Volume 3, Issue 4, October 2012

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on computing in teaching. It focuses on the differences between a traditional view of teaching and a view where the teacher no longer is the knowledge broker but more of a coordinator or a coach. The empirical examples stem from a research project called “One computer one pupil”, a study of two classes in year three with children aged 9 and two classes in year five with children aged 11 in a Swedish primary school. When the project started the pupils had been using the computers for about 2,5 years. In contrast to the teacher in grade five, the classes in year three had teachers with a great interest in developing ICT. The children became very skilled in using ICT and working with the laptop was very popular. According to the theoretical model of Voogt (2008), features of a “traditional pedagogy”, like prescriptions of the activities, were mixed with elements of an “emerging pedagogy”, where the pupils in collaboration performed their tasks in a creative way. However, some of the classroom work was quite unfocused relative to the goals of the subject. Instead of using the technology to reach the goals of the subject, the technology more or less became a goal in itself. To follow up ten Brummelhuis’ and Kuiper’s (2008) terms technology push and educational pull, we have added the term “technology pull.”

Keywords: Teaching design, Computer use, Technology push, Technology pull, Primary school, One–to-one learning environment.

ABSTRACT

This study examined new media literacy skills of university students based on Jenkins and his colleagues’ classification. Toward this purpose, an online Likert scale was administered to a sample (n=170). This scale included a multi-component understanding of media literacy such as tackling the consumption of media messages and the original creation of multimedia material. The Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was 0,93. The instrument was structured around three main sections; demographics, media use characteristics, and new media literacies (NMLs). The third section aimed to assess participants’ new media literacy skills by presenting them 60 items about their social and cultural modes of engagement, online interaction, and media consumption and creation patterns. The statements were conceptually built around the 12 NMLs skills identified by Jenkins and his colleagues. These skills are: Play, appropriation, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, negotiation, and visualization. The results of the study showed that individuals who spent more time on Internet, social media, and blogging had the highest NMLs levels. Furthermore, young participants’ NMLs levels were higher than those over the age of 32.

Keywords: New media literacies, Social media skills, New media literacy assessment, Digital literacies, Measuring new literacies

ABSTRACT

The single most dynamic ICT development in recent years has been the worldwide surge in mobile phone subscriptions. This “mobile miracle” has been continued in the developing world, particularly in Africa. At a time when discourses on the information society have focused on the internet, the mobile phone has been providing access to telecommunication to people at the bottom of the income pyramid – often for the first time in their lives. Moreover, mobile broadband internet has raised hopes that mobile phones will allow Africa to leapfrog across the digital divide towards becoming an information society. This article addresses issues related to Africa’s position in the information society pertaining to access to mobile phones and mobile broadband; pricing, ICT skills and readiness, usage patterns, potential for usage in education, and impact on the lives of Africans. Conclusions are drawn on the potential role of mobile phones as information highways to the information society.

Keywords: Information society, Mobile broadband, Information highway, Mobile phone, Mobile technologies in education, Internet access in Africa

ABSTRACT

This study compares the influence of two learning conditions – a screen-based virtual reality radiology simulator and a conventional PowerPoint slide presentation – that teach radiographic interpretation to dental students working in small collaborative groups. The study focused on how the students communicated and how proficient they became at radiographic interpretation. The sample consisted of 36 participants – 20 women and 16 men – and used a pretest/posttest group design with the participants randomly assigned to either a simulation-training group (SIM) or conventional-training group (CON) with three students in each collaborative group. The proficiency tests administered before and after training assessed interpretations of spatial relations in radiographs using parallax. The training sessions were video-recorded. The results showed that SIM groups exhibited significant development between pretest and posttest results, whereas the CON groups did not. The collaboration in the CON groups involved inclusive peer discussions, thorough interpretations of the images, and extensive use of subject-specific terminology. The SIM group discussions were much more fragmented and included more action proposals based on their actions with the simulator. The different learning conditions produced different results with respect to acquiring understanding of radiographic principles.

Keywords: Educational computer based simulations, Collaborative learning, Health care education, 3D Simulations, Peer communication

ABSTRACT

In 1986 when locally designed personal computer (PC) appeared, the author was unexpectedly involved in calamitous key-search difficulty on the PC keyboard. He created a graphic reference table coping with the difficulty. The table reached immediately a visual aid for obtaining fingering less typing skill helped by graphic conditioned response. After a decade of practicing with the skill, a trial succeeded in enhancing the aid to a visual aid for obtaining eight-fingered typing skill. Even school children with literacy can obtain the superior typing skill effortlessly and shortly. To the contrary of recent remarkable progress in PC capabilities, the general public worldwide has been without any typing methodology ever since invention of typewriter. The cause of it has existed in unbelievable difficulty of finding a clue to developing such an aid. The developed aid is ready to contribute to bridge the gap between PC and the general public. The aid would help fresh general public once a year and even eternally, since ideas, thoughts and others in the human brains are the last thing to be typewritten automatically.

Keywords: Multi-fingered typing aid, Visual eight-fingered typing skill, Bird’s eye view of the keyboard, Graphic conditioned response, Finger assignment principles

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