Liz Coleman (ellejaycee)'s Public Profile in the Diigo Community

Member since Jan 09, 2009, follows 1 people, 1 public groups, 19 public bookmarks (19 total).

More »

Tags

Recent Tags:	Dislike(0), Like(0), accessibility(0), Chemistry(0), ICT(0), InternetActivities(0), digitalstorytelling(0), resources(0), GPS(0), WebDev(0)
Top Tags:	Dislike(5), Like(5), digitalstorytelling(1), ICT(1), accessibility(1), GPS(1), resources(1), Chemistry(1), WebDev(1), InternetActivities(1)

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

2009 Horizon Report: The K12 Edition » Critical Challenges on 2009-04-14
- Students are different, but educational practice and the material that supports it is changing only slowly. Schools are still using materials developed to teach the students of decades ago, but today’s students are actually very different in the way they think and work. Schools need to adapt to current student needs and identify new learning models that are engaging to younger generations. Many education professionals feel that a shift to a more learner-centered model focused on the development of individual potential instead of the imposition of a body of knowledge would lead to deeper and more sustained learning across the curriculum. To support such a change, both teaching practice and the tools used in the classroom must adapt. Assessment has also not kept pace with new modes of working, and must change along with teaching methods, tools, and materials.
- Learning that incorporates real life experiences is not occurring enough and is undervalued when it does take place. This challenge is an important one in K-12 schools, because it results in a lack of engagement in learning on the part of students who are seeking some connection between their own lives and their experience in school. Use of technology tools that are already familiar to students, project-based learning practices that incorporate real-life experiences, and mentoring from community members are a few practices that support increased engagement. Practices like these may help retain students in school and prepare them for further education, careers, and citizenship in a way that traditional practices are failing to do.
- 1 more annotations...
- - Professional development, intellectual interactions with peers, adequate training, and preparation time — all scarce resources for teachers — are necessary in abundance for such a shift to take place.
LLT Vol9Num1: THE DESIGN OF EFFECTIVE ICT-SUPPORTED LEARNING ACTIVITIES: EXEMPLARY MODELS, CHANGING REQUIREMENTS, AND NEW POSSIBILITIES on 2009-03-27
- ABSTRACT
  
  Despite
  the imperatives of policy and rhetoric about their integration in formal
  education, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are often
  used as an "add-on" in many classrooms and in many lesson
  plans. Nevertheless, many teachers find that interesting and well-planned
  tasks, projects, and resources provide a key to harnessing the educational
  potential of digital resources, Internet communications, and interactive
  multimedia to engage the interest, interaction, and knowledge construction
  of young learners. To the extent that such approaches go beyond and
  transform traditional "transmission" models of teaching and
  formal lesson planning, this paper investigates the changing requirements
  and new possibilities represented by the challenge of integrating ICTs
  in education in a way which at the same time connects more effectively
  with both the specific contents of the curriculum and the various stages
  and elements of the learning process. Case studies from teacher education
  foundation courses provide an exemplary focus of inquiry in order to
  better link relevant new theories or models of learning with practice,
  to build upon related learner-centered strategies for integrating ICT
  resources and tools, and to incorporate interdependent functions of
  learning as information access, communication, and applied interactions.
  As one possible strategy in this direction, the concept of an "ICT-supported
  learning activity" suggests the need for teachers to approach this
  increasing challenge more as "designers" of effective and
  integrated learning rather than mere "transmitters" of skills
  or information through an add-on use of ICTs.
- The Internet is an embarrassment
  of riches that is next to worthless without an educator to facilitate
  learning and integration in classrooms … what
  tends to be in shorter supply are specific learning activities that make
  use of this wealth. (March,
  2001)
  
  How do we understand persistence, but also the reasons for transformation
  -- decays of old lines of work and the emergence of really new ones? For
  this, we need an as yet unknown nonexistent theory of the structure
  and evolution of activities. (Disessa, 2000, p. 78)
- 17 more annotations...
- - INTRODUCTION: THE
    CHALLENGE OF "DESIGNING" LEARNING FOR ICT
    INTEGRATION
    
