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The article highlights the integrated and less fragmented post secondary music curriculum advocated by Claire Detel. The author stated that the hard-boundedness that Detels wants to change is a significant problem for music education, thus music teachers need to work to make its boundaries more supple. In addition, music teachers need to carefully think about the kinds of dispositions it requires in order to flourish, to have interdisciplinarity benefit from music education. However, the author contradicts the claim of Detel that specialization and fragmentation are to blame for flagging support for the arts, since the reasons for the problem are more complex than his suggestions.

The article addresses the lack of outcome-based research on the integration of technology into pedagogy at the undergraduate college level. It describes a study performed at a Midwestern university, testing the relative effectiveness of paper and electronic topographic maps for teaching map-reading skills. The article considers the relationship between learning styles and paper or digital map preferences. Results indicate that although student map skill performance did not differ significantly with the use of paper or electronic maps, students preferred paper maps. Neither their performance nor their preferences were related to learning style.

This special issue comprises a series of six papers selected from a large pool of papers originally presented at the CBUS 2003 conference. The special issue highlights the important role of educational research in designing and evaluating learning environments for scientific thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's technology world, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly prominent in education, with enormous potential to improve the teaching and learning experience. AI, defined by its ability to imitate human intelligence, possesses enormous power and has the potential to dramatically impact a variety of areas, most notably education. AI has significantly improved learning experiences for both teachers and students by allowing them to be customized and personalized. This review article investigates the prospects provided by AI in modern teaching and learning processes, with a special emphasis on its advantages in language learning. This study examines existing literature and studies on AI in education, with a focus on language learning environments. The results show AI's advantages in giving targeted feedback and practice opportunities, making language learning easier, and improving overall learning efficiency and effectiveness. Thus, this review contributes to a better understanding of AI's role in redefining present educational paradigms, as well as its potential to transform teaching and learning methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the exponential increase in the volume of data available in the 21st century, data literacy skills have become vitally important in work places and everyday life. This paper provides a systematic review of available data literacy assessments targeted at different audiences and educational levels. The results can help researchers and practitioners better understand the current state of data literacy assessments in terms of issues related to 1) educational levels and audiences; 2) data literacy definitions and competencies; 3) assessment types and item formats; and 4) reliability and validity evidence. The results from the present review led us to conclude that teaching and assessing data literacy is still an emerging field in education. Therefore, high-quality assessment tools are greatly needed to provide valuable insights for students and instructors to monitor progress as well as facilitate and support teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on educational technology. Educational technology research and study of change; Systemic change within a rural school system; Changes in the way people teach and learn.

The article discusses the Association for Educational Communications and Technology Research Symposia, a-biannual event which draws the best minds within the members of the organization. The symposia are designed to bring a small group of scholars together in a format that encourages in-depth dialogue, and different perspective on a predefined topic or problem. As a preparation for the researchers and researches' gathering, all papers pertinent to the symposia are required to be passed two months prior to the actual meeting date. The selection process will then take place wherein only those papers thoroughly perused are to be presented.

The article discusses a paper which tackles the issues and options for formal online discussions in general with an emphasis on moderated discussions as exemplified at the International Forum of Educational Technology and Society (IFETS). The five areas for discussion proposed by the author include maintaining archives and preserving privacy. Discussion space options are also cited, including collaborative workspaces, web-based systems, and e-mail. The article also mentions problems in preserving privacy.

