“That's more like how they know me as a person”: one primary pre‐service teacher's stories of her personal and ‘professional’ digital practices

In contributing to debates about how student‐teachers might draw from personal experience in addressing digital literacy in the classroom, this paper explores the stories that one primary student‐teacher told of her digital practices during a larger study of the role of digital literacy in student‐teachers' lives. The paper investigates the ‘recognition work’ this student‐teacher did as she aligned herself with different discourses and notes how themes of ‘control’ and ‘professionalism’ seemed to pattern her stories of informal and formal practices both within and beyond her professional education. The paper calls for further research into how student‐teachers perceive the relevance of their personal experience to their professional role and argues for encouraging pre‐service and practising teachers to tell stories of their digital practices and reflect upon the discourses which frame them.     

The modern environment of humanity in information and computer dimensions (experience of analytical assessment)

The specific character of the modern information environment in the wide and in the narrow sense is discovered. Representation of three methods for the existence of information is given. The state of information on the Internet is analyzed. The nature of crimes in an information environment is discovered, along with the negative influence of SPAM. Opportunities for managing the information environment and actions for its regulation are considered.     

University teacher approaches to design and teaching and concepts of learning technologies

This study investigates the experience of teaching of 19 teachers who are teaching on university courses involving face-to-face and on-line learning. The teachers are asked about how they think about learning technologies and how they approach the design and teaching of their courses across these two contexts. Results show that there are qualitatively different ways of thinking about learning technologies that relate logically and positively to qualitatively different ways of designing and teaching using learning technologies. The results have implications for teachers and those interested in maximising the likelihood of learning for university students when teachers teach with learning technologies.     

Low-income Latino mothers’ booksharing styles and children's emergent literacy development

Booksharing is often considered one of the most important activities parents can do to promote young children's early literacy skills. However, there is relatively little research on the style and nature of booksharing in Latino homes. This study examined the relation between maternal booksharing styles and low-income Latino children's subsequent language and literacy development. Eighty Latino Head Start four-year-old children and their mothers were audiotaped while they shared a wordless children's picture book together in their home. Six months later, children's emergent literacy ability was assessed. Results of a cluster analysis identified three types of maternal booksharing styles which had differential predictive power over children's literacy longitudinally. Results are discussed in terms of improving culturally appropriate research, practice and policy for early childhood and family literacy programming designed to meet the needs of young Latino children and their parents.     

Beyond a battery hen model?: a computer laboratory,micropolitics and educational change

This paper investigates what happened in one Australian primary school as part of the establishment, use and development of a computer laboratory over a period of two years. As part of a school renewal project, the computer laboratory was introduced as an ‘innovative’ way to improve the skills of teachers and children in information and communication technologies and to lead to curriculum change. However, the way in which the laboratory was conceptualised and used worked against achieving these goals. The micropolitics of educational change and an input–output understanding of computers meant that change remained structural rather than pedagogical or philosophical.     

E-learning in engineering education: a theoretical and empirical study of the Algerian higher education institution

Technology-mediated education or e-learning is growing globally both in scale and delivery capacity due to the large diffusion of the ubiquitous information and communication technologies (ICT) in general and the web technologies in particular. This statement has not yet been fully supported by research, especially in developing countries such as Algeria. The purpose of this paper was to identify directions for addressing the needs of academics in higher education institutions in Algeria in order to adopt the e-learning approach as a strategy to improve quality of education. The paper will report results of an empirical study that measures the readiness of the Algerian higher education institutions towards the implementation of ICT in the educational process and the attitudes of faculty members towards the application of the e-learning approach in engineering education. Three main objectives were targeted, namely: (a) to provide an initial evaluation of faculty members’ attitudes and perceptions towards web-based education; (b) reporting on their perceived requirements for implementing e-learning in university courses; (c) providing an initial input for a collaborative process of developing an institutional strategy for e-learning.

Statistical analysis of the survey results indicates that the Algerian higher education institution, which adopted the Licence – Master and Doctorate educational system, is facing a big challenge to take advantage of emerging technological innovations and the advent of e-learning to further develop its teaching programmes and to enhance the quality of education in engineering fields. The successful implementation of this modern approach is shown to depend largely on a set of critical success factors that would include:

1. The extent to which the institution will adopt a formal and official e-learning strategy.

2. The extent to which faculty members will adhere and adopt this strategy and develop ownership of the various measures in the context of their teaching and research responsibilities.

3. The extent to which the university will offer adequate support in terms of training, software platform administration, online resource development and impact monitoring and assessment.

     

Writing stories,rewriting identities: using journalism education and mobile technologies to empower marginalized high school students

This study examines the impact that producing a print newspaper using cell phones had on marginalized students in a high school journalism classroom. Analysis of data from participant observation, artifact analysis and student interviews revealed that a) students negotiated cell phone use for educational purposes, despite school bans on such devices, and b) students manifested emerging, transformative identities that positively influenced their roles in five key areas: as a conception of self, in other academic classes, among peers, with family, and in the community. Our findings point to the significance of media-based journalism production in allowing marginalized students to embrace professional identities by participating in a meaningful community of practice. This research highlights the academic, social and civic benefits of such initiatives, and calls attention to the range of opportunities and challenges that pertain to using mobile devices as learning tools in these contexts.     

A time to nourish? Evaluating the impact of public procurement on technological generality through patent data

Innovative public procurement is increasingly considered as a form of public support for private innovation activities by both innovation scholars and policymakers. Economic historians have suggested an even more fundamental role of public procurement in setting the pace of technological change, reporting how defense-related procurement has had a major impact on the emergence and diffusion of many general purpose technologies developed in the United States in the 20th century. In this paper, I suggest that procurement might represent one of the most important elements in creating the right soil to ‘cultivate’ a technology that may have the potential to reach high levels of pervasiveness. To test this hypothesis, I make use of patent data and patent citations. I design a quasi-experiment to compare the changes in the level of generality level over time, between a group of treated and a group of control patents. A patent is assigned to the treatment group if it receives a citation from a patent related to public procurement. Results suggest a positive and significant impact of innovative public procurement on the generality of a patent.     

Distributed writing as a lens for examining writing as embodied practice

The author argues for a reinvigorated focus on writing “as material, corporeal action” and proposes a framework of “distributed writing” through which to enact this focus. This framework highlights writing’s simultaneously material and embodied nature and can help scholars further examine and understand interactions among tools, artifacts, and writing bodies. Continuing to study writing “as material, corporeal action” is necessary as 21st century tools for writing continue to change.     

一些国家面向创新的规制改革浅析

阐述规制对创新的影响,分析科技的快速发展对规制带来的挑战,研究主要国家面向创新的规制改革做法,具体包括探索建立创新友好的规制框架,针对新兴技术领域进行规制改革,减轻规制负担并提高其灵活性,并结合我国的实际情况,提出对策建议。