    In
    general, ICTs are often used as an "add-on" in the classroom,
    demonstrations of cutting-edge programs and possibilities often intimidate
    rather than encourage educators, and teachers often resent the naïve
    rhetoric of ICT integration typically associated with top-down policy
    imperatives (Cuban, 2001; Healy, 1998). The challenge for teachers to
    more effectively harness the educational implications and possibilities
    of ICT learning resources and tools is not simply a problem of finding
    sufficient time to develop appropriate computer skills or even think
    about potential applications. Relevant contexts or frameworks for practical
    integration which link to both the curriculum and the learning process
    are also needed, as are specific methods and models. Despite an often
    instinctive skepticism, many teachers have a general awareness that the
    Internet offers a rich source of potential learning resources, that
    multimedia tools and design can make interesting, impressive, and interactive
    tools of learning, and that many of their colleagues are finding ways
    of harnessing the learning possibilities of ICTs in unique contexts.
    Even an ICT-resistant "traditional" teacher
    cannot deny that the World Wide Web (WWW) houses endless and ever-current
    information on all manner of topics, and that multimedia CD-ROMs are
    at the very least useful for skills-based tutorials or for making information
    links more attractive.
  - The inquiry represented by
    this paper began with an interest in developing transferable design
    principles for a teacher education context out of the many good ideas
    and examples of good practice available. This goal initially proved
    to be most elusive because of the difficulty of distinguishing between
    context-specific factors related to teaching and learning and any inherent
    principles of design that might be at work. Effective learning through
    an integrated use of ICTs often occurs despite, and not because of,
    the role of the teacher (Loveless, Devoogd, & Bohlin, 2001).
    Yet relevant designs for learning with ICTs can certainly enhance this
    possibility. An initial review suggested some inherent principles and
    strategies at work in effective examples and models of teaching with
    ICTs that emphasize an activity-based approach (e.g., Thomas & Knezek,
    2002), hence the interest in alternative requirements needed to more
    effectively integrate ICTs in teaching and learning. This paper therefore
    investigates the idea that an emergent notion of "ICT-supported
    learning activity design" provides an antidote of sorts to an
    add-on use of ICT in education. This is insofar as the conventional
    generic structures of formal lesson-planning and syllabus design tend
    to reflect a view of learning as essentially a transmission of information
    or skills, as distinct from a dialogue between teacher and learner
    or an interaction between learners and the learning process (e.g.,
    Laurillard, 2002)
  - One principle which suggested
    itself from the outset is that effective teachers tend to see ICT resources
    and tools as much more than an extension of "traditional" print resources, existing classroom practices,
    and "curriculum-as-content" transmission. The integration of
    ICTs in teaching and learning is more likely if the tools and resources
    of the Internet, multimedia, and related technologies are seen as being
    integrally connected with literacy learning in the wider sense of learning
    as a matter of accessing information, communicating, and applying knowledge
    (Kress, 2003; Lankshear & Snyder, 2000). In other words, to the
    extent that they represent new tools, media, and functions of learning
    in the digital age, ICTs complement, extend, and transform the role
    of language-across-the-curriculum in learning as the very basis of
    generic skills or competencies and applied knowledge as well as mere
    skill or content transmission. Thus, it might be argued that an across-the-curriculum
    approach does not just complement and extend a more skills-focused
    and specialized use of ICT in formal education, but is a key to ICT
    integration in teaching and learning (Richards,
    1998; Roblyer & Edwards, 2000).
  - In addition to promoting the
    learning of generic skills and applied knowledge orientations instead
    of mere skill or content transmission, an across-the-curriculum approach
    is useful for recognizing and promoting the idea that to effectively integrate
    ICT in education teachers need to increasingly become designers rather
    than merely transmitters of learning (Kimber, 2003). Such an approach
    naturally also extends a "new literacies" perspective of how
    language and literacy learning as formal study is more effective and relevant
    in various ways if grounded in the functions and aspects of informal everyday
    discourses and interactions outside the classroom (Cope & Kalantzis,
    2000). This is especially true in the digital age where young learners
    tend to be more confident and have greater familiarity with everyday (especially
    visual) literacy aspects and functions mediated by ICTs than older teachers
    and parents (Hird, 2000; Richards, 2000). The importance of every learner
    and teacher becoming designers of meaning through new ICT literacies has
    been well argued by Kress (1997), an influential critical literacy and
    language theorist. Kress's recent work has increasingly focused on how
    effective multimodal literacy learning needs to be grounded in (not merely
    imposed on) everyday practices and contexts. Kress's notion that design
    precedes yet is interdependent with evaluation in terms
    of the literacy (i.e., to the extent that writing and reading are aspects
    of design and evaluation) as well as learning aspects of education in
    the digital age, suggests the need for new approaches to learning design
    also.
  - As will be discussed further,
