collaboration made possible by Internet technologies. The skills required in this environment include coping with incompletely specified problems, communicating in heterogeneous teams, working at a distance, and making use of Internet-based collaboration technologies. The new skills in communication and information-sharing need to be taught in schools alongside traditional basic skills. Teaching higher-order skills is a challenge for both teachers and educational technologists. Teachers play an important role in successful collaborative learning, especially with regard to supporting higher-order skills. The teacher needs to design relevant tasks for students so that they encounter sufficiently complex problems to enable learning of such skills. Together with pedagogical agents and predefined message categories, the teacher can support the students as facilitator.

The article explores that tradeoffs between generality/power and simplicity/usability in authoring tools for advanced and adaptive learning environments (LEs) in the U.S. Advanced and adaptive learning environments are those computer-based LEs that include advancements over traditional courseware, multimedia and educational simulations. Authoring tools relieve the designer of the task of programming by providing suitably generic and flexible building blocks and customization parameters. The teachers and other subject matter experts play an important role in the design process of LEs.

The article presents a research that focuses on identifying a knowledge base required for online educators in two school divisions in rural Alberta, Canada. It provides information on the issues teachers face when working with online technologies, the skills and knowledge they identify for their colleagues, and the ongoing professional development required to support them as they are faced with emerging new technologies that affect their practice. The findings suggest that skill requirements for online educators can be broadly categorized by technology and support, online pedagogy, and opportunity to practice.

The article discusses the socio-cultural issues and problems inherent in IT integration in school contexts. It proposes a socio-cultural framework for IT integration for teachers and school leaders to consider for their experiment in the existing and emerging technologies. It presents different perspectives where the new directions in IT as applied to learning and IT enriched environments can be seen from. They include simulation, visualization, and modeling, cognitive tools, assessment tools, wireless and mobile computing, and tools for learning communities.

The article reports on motivating online collaborative learning in students. It presents principles necessary in dealing with learning goal orientation as a design strategy in fostering intrinsic motivation in online collaborative learning environments. They include keeping in mind that a learning goal orientation is a state, that goals in learning goal orientation theory are different goals in other goal theories, and that a learning goal orientation is one type of goal orientation. It also discusses design factors for enhancing a learning goal orientation and design strategies for enhancing a learning goal orientation and motivation.

The article reports on expert practice and the development of learning objects as essential resources for online and distributed education. It discusses the case for learning objects incorporating expert practice and suggests that teachers must first identify concepts within the curriculum which are consistently challenging and consider the use of alternative materials to support instruction. It presents thoughtful steps for insuring accuracy, appropriateness, quality, and an adherence to relevant theories of learning.

The article reports on the study regarding the best educational Web sites to help teachers and learners get the best resources for their research. Accordingly, more and more educational institutions are planning on online initiatives and they turn to World Wide Web (WWW) for their educational materials and other activities. In response, various public, private organizations and Web users offered online learning materials. Due to many available materials, the quality of the information is at risk because researchers have no idea the quality of the content of such materials and they do not have enough time filtering the needed information. The author offers several categories to narrow the research of the users including instructional strategies, learning activities and content collection.

The article focuses on the conceptions of learning that guided teacher in designing instructional system. Learning is a biochemical activity in the brain and requires the release of a neurotransmitter that eases the transmission of electrical pulses between the neurons of the brain. Learning is also evidenced by behavioral dispositions. Learning is also the processing, storage, and retrieval of information. Like computers, human beings take in information, hold it in short-term memory until they can find a place to store it in a long-term memory. In addition, learning is conceptual change. It is a process of developing coherent conceptual structures from domain concepts.

The article discusses the use of the instructional design for teachers in the U.S. The concept of instructional design enables instructional designer or teachers to relate theories of education to much higher purpose of instruction rather than relying on educational models through the perspective of moral and educational philosophy. The formation of reflexive judgment or the act of differentiating the right and good from wrong would allow instructional designer use the framework to improve their practice.

