The ``digital society'' provides not only with new technology, but also with new concepts. Information plays a central role and becomes a valuable good, but knowledge cannot be reduced to information, and one aim for educators is to contribute in a ``knowledge society'', not only an ``information society''. A knowledge society is structured in networks, enriching the traditional hierarchies; a knowledge society promotes a kind of ``collective intelligence''. In such a society, open and distance learning has new dimensions and faces new challenges: collaboration and individualization, dealing with time and space, dealing with presence and distance, and contributing to lifelong learning. The Stellenbosch Declaration gives the main trends for ICT in education in a knowledge society, according to six major issues: digital solidarity, learners and lifelong learning, decision-making strategies, networking, research, teachers.
A web application has been developed using the Microsoft .NET technology, which allows to use the Mathematica software from any personal computer connected to Internet.
It is not necessary to have the Mathematica software in the own computer, therefore the requirements are limited to have a web browser.
All the power of a high level package for numerical and symbolic calculation can be used with no need to spend great amounts of money in individual licenses.
This allows students to use this software from their houses, by means of a simple interface, in any subject or project with mathematical calculations, even to attend virtual laboratories.
The article aims at raising the problem of culture in the context of globalisation, at characterising influence of globalisation and globalisation culture on human values and relation as expression of their spiritual world. In this context, a question of intermediary communication influence on individual's spiritual becoming is also raised. On the basis of own research data, the author defines peculiarities of internalisation level of upper secondary learners' spiritual values, observed in 1998, 2001 and 2005. On the basis of comparison, information regarding cognitive, emotional and behaviour level of internalisation and tendencies of its changes are analysed. The possibilities of teaching process, as a relevant factor of education, internalising values are concretised and the role of mathematics in this process is defined.
As part of a wide-ranging phenomenographic study of computing teachers, we explored their varying understandings of the lab practical class and discovered four distinct categories of description of lab practicals. We consider which of these categories appear comparable with non-lecture classes in other disciplines, and which appear distinctive to computing. An awareness of this range of approaches to conducting practical lab classes will better enable academics to consider which is best suited to their own purposes when designing courses.
The ongoing, unprecedented growth of ICT, coupled with the globalisation of the economy, has created a huge challenge for education. This rapid growth of infusing ICT in education is confronting stakeholders with the effectiveness and the impact of these technological applications. This paper explores the impact of ICT implementation on Hong Kong classroom practice since the inception of the government IT initiatives with particular emphasis on teachers' perceived changes in teaching and learning, and how it interacts with a variety of contextual factors such as leadership and school climate. To deepen our understanding of how ICT acts as a lever to bring about changes in student learning, this study also relates changes in learning to various factors like frequency and types of ICT tools used in classroom teaching, and the kinds of instructional strategies. It is hoped that the findings will inform educational practitioners and researchers of the emerging pedagogical practices with ICT.
This paper deals with the process of expanding the virtual secondary education school network, aiming to provide daily basis, online teaching. The context of this research is the ESR funded Eastern Finland Educational Network Project, which is a network of 36 high schools providing courses via web-based learning environments. The project is a shared activity between teachers and researchers. The aim of the present study is to investigate teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge by finding out what kind of pedagogical solutions the teachers use while designing and carrying out online teaching. In this study thirteen online courses were analysed and based on the analysis, four different course design patterns were found. The most general approach in course designs seems to be teacher centred, focusing on well guided individual learning processes. There seems to be need for development of teacher technological pedagogical content knowledge, to support approaches of more collaborative course designs.
The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education is one important competence that student teacher should develop in their academic studies. To be capable of using ICT in education, students should study both pedagogical and technical issues. In order to affect student teachers' willingness to use ICT in education, more attention should be paid to their learning experiences. In this research, student teachers' attitudes toward the use of ICT in education were studied before and after the web-based course. Based on students' learning experiences, attitudes and evaluations of the web-based learning environment, dimensions of a successful web-based learning environment were examined. According to the results, ``motivation and accuracy'', ``learner-interface interaction'' and ``learner control and self-directed learning''are the dimensions of a learning environment that encourages student teachers' to use ICT in education. A well designed learning environment also gave a realistic overview and knowledge of the possibilities and limitations of the use of ICT in education.
With the growing awareness of the scholarship of teaching and the appropriate incorporation of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in higher education, there is a need for university lecturers to reflect upon and share their practice in the use of ICT in teaching and learning. This paper aims to study the way lecturers communicate their ICT teaching experience. Specifically, it tries to identify the key elements that are needed to form a model to make sharing of practice more effective. An action research approach was adopted to explore the issue. Nine teacher educators and nine university lecturers participated in different study stages. This paper provides evidence that the use of an issue-based model together with Benzie's (1999) evaluation dimensions, the sharing process and discussions are focused and cover a wide range of aspects in relation to the teaching context, and support a discussion of pedagogy rather than merely technical issues.
We present a collaborative learning tool for programming, Jeliot Collaboratively or JeCo. Jeliot Collaboratively is a combination of a program visualization tool for Java programs, called Jeliot 3, and a collaborative authoring tool, Woven Stories. We introduce these systems and explain how they can be used in learning. Furthermore, we present future directions in order to support a wider range of use cases with JeCo.
Weblogs are a popular form of easy-to-use personal publishing that has attracted millions of bloggers to share their personal thoughts, opinions, and knowledge on the web. The versatility of weblogs as a communication medium has attracted interests from educators. Educational applications of weblogs have so far included journals, e-portfolio, learning diaries, and logbooks. As in the case of other educational technologies, the perception of students is a determinant factor of whether weblogs are used in a way that elicits educational values. This paper investigates student perception towards the purposes of blogging. It reports an experience of introducing blogging tasks to third year computing students, and compares their perception with students not participating in the blogging tasks. A student perception model is proposed to explain the difference in the perception due to the experience in blogging. The paper concludes that mandatory use of weblogs in a course can gradually cultivate educationally sound perceptions in students despite of the observed misuse.