    many of the new learner-centred concepts and models point in a similar
    direction but are often either practiced or theorised in a way which
    inadvertently reinforces teacher-centred or transmission approach
    assumptions. Practical concepts such as problem-based learning, collaborative
    learning, project work, authentic assessment, and inquiry-based activities
    all represent alternatives to the linear and hierarchical assumptions
    of formal lesson-planning and course design, yet tend to be seen in either
    opposition to or as an add-on to traditional educational design.
    To the extent that they provide exemplary foci for discussing the learner-centred
    implications of ICT tools and resources (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra,
    2003), such approaches emphasize how effective learning should rather
    be understood as a process, cycle and/or set of stages proceeding
    from initial skill or information acquisition to more applied and
    reflective understanding, knowledge and even innovation .
  - Kolb's (1984) influential model of the learning process usefully lends
    itself to the practical requirements of ICT integration in terms of how
    it outlines a practice-reflection cycle proceeding as distinct stages
    of concrete experience, observation, conceptual abstraction and testing. Likewise,
    Sandholtz, Ringstaff, and Dwyer (2000) have developed a well-known
    model of instructional "evolution" as a traversal of five
    stages (entry, adoption, adaptation, appropriation, and invention).
    However such models or theories tend to view learning processes, cycles,
    or stages independently of context and often fail to recognize the
    discontinuities or "missing links" between learner doing and thinking, educational
    practice and theory, and ICT skills or information and applied understanding
    or innovation (e.g., Beard & Wilson, 2002). The hands-on requirements
    of ICT integration suggest how such models need to be more effectively
    grounded in the very situational contexts of practice, application,
    and various related notions of activity which every teacher needs
    to negotiate. The challenge of ICT integration also represents a good
    opportunity for productive change and interesting innovations.
  - Study #2: Project-Based Learning for Internet Communications and Multimedia
    Design
  - We continued to use webquests and microlessons as useful templates for
    getting my students to design learning contexts with ICT tools and media.
    However we found that project-based learning was an even more useful
    framework to get these students to link the design of learning contexts
    for ICT integration with a range of associated issues and challenges
    -- especially those to do with reconciling the quantitative emphasis
    of much formal assessment and qualitative aspects of the learning process
    on one hand, and an applied, problem-solving focus with the acquisition
    of multiple skills and knowledges on the other. So to extend the focus
    and possibilities of designing learning for ICT integration two other
    specific design models were used monster
    exchanges as an introductory example of Internet communication
    projects, and multimedia learning projects as a design cycle
    developed around a particular topic or idea (Lehrer, Erickson, & Connell,
    1994). The latter uses Internet communications directly as a pretext
    for writing, drawing, and other learning activities, whilst the former
    provides a convergent, developmental, and often collaborative focus
    for seeking and transforming information into modes of indirect communication
    as presentations or publications designed to engage particular audiences.
  - Monster exchanges exemplify
    the power of an interesting pretext for a range of ICT-supported learning
    activities within and between different classrooms, including international
    language exchanges. The basic idea of a monster exchange is that getting
    students to imagine in written and then also in graphic form their
    own unique monsters not only provides a powerful motivational focus
    for learning participation but also for interactive exchange in and
    between classrooms. A typical variation is students in two different
    classrooms send each other monster descriptions by e-mail to be drawn
    by the other as a focus for ongoing interactions. The originators of
    this particular model mainly conceived it terms of literacy learning,
    but other related models such as the Global Schoolhouse's "travel
    buddies" exemplify the power and across-the-curriculum possibilities
    of such exchanges and pretexts for learning. While we have used real-time
    chat programs such as ICQ as a means
    of conducting monster exchanges and organizing online dialogue (either
    with other classes running at the same time or groups within the same
    class), usually e-mail or even webforums are the ways in which students
    interact and send attached graphic or word files in their monster exchanges.
    Using this model we found that imaginative drawing and writing activities
    provided a powerful focus and example for even older learners such as
    Lena to get excited about using Internet communications and graphical
    tools on one hand, and linking of design activities with the learning
    process on the other.
  - The development model
    of hypermedia proejcts seminally conceived by Lehrer, Erickson, and Connell
    (1994) -- also developed and refined by others -- provides a useful focus
    for both developing and converging the learning design models of webquests
    and microlessons. Such models provide a context for connecting multimedia
    effects and some form of curriculum content in a common design process.
    Multimedia learning projects are similar in many ways to commercial models
    of multimedia project development, but much smaller, more manageable,
    and more flexible. The key learning design principle involved here is
