August 20, 2001

Exploring Learning in a Technology-Enhanced Environment Broad-based and thorough research study that shows that "the importance of the students’ attitudes and perceptions of the technology is paramount. How students perceive the technology will impact their learning." Thus, designers must incorporate elements that improve student attitudes towards learning online: "providing time for group development, discussing the climate of the group, setting expectations, developing ground rules, providing synchronous chats, structuring opportunities to work with peers, and communicating expectations clearly..." By Barbara J. Daley, et.al., Educational Technology & Society 4 (3), 2001. [Refer]

Integrating Adaptive Educational Content into Different Courses and Curricula In one sense, this essay describes the major design tasks in creating a 'Knowledge on Demand' (KOD) learning system. But it delves deeper, looking at how adaptive systems can create personalized KOD systems. There's a lot going on in this paper and it is unfortunately short but it gives a good overview of the issues in the field. By Charalampos Karagiannidis, et.al., Educational Technology & Society 4 (3), 2001. [Refer]

Distilling a Language for Cyberspace A provocative essay that asks a question more than it proposes a solution. The question is this: can we envision a language for cynberspace? Not a language in the sense that English is a language, but a language in which a screenplay is a language: something that tells a story, that describes what is happening in an online learning session. Why is this important? Because if we are to explain the successes or failures of online learning, we need a way of describing what happened online, and no current langauge is sufficient to create such a description. By John Laurie, Educational Technology & Society 4(3), 2001. [Refer]

Interactivity Research Studies Survey of recent research and major approaches to the discussion of interactivity in online learning. Useful lists of expectations from interactivity and competencies needed for interactivity. By Brent Muirhead, Educational Technology & Society 4 (3), 2001. [Refer]

Soul in the Machine This article asks, could an artificially intelligent internet surf itself? Not an idle question, not only because of the increasing capacity of computer software, but also because of the increasingly difficult task of locating information on the internet - information like learning objects, for example. By Charles Platt, Yahoo Internet Life, August, 2001. [Refer]

Penguin Enrolls in U.S. Schools Article describing how some schools are reacting to high costs and licensing crackdowns by Microsoft by installing Linux into their school networks instead. By Angel Gonzalez, Wired News, August 20, 2001. [Refer]

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