Mobile and ubiquitous learning facilitates language learners to continue their learning process outside the formal classroom, when and where they desire. While more and more learning resources are accessible via a mobile device, there is a challenge in providing access to appropriate personalized learning resources. This paper describes the PALLAS system which enables real life language learning scenarios by providing personalized and contextualized access to learning resources via a mobile device. The support provided to the learner includes tasks that are personalized and contextualized and tasks that are set by the teacher. Access to learning resources through integration with a Content Management System is also provided. An evaluation framework for mobile language learning systems and an evaluation of the system by three language teachers are included. The main contribution of this work is personalized and contextualized learning resources, where the resources are composed of a variety of sources. Some of the topics addressed in this paper focussed on personalization appears in (Petersen & Markiewicz, 2008). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past and present research has provided evidence to support the claim that technologies for teaching and learning must be pedagogically sound. However, educational technologies are also part of a complex process involving the people in the implementation of the innovation. In this paper, I review existing research and explain what both of those claims entail for educational technology. In the remainder of the paper, I discuss the research agenda related to the need to provide evidence that technology innovations are successful in the implementation process. Implications of this three-part model as well as a discussion of the importance of technological pedagogical content knowledge conclude the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores some of the key themes and discussion points that were aired at the Association of Learning Technology conference in 2004. It discusses the findings of several of the keynote speakers and presenters within the context of the relationship between technology, practice and innovation. It references the papers presented in the technology infrastructure and new technology strands of the conference to examine whether educational technology currently has an appropriate balance between innovation and good practice. It then presents a case study of application in practice through some of the development activities that a national funding body, the JISC, has put into place. Finally, it draws conclusions about how well the learning technology community is achieving appropriate balance between innovation and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the Kyoto University Center for Information and Multimedia Studies, progress is being made with TIDE (Trans-Pacific Interactive Distance Education), a distance learning project which links Kyoto University and UCLA in real time through cooperation between the University of California at Los Angeles's Digital Innovation Center and NTT. In this paper the authors report on a distance learning system that takes advantage of the TIDE project. During the creation of their system, the information exchanged among the lecture participants is first classified into five categories, then the function classes necessary to exchange the various types of information between the classroom and remote locations are assembled into six classes. As a result, 30 functional elements are needed for the distance learning system. In the system reported on in this paper, the authors classify the functional elements into eight subsystems based on network bandwidth and various restrictions. The authors also report on the technology requirements for each subsystem, in addition to the system structure. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 88(3): 53–62, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjb.20160 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to present the Large Unit District Association virtual high school (LUDA-VHS) project and discuss its design, development, and implementation. A model developed at the Center for the Application of Information Technologies for designing online classes will be presented and discussed. The focus of the paper will be to present the lessons learned and provide practical recommendations on how to design successful online programs. Issues to be discussed include the following: recruiting, training, and compensating teachers; selecting and supporting students; developing instructional strategies for online learning; building a sense of community; educating the public on the benefits of online education; providing equal access; building quality assurance mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As higher education institutions seek to prepare an increasingly diverse population of students for a rapidly changing future, makerspaces offer a pedagogical approach for engaging all learners in active thinking and hands-on learning while promoting creativity, problem solving, and collaboration skills. In this paper, we discuss ways to integrate makerspaces and maker-centered learning within undergraduate and graduate college courses that reach students from majors ranging across the college and university curriculum. We highlight four courses, each taken by students at different points within their academic programs of study: a) digital media production & 3D modeling in a first-year seminar, b) poetry writing and 3D modeling and printing in a flipped learning course, c) wiki page building workshops for future teachers, and d) learning, media, and technology undergraduate/graduate courses. Makerspace experiences are ongoing features of each course, but not in the same ways, offering models that faculty can use in adapting their courses to include more active and applied learning for students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study investigating the use of e-readers in education, with particular focus given to the feasibility of incorporating diverse learning and instructional materials into e-reader learning. The process of file conversion and learning materials design, the time spent by instructors on design, and the principles of digitizing learning materials are examined, and the finding that it is difficult but possible to make a range of learning materials compatible with e-readers used in classrooms is explored.