    that the trajectory between an initial idea and a developed project or
    outcome at the end not only provides a framework for the learning process
    but also a convergent focus for acquiring, refining, and reflecting on
    a variety of multimedia design processes and project development skills
    along the way. This may be represented and evaluated effectively as an
    activity-reflection learning e-portfolio or some similar way of grounding
    assessment in the learning process. Multimedia learning projects provide
    an especially useful focus for reflecting on the interactions between
    individual and collaborative or team efforts and visions in relation to
    a specific idea or topics. Electronic concept-mapping programs provide
    the means to get learners to design and develop their work through mindmaps,
    concept maps, hypermedia flowcharts, and storyboards. Mei conveived and
    developed her multimedia project in this way and presented the final product
    as part of an activity-reflection e-portfolio assignment.
  - As a transformational focus for learning multimedia skills and knowledges
    in a doable, applied context, multimedia learning projects contrast with
    workshop models which either focus on skill acquisition without much
    effective connection to the design of learning process, or rather tease
    with the distant promise of advanced cutting-edge possibilities which
    the average teacher has little hope of attaining. Multimedia learning
    projects may be further developed as learning contexts in themselves
    in terms of how hypermedia may be approached as either an animated sequence
    or as a set of multimedia links. Commercial programs are usually some
    sort of mix involving an opening animated context followed by the options
    of hypermedia links. For example, the Winnie-the-Pooh literacy skills
    programs sets the main character in a forest and children then need to
    decide which path to take from there to engage in learning activities.
    The typical design for teacher multimedia learning projects typically
    involves an animated sequence which introduces a topic or process of
    learning linked to a menu of further topics or processes. However, many
    of the more effective multimedia projects tend to be more mixed with
    ongoing animation linking with interactive options for engaging learners
    in the negotiation of choices or selections (Mayer, 2001).
  - As the Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project (1999)
    outlines, "project-based learning is a model for classroom activity
    that shifts away from the classroom practices of short, isolated, teacher-centered
    lessons and instead emphasizes learning activities that are long-term,
    interdisciplinary, student-centered, and integrated with real world issues
    and practices." As a context for discussing the integration of
    Internet resources in teaching and learning, PBL also goes beyond the
    webquest model in terms of emphasizing that problem-based and inquiry-based
    contexts for transforming information are ultimately part of a larger communication framework
    of learning, interaction, and presentation -- instead of vice versa --
    by those who focus on the Internet as a gigantic database rather than
    primarily as a telecommunications media. While the student webquest report
    is typically produced for the teacher alone, influential models of Internet
    PBL emphasize the sharing and even wider publication or presentation
    of activity outcomes and products.
  - As a communication tool, the
    Internet extends the process of learning in terms of a range of "telecomputing
    activity structures" (Grabe & Grabe, 1998, p. 44). Particular
    types of activities ranging from key pals or electronic mentoring
    through to tele-fieldtrips and social action projects
    may be adapted to and extend the specific contents of different subjects.
    Whether or not a particular project makes use of e-mail, webforums or
    even chat and other conferencing Internet functions or programs, influential
    organizations such as the Global Schoolhouse-- which has pioneered
    telecollaboration projects since 1984 -- use the World Wide Web itself
    as a communication medium to advertise projects, to link classrooms across
    the world, and to develop online educational communities. Various communication
    options from e-mail lists through to Internet chat provide contexts of
    interaction on these sites for teachers to discuss possible projects and
    for students to undertake projects (e.g., Lerman,
    1998). Likewise, within a communication framework of collaborative
    projects, student Web sites provide a focus for reporting and interaction
    as well as developing information resources -- as exemplified by the International
    Schools Cyberfairs organized by the Global Schoolhouse.
  - Although Internet communication
    projects typically involve more simple pretexts for learning and social
    interaction than the other models looked at, examples such as Monster
    Exchange and Travel Buddies illustrate how even simple pretexts can
    provide the focus for more varied and developed modes of ICT-supported
    learning activity. Project-based learning might productively be considered
    as one useful sub-category of problem-based learning in terms of not
    only designing a specific focus and context for student projects but
    in terms of getting students themselves to also (a) identify project
    constraints and feasibility; and (b), to plan and apply a "design" approach. Sternberg's (1997) "six A's
    of designing projects" provides a useful overview of relevant
    criteria for an effective PBL context: authenticity, academic rigor, applied
    learning, active exploration, adult/effective guidance, and assessment
    practices.
  - At this stage of the inquiry
    some of the convergent principles (or "anatomy")
    of an effective ICT-supported learning activity are clearer and more
