Making the History of 1989: The Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe
Making the History of 1989 materials were developed because teachers and their students have little access to vivid historical documents in English that convey the epochal events of 1989. Project materials utilize recent advances in our understanding of how historical learning takes place, including complex interaction with sources, recursive reading, and skills used by historians.
The site has three key features: a substantial collection of high quality primary sources; a set of multimedia int
Internet Scout Project
Engaging in social issues in today's society requires an understanding of numerical data, statistics, and mathematical assumptions that underlie discussions about the federal budget, the spread of disease and other issues. However, the mathematics and the social issues are often considered in isolation and leave many Americans "ill-prepared to make informed decisions." The Thinking with Data Project is a new initiative of the National Science Foundation, SRI International, Kent State University
Toward Computer-Based Support of Meta-Cognitive Skills: a Computational Framework to Coach Self-Expl
We present a computational framework designed to improve learning from examples by supporting self-explanation ö the process of clarifying and making more complete to oneself the solution of an example. The framework is innovative in two ways. First, it represents the first attempt to provide computer support to example studying instead of problem solving. Second, it explicitly coaches a domain-general, meta-cognitive skill that many studies in cognitive science have shown to greatly improve le
LaCOLLA: Middleware for Self-Sufficient Online Collaboration
The LaCOLLA middleware makes it possible for collaborators to interact using their own resources and not depend on a centralized regime. By contributing their own resources, group members can organize and communicate using a federated peer-to-peer model. Utilizing LaCOLLA middleware, the group can function regardless of whether a member removes resources and despite network or node failures or disconnection. This capacity for self-organization, together with location transparency, lets applicati
Narrative Evolution: Learning from Students' Talk about Species Variation
Learners do not always enjoy productive interactions with Multimedia Interactive Learning Environments. Their attention can be distracted away from the educational focus intended by designers and teachers through poor design and operational inadequacy. In this paper we describe a study of groups of learners using a multimedia CD-ROM research tool called Galapagos. This tool was developed to enable us to observe groups of learners interacting with different versions of the same multimedia content
Internet Scout Project
This website presents the American Chemical Society's (ACS) Young Chemists Committee (YCC), which is described as "the definitive resource for chemists under 35." With the goal of connecting, encouraging, and empowering young chemists; the website offers information on an abundance of award opportunities presented by the ACS, YCC, and private and government establishments. Chemists can learn about upcoming regional and local section meetings. By downloading archives of the YCC biannual newslette
LifeWorks
This site explores careers in health and medical sciences. See interviews with more than 70 professionals -- a chemist, dentist, dietician, epidemiologist, lab technologist, medical illustrator, microbiologist, nurse, pharmacist, social worker, veterinarian, and others. Learn what their typical workday involves and why they chose their career. Find out which careers match your interests and skills.
Do two heads search better than one? Effects of student collaboration on Web search behavior and sea
This study compared Pairs of students with Single students in Web search tasks. The underlying hypothesis was that peer-to-peer collaboration encourages students to articulate their thoughts, which in turn has a facilitative effect on the regulation of the search process as well as search outcomes. Both hypotheses were supported by the results. Pairs located the target information more often and in less time than Singles did. Pairs also employed a richer repertoire of search strategies and were
Flexible navigation for the pedagogical hypermedia design and evaluation improvement
We are working on a method, called CEPIAH, for the design and the evaluation of pedagogical hypermedia. We propose a web based system used to help teachers to design hypermedia documents and to evaluate their prototypes. Having already elaborated a methodology for the evaluation of interactive pedagogical hypermedia (EMPI), the experience and the acknowledgement we have is able to upgrade the design help. To help the designer in his instructional Web site creation we developed an interactive gui
On Determinism from the course History of Information
This course explores the history of information and associated technologies, uncovering why we think of ours as 'the information age.' We will select moments in the evolution of production, recording, and storage from the earliest writing systems to the world of Short Message Service (SMS) and blogs. In every instance, we'll be concerned with both what and when and how and why, and we will keep returning to the question of technological determinism: how do technological developments affect socie
Foundations and opportunities for an interdisciplinary science of learning
In this chapter, we argue that the learning sciences are poised for a "decade of synergy." We focus on several key traditions of theory and research with the potential for mutually influencing one another in ways that can transform how we think about the science of learning, as well as how future educators and scientists are trained.
Narratives and their significance for childrenÂ’s communication about their world
In this article I will give a description and a definition of narrative through historical review. This forms a background to my other purpose, to describe and discuss the importance of using storytelling as a tool for meaning making for the individual. In this text I will also raise the significance of stories as a tool for society to mediate culturally important messages to the individual and thereby shed light upon the dialectics between the individual and the collective.,part of Kaleidoscope
The CoVis Project: Building a Large-Scale Science Education Testbed
This paper describes the construction and research program of the Learning Through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis) Project. a testbed for exploring science education reform with telecommunications technology. The CoVis testbed is contrasted with other forms of cducational research in an "ecolo~yo f paradigms." which argues that testbeds are in fact a new setting for research with different requirements and challenges for the researcher. Two extended examples of telecommunications research ar
Using the World Wide Web to Build Learning Communities in K- 12
Social accounts of learning and human knowledge have led to attempts to reorganize schools as learning communities. This paper examines the utility of World Wide Web (WWW) for aiding in the construction of school-based and work-based learning communities An ordered list of interactions is provided to characterize the depth of students entry into new learning communities. Current offerings on the WWW are then surveyed in terms of these categories. Finally, proposals are advanced for enhancing the
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
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
Towards a Generic Service Oriented Framework for Integrated User Management of Virtual Communities
A central Service layer for the European eLearning Grid Infrastructure (ELeGI) is the one for the management of members and the provision of collaborational services (Virtual Community Services).
Because it is a lot of effort to totally newly (re-)write the collaboration services like e.g. a videoconferencing service, it is much more desirable to take existing applications and just to wrap them with a Web Service interface to programmatically access the existing functionality relevant to user m
Functional analysis
As taught in 2006-2007 and 2007-2008.
Functional analysis begins with a marriage of linear algebra and metric topology. These work together in a highly effective way to elucidate problems arising from differential equations. Solutions are sought in an infinite dimensional space of functions.
This module paves the way by establishing the principal theorems (all due in part to the great Polish mathematician Stefan Banach) and exploring their diverse consequences. Topics to be covered will inclu
Phases of the moon
Young children may have the idea that the moon actually changes shape. This lesson explains that this apparent change is a result of the moon's revolution around the earth.
Computers and Excellence in the Future of Education
not available