Despite major efforts to change teachers' practice through professional development activities, much remains as it always was. Our claim is that this rarely happens because significant change in how one teaches can only come about as a result of some realization about oneself as a teacher, and the resulting changes in identity. In recent years we have been studying the ways in which participation in collaborative action research (CAR) can result in changes in teachers' ways of being. In this paper we report on a study of teachers engaged in CAR to improve their implementation of digital photography in their teaching. The whole group (n = 28) completed one cycle of action research as part of the evaluation of the program using empowerment evaluation methods. A subset (n = 5) chose to continue doing CAR. We used ethnographic methods including participant observation, interviews, and document analysis. In this paper we use cultural-historical activity theory to understand why our data suggest that there was little change in the teachers' identity by the end of the first cycle of action research, while those who participated in both the initial action research and the CAR group had a change in their identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on what researchers and professionals in the field internationally report, this paper reviews educational technology as an emergent field. The review reveals the continuum of perspectives on what the field is, and how it is bounded or fragmented. The paper describes the field from two perspectives: the professional and scholarly and considers how the forms of knowledge differ and overlap in each domain. It posits some dichotomies which may frame the field such as science/ social science and positivist/ post-modernist. Finally the paper provides conceptual frameworks for distinguishing fields from each other and suggests what the categorisation of the field might mean, especially considering its emergent status in a rapidly changing context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technologies offer tantalising possibilities for new forms of educational innovation, but we have argued that there is a gap between the potential of technologies to support learning and the reality of how they are actually used, and that this is due to a lack of understanding about how technologies can be used to afford specific learning advantages and to a lack of appropriate guidance at the design stage. This paper describes a project that has developed an approach to using learning design as a methodology to guide design and foster creativity in concert with good practice in the creation of learning activities. The paper will provide an overview of the work being undertaken by the Open University, UK Learning Design project; concentrating on the work we have done to represent and visualise design... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to move away from the notion of a digital divide premised on technology 'haves and have-nots' to a more nuanced understanding based on technological practices. It draws on empirical research from interviews with eight case-study families about the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICT) fit into their everyday lives. The families were chosen to reflect those owning multiple technologies, rather than to be 'representative' of the social make-up of schools or geographical area. The intention here is to explore the barriers to use of ICT in technologically privileged households, and to ask questions around the orthodoxy of the digital divide. The novel approach of using only privileged families is an attempt to build on the new thinking of the digital divide as based on qualitative concerns. Relevance and social networks as crucial mediating factors in people's access to ICT are explored in three socio-spatial environments. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the findings link to ICT pedagogical thinking and educational technology policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much of the literature related to the digital divide focuses on either technology penetration in developed countries or the introduction of new technology to the poor and disadvantaged in the developing world, this paper pays attention to the middle-classes in a developing country which is connected to the Internet but under poor conditions. The digital divide is examined by investigating how the uneven distribution of Internet connection influences distance education students' participation in higher education. Empirically, the paper is informed by a qualitative study of distance education in Indonesia. The main conclusion is that while in more peripheral areas students may not gain much from the use of new technology, the use of this technology may be useful for the further development of such regions. In central areas the new technology seems to contribute to students' study situations more effectively and the daily environment empowers the students' study activities, rather than vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to extend our understanding of the relative strengths and weaknesses of academic startups (ASUs) and other new technology-based firms (NTBFs). First, relying on insights from the resource- and competence-based theories of the firm and the literature on social networks and financial economics, we identify the factors that might differentiate ASUs and other NTBFs. Then, we combine the results of prior studies on NTBFs and the evidence from four theory-building case studies of Italian ASUs to formulate a series of empirically testable hypotheses that relate to the differences between ASUs and other NTBFs as to the extent and nature of the initial funding and knowledge gaps, and the strategies that firms adopt to close them. Our analysis suggests that ASUs' major relative strengths reside in the lower initial funding gap and greater investments in technical activities. Conversely, ASUs' major weakness consists of the lack of commercial knowledge: ASUs suffer from greater initial gaps in this field and encounter serious obstacles in implementing effective strategies to close