The article presents information on the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) projects. WISE projects are used for investigating inquiry and technology, including effective designs for inquiry activities and assessments, technology supports for students and teachers, authoring partnerships to create library of inquiry projects, and professional development programs to enable a wide audience of teachers to succeed with inquiry and technology. An Internet-based platform is provided by WISE for middle and high school science activities where students work collaboratively on inquiry projects, making use of "Evidence" from the Web. The duration of WISE projects vary from two days to four weeks, providing inquiry topics for teachers in every science topic from grades four to fourteen. The students are engaged in designing solutions to problems, debating contemporary science controversies, or critiquing scientific claims found in Web sites through the typical WISE projects.

The article stresses on the need for educational reform for the effective use of instructional technology. Several educational programs focus on presenting information and various technological tools are used for carrying the message. There is no scope for demonstration of skill and opportunity to apply those newly-acquired skills with guidance and feedback. The students learn more by imitation than by being told. The demonstrations in the class are quite often inconsistent with the taught subject matter. The instructional tools should enable the teachers to use their creativity to incorporate basic principles of learning and instruction. Teachers should be allowed to use technology to develop curriculum and teaching methods. They must be provided with incentives to develop excellent academic programs. The teachers must be provided with necessary support staff to be able to concentrate on their primary role of teaching.

This article presents information about a study which develops a model of users' perceptions related to the use of web technology in learning. Information technology plays an important role in the success of organizations in a competitive environment. However, the potential benefits of the web services as a tool for learning may not be fully realized due to poor acceptance by users. The discussed model focuses on web-based environments that combines the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), and motivational perspective. TAM says that two specific behavioral beliefs, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, affects an individual's acceptance of technologies. SCT suggests that social factors such as social pressure and personality, influence an individual's behavior. The results of the study show that educators and instructional designers of web-based instruction should be more attentive to learners' perceptions toward Web-based environments.

This article focuses on the need for additional skill development in client interactions in instructional technology courses. Instructional technology programs equip students with the tools necessary to handle instructional problems. These programs may include classes in instructional design, evaluation, learning and instructional theories. However, an expert needs additional skills including general tricks and techniques of the trade. These skills may be developed through immersion in the culture of practice. With the help of their teachers and seniors, students are able to derive principles applicable to instructional design in general from their specific experience. Exposure to a variety of cases related to the client-designer relationship may help students. Discussions with expert designers may also benefit novice designers.

The article presents information on the needs of teachers who either do not want educational training or are not prepared to learn from it in the United States. It also proposes a model of teacher development that builds on and responds to teachers needs and emphasizes the role that teachers belief play in the change and adoption process. According to many educational researchers, there is a strong relationship between teachers educational beliefs and their planning and classroom practices. Different strategies are likely to be less or more effective for people with various levels of efficacy. Self-efficacy belongs to personal beliefs about one's capability to perform actions at designated levels. Self-efficacy is based not only on the level of skill retained by an individual, but on judgments about what can be done with current skills.

The article presents information on the role of the Internet in higher education, as compared to classroom education in the U.S. Those who are against the Web consider it as complicated and time-consuming, and consider classroom teaching as the best way of teaching. According to the supporters of the Web, Internet results in 24 hour access of the students to the course, and is time-saving. However, these arguments consider computer technologies as an enhancement to traditional education, and not as a new form of intellectual education. The author himself is against the use of Internet in education, and discourages his students from using Internet. Higher education is undergoing several changes, in which teachers should take an active part. Internet has an influence on interpersonal relationships within, and outside cyberspace. According to the author, computer technology facilitates distance communication, but it has a negative effect on communication in classrooms.

The article reports on the findings of a study which used surveys, observations, and interviews to document the experiences of ten public school teachers whose classes spent two months in a high tech facility made available to them at the local university to find out the effect of technology on education. The availability of so much technology altered class dynamics in several ways. Students were able to work more independently than in the conventional classroom, and their learning experiences were more individualized. Students also worked more extensively in teams, so that cooperative learning was enhanced. Teachers were better able to present materials to the whole class using the special equipment provided at their teaching station. Overall, the teachers felt that this experience was very rewarding, and that their teaching was more effective in a technology-rich environment. They also tell that these students' achievement was noticeably improved over that of their previous classes, who had worked on the same curricular units without the benefit of so much technology.