Innovate (www.innovateonline.info) is published bimonthly as a public
service by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova
Southeastern University and is sponsored, in part, by Microsoft.
The April/May issue opens with an interview with Phil Long, who
describes a multi-year MIT project that contributed to a number of
groundbreaking developments, including a complete redesign of the way
MIT teaches introductory physics and a Web-services-based utility to
support online laboratory experiments. See
http://tinyurl.com/d37axw
Next, Marie Sontag offers a new learning theory to shape K-12
teaching. Sontag's social and cognitive connectedness schema (SCCS)
theory recognizes the changes in the way students obtain and integrate
new information and offers a structure for instructional design that
fosters learning by accessing students' strengths in these areas. See
http://tinyurl.com/dhprfx
Jacob Schroeder and Thomas J. Greenbowe also suggest that educators
consider meeting students where they are. Frustrated by students' lack
of engagement in WebCT discussion forums, Schroeder and Greenbowe
tried something else with an organic chemistry class: a course
Facebook group. Although not all students joined the optional group,
participation among those who did was far more dynamic than activity
in the WebCT group. See
http://tinyurl.com/ddwxy6
Pam Wright argues that barriers to adopting such technologies may
arise from teachers' resistance to seeing those technologies as
educational; this is particularly true for gaming, which many teachers
see as, at best, an add-on to the central curriculum. To combat this
attitude, Wright designed a unit on educational gaming to help her
preservice K-12 teachers assess the value of gaming in the classroom.
Although her students' attitudes remained mixed, the online unit did
prompt students to consider games in ways they might not have
otherwise. See
http://tinyurl.com/ddg8wf
Our next two articles describe technological solutions to specific
challenges. Mark Rabinovich details the development of the iPass
online tutoring system at Queensborough Community College's writing
center. The system, which allows students and tutors to interact
asynchronously across multiple drafts of a project, has helped
students earn higher grades in writing-intensive classes and improved
pass rates on the college's remedial writing exam. See
http://tinyurl.com/cuyoeg
The computer-based testing system described by Michael Russell,
Thomas Hoffmann, and Jennifer Higgins addresses a critical challenge
for K-12 schools: delivering standardized tests in a way that can
efficiently and flexibly accommodate students' special needs. Russell,
Hoffmann, and Higgins used the principles of universal design to
create a computerized solution that allows schools to offer
individualized accommodations easily and equitably, increasing test
validity. See
http://tinyurl.com/dx67lz
In Innovate-Ideagora this month, Alan McCord and Denise Easton report
on developments in our social networking community, which now boasts
over 400 members. As members considered ways to support sustainable,
accessible technologies, discussion coalesced around rumors of a $10
laptop and what such a development might mean for education. In
webcast interviews, Nibipedia founders Troy Petersen and Terry
Schubring discussed their vision for collaborative video learning, and
Miriam Scurrah, the training and development designer for Kmart
Australia, described her use of three-dimensional animation videos to
create engaging training programs for the company. See
http://tinyurl.com/dewyqb
We have extended the deadline for our upcoming special issue The
Future of the Textbook. Submissions will be accepted through May 31,
2009; the projected publication date is December 2009/January 2010.
Microsoft, Innovate's sponsor, has upgraded their offer to the senior
authors of the top three papers published prior to June 2009. Instead
of the opportunity to present their papers at the Microsoft Global
Exchange summit in July 2009, they will receive the Lenovo X60 Tablet
PC loaded with Windows Vista Ultimate and Microsoft Office Ultimate
2007. This is the same computer included in the new Microsoft and
Lenovo Ultimate Academic Personal Computer Program designed
specifically for college and university students, faculty, and staff;
under this program, Lenovo will offer four different ThinkPad laptops
loaded with Windows Vista Ultimate and Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007
at a substantial discount. (See
http://tinyurl.com/cslpnk for the
details.) This offer is currently available only in the United States,
although it may eventually be extended internationally.
We hope that you enjoy this issue of Innovate. Please use the
discussion board within each article to raise questions or provide
additional commentary. Your comments will be sent to authors for their
response, which will become part of the record for their article.
Also, please forward this announcement to appropriate mailing lists
and to colleagues who want to use IT tools to advance their work and
ask your organizational librarian to link to Innovate in their
resource section for open-access e-journals.
Thanks!
Jim
----
James L Morrison
Editor-in-Chief, Innovate
http://www.innovateonline.info
Fischler School of Education and Human Services
Nova Southeastern University
http://www.schoolofed.nova.edu/home.htm