    explicit. In particular, it is the function of learning activity "pretexts" to
    engage learner interest, participation, and their very process of learning
    and focus this in the direction of some kind of applied learning, explicit
    knowledge, and effective outcomes. This initial transformatory connection
    is a crucial not just accidental or add-on function of learning activity
    design. Such a learning design structure is significantly different
    to that associated with formal lesson planning although the latter
    may be used to develop the former. The whole more effectively informs the
    parts in a progression of learning focus from implicit to explicit knowledge, both
    in terms of individual lessons and larger modules. As indicated, for
    instance, by Blue
    N'Web's typology of ICT resources and learning designs, a specific
    learning task (i.e., a narrow conception of a learning activity)
    may organize the plan for up to several classroom lessons. In contrast,
    a project is an educational focus which is able to provide an
    organizing framework across and beyond a series of lessons and many quite
    distinct even if related activities (March,
    2001).
  - To more effectively harness
    the exciting educational implications and learner-centred possibilities
    of ICTs, teachers need (a) new design strategies for teaching and learning
    which promote the applied integration of ICTs, and (b) to avoid the
    kind of add-on tendencies associated with still dominant assumptions
    about formal lesson planning and syllabus design on one hand, and are
    often inadvertent in the use of top-down models such as instructional
    design and social constructivism learning theory. This inquiry has
    investigated how the exemplary use of practical design models (a) provide
    a useful focus in teacher education for encouraging teachers to become
    more active and innovative "designers" of
    ICT-supported learning in the digital age, and (b) indicate the generic
    structure or anatomy of an effective ICT-supported learning activity.
    Practical activity-based learning with ICTs that provides pretexts for
    more effective curriculum learning and reflective practice exemplify
    a dialogical approach to educational design. Such an approach to educational
    design goes beyond (rather than merely oppose) the linear, hierarchical
    and transmission assumptions still dominating formal education in a way
    which is able to ground critical and applied thinking in transferable
    contexts of practice and knowledge. The dialogical stages of naïve,
    critical, and applied learning represent a framework for
    not only linking educational content and process and also learner thinking
    and doing, but the very transformations which exemplify an ICT literacy
    transition from mere competency to applied understanding, knowledge and
    innovation.
  - The alternate challenges of integrating the Internet and related ICTs in
    education on one hand, and encouraging innovation and applied thinking
    in students on the other, are helping us to appreciate that the new 'literacy
    and learning' skills of the electronic age revolve around the complementary
    organizing concepts of design and evaluation, and also learner
    doing and thinking. This paper has argued that there is a similar
    need to reconstruct the role of the teacher as a designer and evaluator
    of learning activities, contexts, and environments in a way which more
    effectively links the learning process to the curriculum, especially when
    using the Internet or ICT generally. In short, teachers need to consider
    overall design elements when outlining or setting up specific assignment
    contexts, criteria, and outcomes which exemplify effective ICT-supported
    learning. The emergent notion of an effective ICT-supported learning activity
    provides a useful focus for encouraging teachers to approach the challenge
    of ICT integration in education more as designers of interesting and applied
    learning rather than mere transmitters of skills or information through
    an add-on use of ICTs in teaching and learning.
6: Information Architecture - Planning out a web site - Opera Developer Community on 2009-02-20
- From this, you’ll work out what pages the web site needs, and how they should link to one another.
- Drawing a site map
- 2 more annotations...
- - Additionally, the word “News” is a simpler, more general word that people will be able to recognise faster if they’re skimming a page for the information they want.
  - “About” is a common term used on a lot of web sites. Any time a visitor wants to learn more about a company, a product, a service, or an individual, they usually look for an “About” link.
Cengage - Media Arts & Design - Instructor Product Details Page - Exploring the Elements of Design (1418038555) on 2009-02-03
Learn Spanish on 2009-02-02
Hot Potatoes Home Page on 2009-02-02
Welcome to Starfall's Download Center on 2009-02-02
Peachpit: Website Type and Colour for the Visually Impaired on 2009-01-29
Tech Head Stories on 2009-01-21
Play free games and win prizes at Gamevance on 2009-01-12

More »

Bookmark Lists

More »

Groups

ECI515

20 members, 154 items

This is a diigo group for members of ECI 515 to share interesting websites concerning web development in K-12 education.

Liz Coleman follows 1 people

See More »

Recent Visitors (4 visits)

Karl Schaefer

on 2009-03-31
Bethany Smith

on 2009-01-12

Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »

Join Diigo

Liz Coleman's Profile

More »

Tags

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

More »

Bookmark Lists

More »

Groups

ECI515

Liz Coleman follows 1 people

Recent Visitors (4 visits)

Me elsewhere

Liz Coleman's Profile

More » Tags

More » Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

More » Bookmark Lists

More » Groups

ECI515

Liz Coleman follows 1 people

Recent Visitors (4 visits)

Me elsewhere

More »

Tags

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

More »

Bookmark Lists

More »

Groups