Search results for: Technology integration

Existing research suggests that one of the challenges for teachers in persisting with innovative inquiry curricula is their difficulty scaffolding students’ transitions into technology-supported and open-ended activities.This article addresses the nature and role of students’ collaborations in learning through design, a technology-rich science inquiry curriculum. The authors paid particular attention to how students with varying degrees of previous experience in this curricular approach collaborated with one another. The authors found that experienced fifth graders took on many socializing functions, effectively apprenticing younger students into the practices of learning through design.

Decisions related to the implementation of audio in e-learning are perplexing for many instructional designers, and deciphering theory and principles related to audio use can be difficult for practitioners. Yet, as bandwidth on the Internet increases, digital audio is becoming more common in online courses. This article provides a review of relevant literature and the results of a survey conducted with instructional designers to determine their thought processes as they designed e-Learning courseware with audio components.

This study involved the analysis of the complex interactions that take place between tutors and preschool children using a computer during early literacy tutoring sessions. Eight five-year-old pre- and early-readers (four boys and four girls) attending a childcare centre participated in daily 20-minute tutoring sessions for two weeks. The literacy software (a beta version) was especially designed to guide tutors while working one-on-one with elementary school students falling into the lower 30% of reading achievement (i.e., at-risk). Rigorous grounded theory analyses generated three comprehensive themes: rapport, motivation, and scaffolding. The first focused on interpersonal issues, the latter two on teaching/learning.

A research examined six teachers of grades 4,5, and 6 for three years, as a group and individually. Three case studies were selected for analysis. Findings points to two developmental patterns: the first is concerned with the source of influence on technology adoption, and focuses mainly on the human factor; the second is concerned with the nature of the influence when using technology in the classroom, ranging from technical to cognitive transformation. The case studies reveal three different profiles of change.