them. The paper also offers original insights relating to the impact of the appropriability regime of technology on the financing and alliance strategies of ASUs as opposed to those of other NTBFs. More specifically, when the appropriability regime is weak, ASUs' choices as to the characteristics of external investors and alliance partners, and the organisation of the relations with them are influenced by the desire to mitigate appropriability hazards. Con- versely, appropriability hazards have a smaller influence on the decisions of non-ASU NTBFs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we used qualitative methods to help us better understand the experiences of instructors as they are persuaded to adopt a course management system and integrate it into their teaching. We discuss several patterns explaining how instructors implemented Blackboard, a CMS, by experimenting with individual features, facing both technical and integration challenges, and attempting to adapt Blackboard features to match their goals and practices. We also give explanations for why instructors either (a) embraced the tool and grew more dependent on it, (b) reduced their use of the tool to only some features, or (c) discontinued the tool and actively sought replacement options. In this paper we explain why instructors fell into any one of these three areas and what implications this may have for training and support needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the effects of new technology on teaching and learning by considering examples of studies carried out with five kinds of teaching in five contexts. The five teaching situations are direct instruction, adjunct instruction, facilitating the skills of learning, facilitating social skills and widening learners’ horizons. The five contexts are primary schools, secondary schools, higher education, special education and out of school. The aim of the paper is primarily to inform teachers about current work in these different areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progress files, involving personal development planning (PDP), are becoming a feature of many higher education systems internationally. In the UK they will become mandatory for all undergraduate students from 2005. This presents a major implementation challenge, because while reflection has been a cornerstone of practice in some areas of higher education for a considerable time, its generalisation as national policy changes its discursive location. The paper presents findings from a case study of the implementation of PF in one UK Higher Education Institution (HEI). It reports on how staff in one institution understand PF in the context of national policy, and on how they interpret the challenges they face in facilitating reflection for all students. The paper argues that pedagogical innovations take on a different meaning when applied to the system as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of learning classification knowledge by inquiry examples, how to help students perform induction learning more efficiently and meaningfully with adaptive instruction strategies is an important research issue. This paper presents a machine-learning approach to developing computer-assisted learning supports for inductive learning tasks by providing individualized inquiry examples. A learning process based on the knowledge refinement strategy is first proposed to model the learning task of induction by inquiry examples. Several machine-learning techniques are developed and evaluated to support various instruction/learning activities such as evaluating student learning outcomes, providing appropriate examples for students to study, and giving individualized hints to motivate and facilitate learning during the induction learning process. Integrated with the intelligent learning supports, a web-based system, named ALBIX (Active Learning By Inquiry Examples), was implemented so that students can actively construct, verify and refine their classification knowledge in an interactive manner. Finally, the learning supports presented in this paper are shown to be effective in their design purposes through a set of simulation tests. A small-scaled prototype testing also showed that teachers and students might be interested in such kind of active learning strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stated aim of technology education in New Zealand is to develop students' level of technological literacy. This paper introduces the Technology Assessment Framework (TAF) as an organisational tool for the development and delivery of technology programmes that focus on increasing students' technological literacy through the enhancement of their technological practice across technological areas and contexts. The TAF was developed and refined in 1999 and 2000 as part of a two year New Zealand Ministry of Education funded research project, and integrated within a national professional development programme in 2000 designed for preservice and inservice teacher educators in New Zealand. This paper backgrounds the sociocultural theoretical position of the TAF and explains how it reflects and furthers the aim of technology education in New Zealand. The TAF is then presented and explained with the aid of illustrative examples from classroom practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The management of change has long been recognised to be a complex and challenging process. The literature has revealed few success stories and many examples of curriculum innovations being adopted haif-heartedly or not at all. Set against the increasing world globalisation of which education is a part, the cultural aspects of innovations are being increasingly discussed in recent years. This paper focuses on the cultural dimensions of a major curriculum reform in Hong Kong, the Target-Oriented Curriculum (TOC) initiative. The main principles of TOC and its early implementation are discussed. A number of the main features of TOC are analysed with particular reference to their cultural appropriateness for the Hong Kong context. The thesis underlying the paper is that cultural issues need to be more