Learning through remote practical experiments over the internet: a case study from teacher education

Abstract

The article focuses on a cross-national Internet module employing a remote device for learning about control and intended to promote the professional development of a group of student teachers from England and the Netherlands. The practical activity was one component of an integrated conferencing package that sought to encourage shared pedagogical discussions of the teaching of control technology in schools. Microanalysis of the activities highlighted a number of difficulties affecting the execution of the tasks. An instrument of analysis based on the non-neutrality of technology is described which offered a particular lens with which to interpret participant actions and the extent to which learning took place. The article addresses ways in which remote access transformed those practical experiments and affected the learning experiences.     

Archiving the Web: It's Going to Have to Be a Group Effort

Important content is increasingly published on the Web, and not all of it is being preserved by large projects such as the Internet Archive's “Wayback Machine.” As new technologies transform the publishing industry, libraries will need to identify new forums for scholarly communication as they develop, and take steps to ensure that relevant materials do not slip through the cracks. Local content, government documents, and database-backed websites are three areas in which libraries may find that existing Web archives do not contain the content that users are likely to need.     

International Communications

Alan P.L. Liu, Communications and National Integration in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971—$8.50)

Hamid Mowlana's International Communication: A Selected Bibliography (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1971—$3.75, paper)

Joan Bakewell and Nicholas Garnham, The New Priesthood: British Television Today, (London: Penguin Press, 1970—about $7.00)

Michel Verhayden, La Radio-Television Face Au Pouvior: L'experience Belge (Louvain: Universities Catholique, Centre des Techniques de Diffusion, 1970—$5.20, paper)     

Research Methods

Klaus Krippendorf, CONTENT ANALYSIS: AN INTRODUCTION TO ITS METHODOLOGY (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1980---$16.00/$7.95)

Karl Erik Rosegren, ADVANCES IN CONTENT ANALYSIS (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1981---$25.00/$12.50)

Nick L. Smith, COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES IN EVALUATION: NEW PERSPECTIVES IN EVAUATION, VOLUME 3 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982---$22.50)

Jerome Johnston and James Ettema, POSITIVE IMAGES: BREAKING STEREOTYPES WITH CHILDREN'S TELEVISION (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1982---$22.95/$10.95)     

Book Reviews

The Invention of Journalism JEAN K. CHALABY, 1998 London, Macmillan pp. x, 212

Grub Street and the Ivory Tower: literary journalism and literary scholarship from Fielding to the Internet JEREMY TREGLOWN and BRIDGET BENNETT, eds, 1998 Oxford, Oxford University Press

Gramophone, Film, Typewriter FRIEDRICH A. KITTLER, 1999 GEOFFREY WINTHROP‐YOUNG and MICHAEL WUTZ, trans. Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press pp. xli, 315

Writing and Society: literacy, print and politics in Britain 1590–1660 NIGEL WHEALE, 1999 London and New York, Routledge     

Performance Indicators and Widening Participation in UK Higher Education

We investigate the relationship between the widening participation performance indicators adopted in UK higher education (HE) and the government's objective of increasing overall HE participation rates. We critically assess the development of performance monitoring in HE and identify weaknesses in the current performance indicators from the perspective of the main stakeholders. We suggest the development of internal indicators and benchmarks by HE institutions together with extensions to the current national performance indicators that could improve their usefulness.