Technology and Early Childhood Education: A Technology Integration Professional Development Model for Practicing Teachers

Despite the promise of technology in education, many practicing teachers are faced with multiple challenges of effectively integrating technology into their classroom instruction. Additionally, teachers who are successful incorporating educational technology into their instruction recognize that although technology tools have the potential to help children, they are not ends in themselves. This article describes a Summer Institute project that the authors facilitated in a medium sized midwest public university. The summer workshop afforded participating early childhood education teachers exciting opportunities to interact with various instructional tools and technology applications. Further, the practicing teachers explored various strategies to integrate specific technology tools into their lessons in a manner consistent with constructivist pedagogy. This article is intended to stimulate reflections on the need to adopt a suitable technology integration professional development model in early childhood education classrooms to support young learners.     

The Brokenness of Broken Windows: An Introductory Statistics Project on Race,Policing, and Criminal Justice

Abstract

We describe a semester-long project for an introductory statistics class that studies the broken windows theory of policing and the related issues of race, policing, and criminal justice. The most impactful feature of the project is the data-collection phase, in which students attend and observe a public arraignment court session. This “Court Monitoring Project” was completed in partnership with the Police Reform Organizing Project, a New York City non-profit organization. The mathematical student learning outcomes of the project emphasize the construction and interpretation of various graphical representations of data (contingency tables, bar charts, histograms, box plots, and scatter plots).     

Computer Technology Integration and Student Learning: Barriers and Promise

Political and institutional support has enabled many institutions of learning to spend millions of dollars to acquire educational computing tools (Ficklen and Muscara, Am Educ 25(3):22–29, 2001) that have not been effectively integrated into the curriculum. While access to educational technology tools has remarkably improved in most schools, there is still concern about instructional integration of computer technology to support student learning. Appropriate integration of computer tools constitutes a major change in people’s lives; technology integration is a complex phenomenon that involves understanding teachers’ motivations, perceptions, and beliefs about learning and technology (Woodbridge, ). Although computer technology has a great potential to reform or even transform education, barriers come in the way of achieving success especially with student learning. This paper presents an overview of technology use in education with a focus on barriers to computer technology integration. Further, this paper provides suggestions to maximize the benefits of learning with computer technology.     

The effect of attentional focus cues on object control performance in elementary children

Background and purpose: Attentional focus cues have been shown to impact motor performance of adults and children. Specifically, an external focus of attention results in improved motor learning and performance as compared to adopting an internal focus of attention. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of an internal and external attentional focus cue on children’s object control skill performance during a commonly used motor skill assessment.

Methods: Using a within-participant design, a total of 44 children (M_age?=?7.7 years, 20 boys and 24 girls) completed all three attentional focus conditions. The object control subscale of the Test of Gross Motor Development-2nd Edition (TGMD-2; Ulrich, 2000. Test of Gross Motor Development-2. Austin: Pro-Ed.) served as the motor skill assessment in present study. The TGMD-2 is a normed and criteria-referenced assessment frequently used to assess fundamental motor skill competence in children. The object control subtest of the TGMD-2 assesses a child’s ability to complete six fundamental motor skills – striking a stationary ball, stationary dribble, catch, kick, overhand throw, and underhand roll. All participants completed the object control subtest of the TGMD-2 under three different attentional focus conditions: baseline (i.e. neutral focus), internal, and external. The internal cue focused on movement performance and the external cue focused on movement outcome. In all three conditions, a video demonstration of proper skill performance was used to ensure no difference in visual demonstration, but the overlaying audio was changed to encompass each attentional focus condition. Children’s motor performance was recorded and later coded by a single researcher blinded to the study. A repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to determine if children’s motor scores changed among the three conditions.

Results: Findings demonstrated that children’s performance differed among the three conditions (F_(2,43)?=?3.5, p?Post hoc analysis revealed that children scored significantly better in the external cue condition compared to the baseline (difference?=?1.98, p?Conclusion: Children performed better when given a verbal instruction to focus their attention externally rather than a verbal instruction with no attentional focus cue. No significant differences exist between the internal and external focus condition or between the neutral and internal condition. Our findings align with the literature and support that external attentional focus cues have a positive effect on motor performance. From a teaching and learning standpoint, using consistent instructions appears to be essential for young learners. Slight changes in verbal cues can have a significant effect on how well children execute fundamental motor skills.     

Students’ and teachers’ perceptions: initial achievements of a Project-Based Engineering School

A unified academic model based on the project-based learning (PBL) methodology was implemented, in the 2012–2013 period, in the School of Engineering at Universidad Europea de Madrid. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether teachers and students participating in the capstone projects feel that the objectives for which this methodology was designed for are being achieved. The data were collected through interviews to participants at the end of the PBL experience. The results are encouraging, as students seem to be more motivated, and they say that they are experiencing deeper learning, and have developed key competitive skills required for their professional lives. Findings also suggest that teachers face positively the PBL as a learning approach since they perceive that students obtain a deeper learning, develop transversal skills with the projects and are more engaged with their studies. Implications and recommendations for the future of the model are also discussed.     

Using invention to change how students tackle problems

Invention activities challenge students to tackle problems that superficially appear unrelated to the course material but illustrate underlying fundamental concepts that are fundamental to material that will be presented. During our invention activities in a first-year biology class, students were presented with problems that are parallel to those that living cells must solve, in weekly sessions over a 13-wk term. We compared students who participated in the invention activities sessions with students who participated in sessions of structured problem solving and with students who did not participate in either activity. When faced with developing a solution to a challenging and unfamiliar biology problem, invention activity students were much quicker to engage with the problem and routinely provided multiple reasonable hypotheses. In contrast the other students were significantly slower in beginning to work on the problem and routinely produced relatively few ideas. We suggest that the invention activities develop a highly valuable skill that operates at the initial stages of problem solving.     

Shelf-ready: A cost-benefit analysis

Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library conducted a time-task cost study to compare the cost and processing time of shelf-ready books to non-shelf-ready books to determine if it could better use its human resources and if it should expand the use of shelf-ready to include its approval books. The results showed that shelf-ready was, on average, 5.7% cheaper, took 47% less processing time, and arrived on the shelves 33 sooner than books processed in-house. Based on the results of the study, the library moved its approval books to the shelf-ready program and was able to reallocate catalogers tasks.     

Factors influencing technology planning in developing countries: A literature review

This article is a literature review concerning the factors that play an important role in the development of educational technology plans in the educational system of developing countries (DCs). Largely, the technology plans are influenced by factors that emanates from within the country (internal) and those outside of their borders (external). Internal factors include the high prices and low effectiveness of services provided by technology-related multinational corporations in DCs, the philosophical perspectives and priorities of organizations, foundations and development agencies promoting the implementation of ICTs in DCs, pilot programs without sustainability, uncoordinated pilot projects, selling of refurbished computers for use at a large scale, and dominance of the English language in the software. External factors include international summits and conferences, global partnerships and establishment of international organizations, and technology-related multinational corporations. To this end, this article is intended to stimulate reflections on the different factors that play an important role in the development and implementation of educational technology plans in Dcs.     

Using computer-assisted instruction to enhance achievement of English language learners

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in English-Language environments offer practice time, motivates students, enhance student learning, increase authentic materials that students can study, and has the potential to encourage teamwork between students. The findings from this particular study suggested that students who used computer assisted program had a greater chance of closing achievement gap and meeting NCLB requirements than those students who did not use computer-assisted instruction. Additionally, the students that used computer-assisted classroom instruction gained scores in reading and math. Based on these findings, teachers, school administrators, and other educational stakeholder should explore strategies for technology integration to close the achievement gap.