carefully considered in the policy and adoption stages of the innovation process. In English Language teaching, it may be necessary to reflect more deeply on the suitability of the export of Western-based learner-centred, communicative or task-based approaches to other milieux where such approaches may not be commensurate with the local cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been interest in the implications of learning by doing, and in particular in the possibility that learning by doing may be slower in less developed countries and in industries which use simpler technologies. This paper uses firm-level data from Ghana to estimate learning-by-doing effects and generates three main findings. First, the learning curve, though present, is flatter in Ghana than in developed countries. Second, any industry-wide spillovers are small and insignificant. Third, (contrary to the assumption of much theory) learning-by-doing effects are stronger at low levels of technology than at intermediate levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of teachers’ questions and students’ responses in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) classes of history. Through the combined application of genre theory and a typology of CLIL teacher academic questions, the study aims at contributing to the understanding of how CLIL students use the foreign language to express academic meanings. The data are part of the UAM-CLIL project, which focuses on the systemic-functional analysis of CLIL students’ language production. In this paper, we analyze class discussions on various topics in two secondary schools. These discussions were carried out at the end of a topic and followed a prompt that aimed at triggering participation in different history genres: recount, account, explanation and argument. The aim of the study is twofold: first, the academic questions used by the teachers are classified in relation to the genre triggered by the prompt; second, we analyze the length and complexity of the students’ responses. The results show that the teachers did not always ask the questions related to the prompt. In fact, they frequently used questions for facts, which usually triggered shorter and less complex responses than other types. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a reflection on the history and future of educational media. Over the last century various new media technologies were introduced in education. Most of these failed to meet the high expectations. The paper reviews the rise and fall of various 'revolutionary' learning media and analyses what went wrong. Three main driving factors are identified that influence the educational system: 1) educational practice, 2) educational research, and 3) educational technologies. The role and position of these factors is elaborated and critically reviewed. The paper concludes with identifying a number of relevant developments that substantiate a favourable future outlook of media for learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the great development in technology, there is always the danger that the equilibrium between technology and learning is disturbed. This paper aims to look at m-learning from an educational perspective. The context of this perspective is higher and lifelong education in a developing country. Mobile learning as a concept has come about through the availability of mobile technologies. A major benefit of using wireless mobile technology is to reach people who live in remote locations where there are no schools, teachers, or libraries. Mobile technology can be used to deliver instruction and information to these remote regions without having people leave their geographic areas. This will benefit communities in such places since students and workers will not have to leave their families and jobs to go to a different location to learn or to access information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing need for active and accessible learning in the inclusive knowledge society drives the demand for e-learning that engages users much more effectively than ever before. In this context, it is crucial to conduct research that embraces innovation in user sensitive design, or else influential individual user differences may be overlooked. The objective of this paper is to explore the creation of successful e-learning systems that are able to increase users' learning performance and enhance their personal learning experiences. The paper reports two converging and complimentary approaches, namely case studies and experimentation. First, case studies are used to explore the extent to which effective e-learning systems comply with eight specific factors. Of the eight, accessibility, individual differences and student modeling turn out to be the weakest points in current practice. Second, an empirical study investigates the influences of user individual user differences on users' learning outcomes in an e-learning environment. The experiment found that individual differences in motivation to learn and expectations about e-learning significantly impacted users' learning achievements. Third, based on these studies, improvements in research methodology are identified towards greater consideration of user sensitive research issues, thus enabling us to outline improved experimental procedures. Further experiment results should provide us with better insights into the arguments needed to carefully assess benefits of developing and involving a user model in an e-learning application. Consequently, evaluation and justification could now encompass both system performance as well as user performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on topics on educational technology that researchers have shown an interest in. He suggests that that some of the key topics of the future are already in existence and in the early stages of adoption and that the future of disruptive technologies is harder to predict. He argues that one of the keys to finding academic success when conducting research is to find a disruptive learning technology that no one else is researching and that is likely to be a key topic in the future.

