Constructivism in the Collaboratory
Great attention has been paid recently to the capabilities of computers to provide environments in which active learners can construct their own understanding through open-ended interaction. Yet discussion of constructivist learning environments has commonly focused on the learner as an individual, learning in isolation from other learners. For example, Perkins (1991) characterizes a learning environment as being composed of five facets: information banks, symbol pads, construction kits, phenome
Using the WWW to Build Learning Communities in K-12 Settings - Part II: The Next Generation of Web S
In Part II, we will lay out a plan for an educational Web server that goes beyond what is currently available, providing a truly vital and useful resource for classroom learning. Finally, we will describe current plans for the CoVis Geosciences Web Server, an educational Web resource designed according to the plans outlined in this article.,web document
Using the WWW to Build Learning Communities in K-12 Settings - Part I. Global Network Navigator
The World Wide Web (WWW) can play a vital role in the formation and successful operation of learning communities. Just 18 months ago, there were but 100 WWW servers online worldwide, while today there are over 10,000 WWW servers. Current estimates predict 100,000 WWW servers a year from now, according to M.K. Gray's Measuring the Size and Growth of the Web. This decentralized development of information resources, which cover everything from scientific databases to corporate products to traffic a
The greenhouse effect visualizer: a tool for the science classroom
The Greenhouse Effect Visualizer (GEV) is designed to help students visualize data sets related to the earth's energy balance. This work was inspired by the benefits scientific visualization have provided to scientists in discovering patterns and presenting the results of their work to broad communities. The hope is that scientific visualization can provide equal assistance to students trying to learn science. The philosophy underlying this approach links learning with practice. Hence, students
‘Hole-In-The-Wall’ Computer Kiosks Foster Mathematics Achievement - A comparative study
Earlier work at unsupervised playground computer kiosks in rural India, popularly called 'hole-in-the-wall', showed that children exposed to these kiosks learn to use computers on their own and that they are able to clear school examinations in computer science, without any classroom teaching for it. Extending this, our recent research work examines the possible impact on attainments in other curricular subjects, arising from self-directed use of these kiosks. This paper investigates the impact
Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education
The study will provide a set of recommendations for the JISC, institutions, and teachers on the effective use of Web 2.0 technologies for sharing content for teaching and learning. This will be achieved by desk research building on JISC funded and other work already undertaken, and widespread consultation across the community through an online workshop. The desk research will look at both existing practice and institutional policies which can facilitate or inhibit the use of Web 2.0 technologie
Learning Design and Run-Time Resource Binding in a Distributed e-Learning Environment
Nowadays, the need for e-learning systems supporting a rich set of pedagogical requirements has been identified as an important issue in the field of distance learning. Several initiatives take place in order to meet this need.
Maybe, the most important of these initiatives is IMS Learning Design [6] that provides a framework to depict pedagogies. Furthermore, we are aware that the provision of different learning paths tailored on learner's characteristics and preferences guarantees the learner
AstroGrid as an e-Learning Environment
We present the concept of the Virtual Observatory through the AstroGrid project, which is a Virtual Organization making intensive use of the Internet to produce a working data-grid for Astronomical applications.
AstroGrid has implemented a series of tools which facilitate collaborative work such as news, forum and discussion pages, all of them inspired by the open source and licensing philosophy.
Additionally we explore how such an Astronomical Grid project can be used in the future as an e-Le
The Service Architecture in the ACTIVEMATH Learning Environment
We discuss the usage of web-services in the ACTIVEMATH learning environment, describe the prototypes implemented and the experience gained. Requirements for an ideal web-service technology are described. They include the notion of event propagation as well as the consideration for stateful web-services. Finally we propose models to make the web-services of ACTIVEMATH available to client components without affecting privacy or security. Further work, within the LE ACTIVEMATH EU project is describ
Reactive Learning Objects for Distributed e-Learning Environments
We present a concept of reactive learning objects that goes away from the hydraulic view of e-learning and gives to students activity a central place. First experimentations suggest that this concept should be enlarged to include distributed computation, distributed storage and Web services.
A Virtual Organisation for e-Learning
We present in this paper the results of an European funded project Diogene, finished in October 2004, whose aim has been the design and the development of a distributed e-learning system able to perform several automatic actions such as course customization and information retrieval on the Semantic Web.
The Diogene architecture is based on a network of specialized Organizations each of which has been realized as an independent Web Service.
Adaptive Personalisation in Self e-Learning Networks
This paper presents some of the personalisation services designed for self e-learning networks in the SeLeNe project. A self e-learning network consists of web-based learning objects that have been made available to the network by its users, along with metadata descriptions of these learning objects and of the networkÂ’s users.
The architecture of the network is distributed and service-oriented. The personalisation facilities include: querying learning object descriptions to return results tail
A Grid Approach to Provide Effective Awareness to On-line Collaborative Learning Teams
Providing collaborative learning applications the possibility to offer continuous awareness to on-line collaborative learning teams is a challenging issue since it is essential to keep participants informed of both what is happening and what happened in the learning group.
Moreover, awareness is the basis to enhance collaboration and improve the individual and group performance since it allows to track and assess the collaborative learning process more objectively and to model students' behavio
Computational GRIDs and online laboratories
Many projects addressing the creation of online laboratories have been developed recently. They have a common goal: to enable students and professional learners to get hands-on experience without moving from the places where they are.
Nevertheless, the found solutions are often very different among them, and interoperability between different online laboratories systems does not exist. In this paper we present our work around the exploitation of Grid technologies for sharing instrumentation and
The Internetworked School: A Policy for the Future
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Can research on science learning and instruction inform standards for science education?
We contrast the current science education reform effort with the reforms of the 1960s and suggest how the current effort could be enhanced. We identify insights from recent research that we believe can inform the reform process, in particular, to reach all science students and also impart a cohesive view of science. We propose an ldquoalternative modelsrdquo view of scientific explanation and show how this view would contribute to reforms of (1) course goals, (2) social aspects of science learni
The Climate Visualizer: Sense-Making Through Scientific Visualization
This paper describes the design of a learning environment, called the Climate Visualizer, intended to facilitate scientific sense-making in high school classrooms by providing students the ability to craft, inspect, and annotate scientific visualizations. The theoretical background for our design presents a view of learning as acquiring and critiquing cultural practices and stresses the need for students to appropriate the social and material aspects of practice when learning an area. This is fo
Cyclone in the classroom: bringing the atmospheric science community into the high school
There has been much discussion about the failure of traditional science education to prepare students for careers in science (Halloun & Hestenes, 1985; Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1990). Students may become adept at solving textbook problems, but they fail to apply the theories that are learned in school to the actual phenomena that the theories attempt to explain (Tinker, 1992). This is in large part due to the fact that students don't often experience phenomena in the classroom. They spend most of t
A Discussion of Judah Schwartz's Chapter
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