Making Learning Active with Interactive Whiteboards,Podcasts, and Digital Storytelling in ELL Classrooms

The purpose of this study was to examine effective ways to integrate an interactive whiteboard, podcast, and digital storytelling for language proficiency development in English language learners. Researchers integrated these three technologies into a 60-hour intensive summer English program and investigated their impacts on student vocabulary skill development. Researchers collected multiple data including daily video podcasts, vocabulary tests, a student survey, Photostory videos, and a teacher interview. The results showed that using an interactive whiteboard for (a) visual presentations, (b) interactive games, and (c) test reviews was useful for the English language learners to learn new vocabulary and engage in learning. The effects of a digital storytelling project and the video podcasts are also discussed.     

Exploring the Use of Podcasts and Vodcasts: Multimedia Tools for Word Learning

The study investigated the impact of podcasts and vodcasts accessed through an iPod on fourth- and sixth-grade students’ vocabulary acquisition. Students were randomly assigned to either a podcast group or a vodcast group. Regardless of group assignment, each student completed three six-minute podcasts or vodcasts a day for three days. On average, students learned four out of nine words taught regardless of group assignment. The vodcast group learned significantly more words compared to the podcast group at the receptive level and at the expressive level. Student comments indicated that iPods should be used to teach and to review words.     

Learning Goals,Creativity and Personality

In this article, I examine the meaningful relationships which exist between learning goals, creativity and personality. Two hundred and fifty respondents from two local universities in Singapore responded to a survey which contained various psychological scales which measured specific psychological constructs. They included task orientation, ego‐approach orientation, ego‐avoidance orientation, creativity, conformity, autonomous causality orientation, controlled causality orientation, openness to experience, agreeable‐ness and neuroticism. Task orientation was found to be positively associated with creativity, autonomous causality orientation and openness to experience, and negatively associated with conformity. Both ego‐approach and ego‐avoidance orientations were found to be positively associated with conformity, controlled causality orientation and neuroticism, and negatively associated with creativity and openness to experience. In addition, ego‐approach orientation was found to be negatively associated with agreeableness. In the discussion, it was stressed that if educators wished to nurture creative, compassionate and vivacious students who enjoyed the learning process, rather than competitive, conforming and wary students who feared the learning process, then it was necessary to cultivate a learning environment which encouraged students to be task‐involved rather than ego‐involved.     

注重教学重组实现学习迁移

人们为了达到学习迁移的目的，往往就存在一个对教学内容进行重组的问题。本文以《成本会计》教学为例，说明在《成本会计》教学中，如何通过教学重组，实现学习迁移。     

Web 2.0 Technologies in Music Education in Portugal: Using Podcasts for Learning

This article presents a report of a pedagogic experience carried out in a Portuguese 6th-grade music education class during the 2008–2009 school year. A podcast was created (www.podomatic.com) and several activities were developed, in classroom context, taking advantage of the tool's potential for teaching and learning. Although the podcast was managed by the teacher, the published contents were developed mostly by the students, therefore becoming themselves producers of the information on the Web and having an active role in the construction of the global society of the 21st century. The informal learning activity was evaluated at the end of the year, using both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques. Results show that the podcast activity involved students in the learning process, making them aware of the new roles they will play in the global information society.     

On Goals for ESL Learning and Teaching

ESL learning can cultivate learners’ language skills,communicative abilities,and develop different factors including emotional attitude,cultural awareness and learning strategies. This paper has analyzed two individual goals for ESL teaching accordingly,one is the understanding of foreign culture,and another is academic subject.     

大学本科教育中教与学目标的统一——基于湖南四所高校的调查

文章抽样调查了本科院校教师和学生在教育目标上的统一性情况,调查结果显示,教师和学生在教育目标的选择上存在基本一致的趋势,但也存在一定差异。要实现教与学目标之间的统一,有必要做到以下几点:学习外国教育经验,创新教育理念;转变管理思路,去除人才培养目标制定的路径依赖;打破专业导向,构建个人发展导向的课程体系;调动师生积极性,改革教学方法;注重师生生命价值的体现,重构教学评价体系。     

The Triumph of Users: Achieving Cultural Usability Goals With User Localization

Current localization practices suffer from a narrow and static vision of culture resulting in usability problems for IT product and design. To address this problem, this article compares user localization efforts of mobile messaging technology in two different cultural contexts with a new methodology of cultural usability. It calls for expanding the scope of localization practices and linking user localization efforts to the IT product design cycle.     

试论学习目标及动机生成

学习目标的有效与否直接影响学习的结果和效率,而学习目标的有效性又依赖于学习者对其他的认可和内化程度。应从学习目标的界定、特点、结构体系及构建过程去探讨有效学习目标的心理构建及形成。     

Podcasts are not for everyone

Twenty‐first century students are expected to utilise emerging technologies such as lecture podcasts as learning tools. This research explored the uptake of podcasts by undergraduate students enrolled in two very different cognitively challenging subjects in the second year of the nursing programme and in the first year of a business programme. Regardless of the semester, the different content being studied and the statistically significant demographic differences between the nursing and business cohorts, striking behavioural similarities emerged. Students from both cohorts in each semester under investigation spent similar amounts of time studying regardless of gender, age, Internet access and time spent on paid work. The patterns of podcast usage by responding nursing and business students were not significantly different. Non‐listeners in both cohorts did not differ significantly from podcast users (listeners) either demographically or with regard to personal access to computers, the Internet and MP3/4 players. Non‐listeners utilised lecture notes, text resources and the learning management system in a similar way to listeners. The only significant difference was the longer hours spent in paid work by non‐listeners. These findings reinforce the emerging concept that podcasts are not embraced by everyone. Despite the flexibility and mobile learning opportunities afforded by podcasts, significant numbers of students prefer to learn in face‐to‐face environments and by reading and/or listening in set study environments.     