In this paper we describe the criteria of Technology I, II, and III, which some instructional theorists have proposed to describe the differences between a formulaic and a reflective approach to solving educational problems. In a recent study, we applied these criteria to find evidence of a technological gravity that pulls practitioners away from reflective practices into a more reductive approach. We compared published reports of an innovative instructional theory, problem-based learning, to the goals of the theory as it was originally defined. We found three reasons for technological gravity, as well as three approaches some practitioners have used to avoid this gravity. We recommend that instructional technologists adopt our three approaches, as well as the criteria of Technology III, so they may better develop instruction of a quality consistent with the innovative instructional principles they claim, and that best characterizes the goals they have for their practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews and discusses the notions of interactivity and dynamicity of learning systems in relation to information technologies and design principles that can contribute to interactive and dynamic learning. It explores the concept of dynamic interactive learning systems based on the emerging generation of information as part of a continuous research process in the area of Learning Systems Design. It proposes the addition of a dynamicity dimension to interactive learning systems design to reflect the continuous changes in information technologies, learners' needs and increasing availability of information. The paper concludes with a proposed model that reflects the concept of a dynamic feedback and adjustment mechanism that is generally missing from many learning systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the introduction of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into schools came the expectation that teachers would adopt ICT and change their practices in particular ways. Research indicates that teachers have not changed in the ways expected. Suggested in this paper is that limitations in current research methodologies documenting change in teachers' practices are restricting thorough examination of change in teachers' practices mediated by ICT. This paper reports on the design of a study aimed at investigating teachers' practices from an alternative position from the current research. The research design is a grounded, longitudinal, qualitative study using assorted analysis for the collection and interpretation of the data. This involves a combination of secondary analysis of archive data and collection and analysis of primary data. Participants were able to retrospectively describe and understand their own archived and new data, in interviews and observations. This paper focuses on ways this research design supported examining teachers' practices as including a number of dimensions and the way these dimensions were influenced by the context in which they were situated. Also, the ways this research design provided a means for examining the changes that developed from the teachers' own narratives. This gave some insight into the ways the teachers' understood the changes in their own practices. Examining change from this perspective supports understanding of how and why changes in teaching practices mediated by ICT occur or don't occur. It also contributes to examining the bigger phenomenon of ICT and the long-term impact it is having on teaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher education programs continue to be challenged to prepare prospective teachers to integrate technology into the day-to-day instruction and to strive to instil dispositions of openness to experimentation with ever-evolving technological tools and their pervasive impact on mathematics education. In this paper several activities are used to introduce palm handheld technology to pre-service teachers and to illustrate that with appropriate software, these tools can support a variety of learning activities that support the goals of reform in mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political and institutional support has enabled many institutions of learning to spend millions of dollars to acquire educational computing tools (Ficklen and Muscara, Am Educ 25(3):22–29, 2001) that have not been effectively integrated into the curriculum. While access to educational technology tools has remarkably improved in most schools, there is still concern about instructional integration of computer technology to support student learning. Appropriate integration of computer tools constitutes a major change in people’s lives; technology integration is a complex phenomenon that involves understanding teachers’ motivations, perceptions, and beliefs about learning and technology (Woodbridge, ). Although computer technology has a great potential to reform or even transform education, barriers come in the way of achieving success especially with student learning. This paper presents an overview of technology use in education with a focus on barriers to computer technology integration. Further, this paper provides suggestions to maximize the benefits of learning with computer technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student numbers across the higher education sector have risen over recent years and the challenge of creating and delivering an effective learning experience grows evermore complex for the educator. It is necessary to provide prompt feedback to students on their current progress and personal areas for development, which is paramount for improving the quality of their future assessed work and also impacts significantly on individual motivation. Podcasting offers a timely and expedient delivery method for a wide range of teaching resources especially when combined with iconic and ubiquitous mp3 devices such as Apple's iPod. The culture of learning and its integration into students' daily lives is changing, and higher education institutions in the United States and Europe have been quick to embrace the potential of this technology, although much of the current research focus is on the delivery and reinforcement of curriculum material. This paper reports on a qualitative study within a music department, using semi-structured interviews and questionnaires to