80: Non-neutrality of Technology In the 21st century, information technology scholars have rediscovered the work of the media theorists who documented the strong and active sociocultural influences of information technology, and they are beginning to study technology as a non-neutral factor in society. Andrew Feenberg (1999), a philosopher and historian of science and technology, captured Read More
Since computers arrived in schools, much of the professional development has been designed to show teachers how to use ICT and how to adopt that ICT into instruction (with the assumption that ICT would be a neutral aspect of the classroom). As the emerging educational paradigm shift is completed, the focus of professional development to Read More
81: Why Theory Matters in Education In many educational communities, existing practice exerts strong influence on the practices deemed acceptable, so attempts to define new goals are met with strong resistance. In this situation, many educators adopt a stance that Paulo Friere, the Brazilian educational philosopher, suggested resembled Aristotle’s concept of doxa, which is practice Read More
Twenty years ago, I was working towards my master’s degree at the local state college. Several fo the faculty were qualitative researchers, and they shared that part of their work with their graduate students. As a “science guy,” I had experience with quantitative data, so the methods unfamiliar to me. Over time, I explored the Read More
Jensen, F. E. (2016). Teenage Brain, The: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults. Harper Paperbacks. Educators have a seemingly endless series of books informing their practice; each year we have a small library full of how-to manuals, philosophical treatises, and utopian (or dystopian) visions of schools from which to select our Read More
I made this presentation at the 2015 Association of Educational and Communications and Technology conference. Avoiding Red Herrings: Technology Support that Works Abstract Information and computer technology has been incorporated in teaching and schooling for several decades. Despite on-going efforts to provide both technical support to maintain functional systems and support for educators to integrate Read More
83: Technology Acceptance and Educational Design In 2016, I delivered this paper at the Annual Conference of the New England Education Research Organization. Abstract Despite a long history of computers in schools, many educators continue to struggle with the problem of creating effective technology-rich learning environments. In this exploratory research, documents collected as several K-12 Read More
67: Four Types of Personalized Learning Educators hear “personalized learning” is almost every professional conversation, conference description, in-service training, graduate course, or other discussion of “the future of education.” I have long been a user of “personalized learning” in my classrooms including the course I teach for teachers, and I must admit being quite frustrated Read More
This article appeared in a magazine a few years ago… Author’s copy of Turning Flipped Classroom Upside-Down
One of the fundamental changes influencing the emergence of technology ecosystems has been the transition from ICT being used to access information to it being used for interaction. Discourse and interaction are fundamental components of learning environments, as well. When investigating the different venues in the classroom that are available for communication, and thus that Read More