Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due: Designing Open Badges for a Technology Integration Course

This paper describes the design, development, and implementation of Open Badges into a secondary education preservice course on instructional technology. Open Badges provide a new way of issuing credentials to individuals who demonstrate knowledge, skill, or ability in a particular domain. Badges provide a simple system for communicating a skill along with specific information about the evidence connected with earning the badge. In this paper, we describe the course in detail along with the several iterations of design that resulted in the development of the badge system, along with the challenges faced and lessons learned for future design and use of Open Badges.     

Partnering with Undergraduate Students to Conduct Library Focus Groups

Experiential learning is becoming an increasingly important part of the university experience. Academic libraries have long provided practicum opportunities for library and information science students. To date, however, few libraries have documented experiential learning partnerships with social science students. Librarians at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) partnered with the university's anthropology department in an experiential learning opportunity. Undergraduate students conducted focus groups to discover how MTSU students complete research assignments and what role the library plays in the process. This article describes the collaboration, and it discusses the benefits and drawbacks of partnering with undergraduate student researchers.     

Scolding John Q.: Articulating a Normative Relationship between Politics and Entertainment

The 2002 hostage drama John Q. triggered a discussion among journalists, the public, and the policy community about the proper relationship between politics and entertainment. In this debate the criteria for good journalism and good political discourse were frequently invoked to evaluate this Hollywood film. This discussion, which spilled out of the film criticism pages into news and commentary pages, shows how public-sphere models of political discourse are privileged even though they may not be a good fit for fictional media. John Q.’s success in triggering public discussion and awareness about health policy issues seems to illustrate DeLuca & Peeples’s (2002) DeLuca, K. M. and Peeples, J. 2002. From public sphere to public screen: Democracy, activism, and the “violence” of Seattle. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19(2): 125–151. [CROSSREF][Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] claim that the “public screen” is a more useful metaphor for thinking about politics than the public sphere (Habermas, 1989 Habermas, J. 1989. The structural transformation of the public sphere, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  [Google Scholar]). John Q. seemed to particularly raise the ire of critics because of its unambiguous critique of domestic policy and its implicit suggestion that collective solutions are needed.     

Motion Pictures

The American Film Institute Guide to College Courses in Film and Television (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis. Books, 1973—$5.95, paper)

Joseph McBride, Orson Welles (192 pp.)

Colin McArthur, Underworld USA (176 pp.)

Alan Lovell and Jim Hillier, Studies in Documentary (176 pp.)

Joel E. Siegel, Val Lewton: the Reality of Terror (176 pp.)

Arnold Gassan's A Chronology of Photography (Light Impressions, Box 3012, Rochester, N.Y. 14614, 1972—$10.50/ 7.95)     

Space Communications

THE INTELSAT GLOBAL SATELLITE SYSTEM edited by Joel Alper and Joseph N. Pelton (American Institute of Aeronautices and Astronautics, Inc., 1633 Broadway, New York 10019---$45.00)

SPACE, EARTH, AND COMMUNICATION by Edward Ploman (Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books/-Greenwood Press, 1984---$27.50)     

Analysis of broadcast literature: Broadcast Journalism in “education on the air” 1930–1953

During the past six years the Journal of Broadcasting has brought to its readers bibliographies on specific topics (audience measurement techniques, content analysis, etc.) and from publications devoted to a specific field (law, economics, journalism, etc.). The bibliography published below belongs to this second category. Education on the Air, the yearbook of the Institute for Education by Radio‐Television, is a continuous record of the deliberations of a convention devoted to exploring the informative and cultural uses of broadcasting. Under the direction of I. Keith Tyler, the IERT was for many years the only major association devoted exclusively to this subject area, and many of the present organizations now in the field are “spin‐offs” from these annual meetings hosted by the Ohio State University. Within the framework of the IERT, the subject of broadcast journalism has not been neglected. Over a period of almost 30 years, this use of radio for informing the public of the events of the day was discussed in various IERT sessions.

This bibliography was prepared to assist researchers and students interested in the growth and development of broadcast journalism as reflected in the IERT annual meetings. Dr. Heath is professor of journalism at Oklahoma State University, and is former chairman of the Council on Radio‐Television Journalism of the Association for Education in Journalism. Mr. Wolfson is working toward his doctorate at Michigan State University. They collaborated on this bibliography while at Iowa State University.     

Segregation,integration, inclusion—the ideology and reality in Finland

In this paper, we try to examine the classical sociological points of special education, especially the organizational form of special education, social background of students and the minority status of students. The material of the study was collected mostly during 2003 from one large city in Finland. This city has more than a 100‐year‐long tradition of organizing special education, and it is also still organized very traditionally, that is mainly in special schools. The oldest functioning special education school was founded in 1901. This form of organization based on special schools is no longer typical in Finland. Over 1000 questionnaires were sent to special education school teachers, and students and their parents, as well as to special needs assistants. The percentage of returned responses was between 70% and 80%. Local material is practically the only way to get information of these critical points because of the Act on the Protection of Privacy and the administrative orientation of state statistics. The results show that boys are strongly over‐represented in special education. Over three out of four of the students in classroom‐based special education are boys. According to our comparison, the children from immigrant families account for less than one out of ten students in general education, but in classroom‐based special education they represent nearly 14%, and in part‐time special education as much as one‐quarter (25%). The form of education differs also in regard to the social class of the parents. The parents have been divided into upper, middle and lower social classes according to their occupation. The proportion of upper‐class parents of the student group in general education (42%) is doubled when compared to the parents of both special education groups. The majority of the parents of severe disabled students support the idea of special education schools, but the majority of the parents from the other special education groups are in favour of education in the nearest school.     

Staff involvement in the design of a key skills curriculum model: a case-study

This case-study follows a school as it struggles to prepare for the changes brought about by Curriculum 2000 and the new key skills qualification. It describes the curriculum debate within the senior management team as it balanced the conflicting needs of subject popularity and necessity. It relates how inherent structural flaws were uncovered in the proposed curriculum strategy, how this very failure was used as an opportunity to initiate staff involvement in the design of curriculum structures and how success was subsequently fashioned from the process. It is a story of failure, consideration, reflection and improvement, and offers some insight into the lessons learned by management and teaching staff as they reflect on the process of change and their own participation in it.     

Integrating reading and science education: On developing and evaluating WEE Science

Two studies of a new science programme called WEE Science were conducted in two fifth-grade classrooms. The studies lasted for seven days in one of the classrooms and nine days in the other. At the beginning of the programme the students chose a science trade book from among the many that were selected and brought to the classroom. The students then formed groups based on the topics of the books and asked questions (Wondering) about the content. After choosing one of the 'wonderments' to pursue further, the students formed and implemented a plan for investigating (Exploring). In each classroom, each student explored, working in cooperating groups of two or more. The students then explained (Explaining) to a group of their peers what they had wondered and what and how they had explored. The students' wonderments, activities, plans, and explanations were recorded in a science notebook that had been designed for that purpose. In addition, the classrooms were videotaped while WEE Science was in progress. While the studies were successful in that most students eagerly participated in all phases of the project, some problems were encountered which created another round of wondering for the researchers. Some of these were: evaluating students' work, responding to science misconceptions of students, teaching some students to record observations in their notebooks, deciding where WEE Science would fit best in the curriculum, and anticipating its reception in the science education community.