evaluate whether student feedback can also be delivered using audio-based podcasts, and whether this has a significant impact on how students respond to and use the information received. The findings conclude that delivering audio feedback produces a high-quality, personalized and appropriately detailed tutor response that students feel has significantly greater value for learning than more traditional written comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper attempts to provide relevant data on the achievements, albeit quantitatively, of the National Correspondence Institute of Tanzania over the past 30 years as a case study in distance education innovation. The case-study data reveal reasons for the near collapse of the distance education programme during the 1990s, and the renewed policy thrust to use distance education to meet expanded secondary education development programmes in the twenty-first century. For Tanzania to achieve equitable socio-economic development, efforts need to be directed to adopting fully-fledged open and distance education policies. It is no longer feasible to achieve equitable access for all citizens to quality education by depending only on conventional formal education systems. Adopting open and distance education learning systems in the twenty-first century is crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the entry of information and communications technology (ICT) into schools there has been significant discussion about how teachers can be supported and encouraged to effectively integrate these tools into teaching and learning. Much of the debate arises from the frequent observation in the literature that ICTs have made little impact in classrooms, even in Western and wealthy countries where many schools have high levels of resources and infrastructure. School systems in the developing world face additional challenges such that approaches to integration 'imported' from developed countries may not be relevant. This paper begins by describing how ICTs have been adopted by education in developing countries, particularly Africa, and argues for further research into the particular challenges faced by African teachers. The authors propose that the notion of 'teacher professional identity' provides an appropriate framework for such research, although it has been little used to examine educational technology. In closing, the authors briefly describe a research agenda currently underway that adopts this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to study the use and educational application of technical resources by students of Social Education (SE) in Spain. The reasons for this research were based on the importance of gaining a deep command of the various skills associated with information and communication technologies in the acquisition of generic competencies. The research we conducted was a descriptive and interpretative study designed from a quantitative-qualitative perspective. The questionnaire was selected as the main data collection tool. Among its most important findings, the research has revealed that SE students are not frequent users of most new technologies, and that they usually copy the behaviours of their teachers in their educational application of technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to investigate (i) gender differences in whole class classroom interaction with a sample of teachers who were not using interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in their lessons; and (ii) the short-term and longer term impact of IWB use upon gender differences in classroom interaction. The study focused upon teacher-student interaction at Key Stage 2 in the teaching of literacy and numeracy in English primary schools. As part of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies, IWBs have been made widely available as a pedagogic tool for promoting interactive whole class teaching. In order to investigate their impact, the project looked specifically at the interactive styles used by a national sample of primary teachers. Using a computerized observation schedule, 144 lessons were observed over a two-year period. The findings concur with other research which has found that boys dominate classroom interaction in terms of the frequency of certain discourse moves. The average length of each move did not vary significantly between boys and girls. Frequency dominance was disproportionately stronger in classes with a high percentage of boys in class, and was also stronger in lessons where whiteboards were used. Understanding how interaction varies in the classroom, and how new technology might affect this interaction, has important implications for teachers, researchers and future research priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses three technologies used in an adult continuing education Masters programme: blogging, learning objects and e-portfolios. My reflections on their use and on the literature underpinning their use form the basis of the discussion. All three of these technologies were used to promote self-directed learning, reflection and learner choice in the activities undertaken. Although these technologies were very successful for our students, the paper concludes that adult learners who take an online Masters programme are not typical of all adult learners, much less all adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work in the field of child welfare is complex and full of challenges. In British Columbia Canada, the Ministry of Children and Family Development, which is the main employer of social workers, entered a partnership with universities to educate baccalaureate social work students in a child welfare specialization. This paper examines an instructional approach to child welfare education at the University of Northern British Columbia. The geography of the university region as well as the need to maintain a critical standpoint presented challenges in the delivery of a child welfare specialization course. The development of an online child welfare practice course assisted the university in meeting the challenges. This paper describes the practice context for social workers in British Columbia as well as the design of the online course offered to social work students at the University of Northern British Columbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]