Research, Development, & Evaluation of Technology

• But first…

Work-arounds

• When you are doing something and you think it's the right thing, but it doesn't work, then instead of getting frustrated, you can see if there is an alternative way to do it

HTML tags & Dreamweaver views

• HTML tag: <whatever> usually with a paired "end" tag </whatever>

• Need to know when:– 1) dealing with some new feature that isn't built

into a web editor yet– 2) when "debugging" by looking at the "page

source" (for either fixing a problem or for figuring out how somebody else did something)

Example: <embed> tag

• Putting music, sound, or movies on your web page

• Take a look at Tera's Musicbox song page

With technology, change is the only constant

• Moore’s Law: the number of transistors that can fit on a chip doubles every 18 months

• Exponential changes: cost of a given computation drops in half every 18 months

Need to predict change

How to predict the future?

• Extrapolation– The “same” extrapolation: the future will be

like the past– Linear extrapolation: the change from last year

to this will occur again between this year and next

– More complex

The “pipeline” of development

Riding the “trailing edge”

• Technology in education organizations

• Technology in education conferences

• Technology in education journals

Organizations

• CUE: Computer Using Educators

• ISTE: International Society for Technology in Education

• AACE: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education

• AERA: American Education Research Association

Conferences

• CUE Conference (in Palm Spring, March 9-11, 2006)

• NECC (in San Diego, July 4-7, 2006)

• Ed-Media (in Orlando, June 26-July 1, 2006)

Journals

• Practitioner– Learning & Leading with Technology

– T.H.E. Journal

• Research– Journal of Educational Computing Research

– Journal of Research on Computing in Education

• See list at http://LRS.ED.UIUC.EDU/tse-portal/publication/dans-journals.html

“Vision” scenerios

• The MBARI scenerio

• Your 2020 visions: what should/will education be like in the year 2020

• My vision

Before next class (Monday)

• Read the Levin & Miyake paper

• Look through the Memorable Troubleshooting stories at http://moodle.ed.uiuc.edu/troublestories/ and submit at least one memorable troubleshooting story of your own.

The importance of stories in education

• Fables, fairy tales, parables, epic poems, legends, etc.

• Studies at Xerox PARC by Julian Orr and others: Xerox technician “war stories”

Functions of stories

• Conveyers of obscure but important information

• A “way in” to becoming a member of a community

• A way to establish expertise/status in the community

Memorable story framework

• http://tepserver.ucsd.edu/~jlevin/memorable-story.html

• CTER memorable stories: http://moodle.ed.uiuc.edu/cterstories/

• Troubleshooting memorable stories:

http://moodle.ed.uiuc.edu/troublestories/

Next class meeting

• Monday, same time, same place

Break time!

• Monday snacks: Season & Ana

• Thanks for today’s snacks to Ruth & Lara