Personality Types,Learning Styles and Educational Goals

Attempts to broaden conceptions of learning styles to represent more adequately individual differences in motivation/emotion, as well as cognition, are limited by a paucity of relevant theory. Personality theories should, but do not, provide a satisfactory conceptual framework for this endeavour. In an attempt to remedy this situation, a new personality typology is outlined which, it is argued, provides a coherent system within which to construe and conduct research upon learning styles. The implications of the theory for educational goals, couched in terms of learning styles, also are discussed.     

论自主学习中学习目标设置的作用及原则

为了更好的培养学生的自主学习能力，本文运用社会认知理论和最近发展区的思想，探讨了目标设置在自主学习过程中的作用及原则。     

开发成人教育课程 实现转化学习

转化学习是成人学习理论新进展的重要方面,通过转化学习,成人能够认清并更正原有扭曲的意义观点,对于成人的持续发展意义重大。但在成人教育的实践中,由于成人存在一定的"自我中心主义",在一定程度上阻碍学习者对根深蒂固的信仰、观念、判断标准等方面进行批判性反思,实现转化学习并非易事,因此成人教育应重视开发转化学习的针对性课程,力求促使成人形成更具包容性、开放性的意义观点,以便更好地适应生活。     

论基于德育目标视域的课外合作学习小组构建

基于学校德育任务,借助德育内容,构建起一种以培养学生德育观、合作观、高能力目标的课外合作学习小组模式,遵循教师引导与学生主体相结合、社会目标与个人目标相结合、目标多元与德育优先相结合等原则,体现模式的导向性和互动性特点,充分利用学校特别是学生资源,提高学校学生德育工作的实效。     

Effectiveness of Podcasts Delivered on Mobile Devices as a Support for Student Learning During General Chemistry Laboratories

Chemistry instructors in teaching laboratories provide expert modeling of techniques and cognitive processes and provide assistance to enrolled students that may be described as scaffolding interaction. Such student support is particularly essential in laboratories taught with an inquiry-based curriculum. In a teaching laboratory with a high instructor-to-student ratio, mobile devices can provide a platform for expert modeling and scaffolding during the laboratory sessions. This research study provides data collected on the effectiveness of podcasts delivered as needed in a first-semester general chemistry laboratory setting. Podcasts with audio and visual tracks covering essential laboratory techniques and central concepts that aid in experimental design or data processing were prepared and made available for students to access on an as-needed basis on iPhones^® or iPod touches^®. Research focused in three areas: the extent of podcast usage, the numbers and types of interactions between instructors and student laboratory teams, and student performance on graded assignments. Data analysis indicates that on average the podcast treatment laboratory teams accessed a podcast 2.86 times during the laboratory period during each week that podcasts were available. Comparison of interaction data for the lecture treatment laboratory teams and podcast treatment laboratory teams reveals that scaffolding interactions with instructors were statistically significantly fewer for teams that had podcast access rather than a pre-laboratory lecture. The implication of the results is that student laboratory teams were able to gather laboratory information more effectively when it was presented in an on-demand podcast format than in a pre-laboratory lecture format. Finally, statistical analysis of data on student performance on graded assignments indicates no significant differences between outcome measures for the treatment groups when compared as cohorts. The only statistically significant difference is between students who demonstrated a high level of class participation in the concurrent general chemistry lecture course; for this sub-group the students in the podcast treatment group earned a course average that was statistically significantly higher than those in the lecture treatment group.     

How Future Goals Enhance Motivation and Learning in Multicultural Classrooms

This review examines the impact of future goals on motivation and learning in multicultural classrooms. Across cultures, schooling is a future-oriented investment. Studies of minority students' school achievement have advanced future goals as a crucial protective factor in the face of frequent school failure. At the same time, cultural discontinuities and limited opportunities in minority students' school careers may weaken the motivational force of the future. Our review of the seemingly contradictory evidence on the role of the future in minority students' school achievement calls for a more fine-grained motivational theory of the future. Specifically, converging findings support conceptual distinctions (a) between positive and negative perceptions of the instrumentality of school tasks for future goals, and (b) between internal and external regulation of classroom behaviour by future goals. Thus, positive instrumentality and internal regulation enhance intrinsic motivation and adaptive learning in multicultural classrooms. We conclude that the motivational force of future goals can be generalized to minority students and that it depends crucially on perceived instrumentality and internal regulation.     

Student-Created Digital Media and Engagement in Middle School History

In this study, student engagement during classroom activities was investigated where sixth graders created digital media projects using historical images. The study employed a qualitative design involving observations, student artifacts, and interviews while students were creating digital storyboards using a Web-based application developed for this research. Several patterns of student engagement were identified, such as time on task, level of detail, and extra effort, which subsequently led to the development of four distinct profiles among the students. Applications of these findings and directions for future studies are discussed.