Search

There is growing interest in the use of games for educational purposes, particularly with regard to teaching curriculum subjects. Much of the research, however, has focused either on the content of games or the learning theory they illustrate. This paper presents a methodology that allows for an examination of how players learn to play. The focus is on understanding learning within specific instances of play. Rather than generalising from such studies, it is argued that understanding such processes is crucial for incorporating specific games into educational systems. Three case studies are presented that illustrate the application of this method. We also evaluate its usefulness and limitations. The paper concludes with a discussion of issues in researching learning from games, and suggestions for how research methods in this area might be developed. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

In March 2020, populations were forced into home quarantine to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Universities moved the majority of their operations to homeworking, with profound implications for students, academics, and professional services staff. This paper analyses interview and visual data collected as part of a study on the impact of 'moving online' on staff at a large UK university. Drawing on sociomaterial perspectives, it considers the status and role of academics' literacy practices under lockdown, focusing particularly on the ways in which a range of boundaries are negotiated – spatial, temporal, material, digital, professional, personal and emotional – in a setting where conventional boundaries have been profoundly disrupted. We argue that these practices form part of emergent, restless and shifting semiotic assemblages. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this conceptual shift for academic work, meaning-making and academic subjectivities, in lockdown and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology has been an important influence on the development of education. However, very little research in Educational Technology considers this history, and even less questions it. In this paper, we argue that our understanding of educational technology should be informed by the philosophy of technology – a field that has attempted to explore what these historical developments mean. This paper focuses on the ontological turn in philosophy and the technological thought of Marx and Heidegger. This is used to propose a foundation that can help researchers rethink educational technology, expanding research to account for human-education, human-technology and education-technology relations. It is proposed that human-education relationships should make students 'become what they are', highlighting their subjectivity rather than concentrating on information. Human-technology relationships can change the focus of design practice, so that technology is not merely seen as an efficient tool, but something 'handy' for peoples' educational needs. Education-technology relationships explain how technology can shape education, and re-introduces the idea of 'techne' as something to be valued in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This theoretical paper argues that Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) can help advance the emancipatory project in critical Ed Tech research. To support this claim, we deploy Tsing's concept of 'scale-making projects' (2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) to connect 'global' narratives to 'local' users in a mobile learning project for Kenyan health workers. Drawing from this exemplar case, we discuss more broadly how FSTS provides useful theory and methods for tracing the trans-national power relations of digital technologies 'on the ground'. The paper concludes by advocating for new forms of emancipatory Ed Tech research – ones framed not only within oppositional pairings such as 'global' versus 'local', but which elucidate how binaries themselves are constituted through far-flung trans-national arrays of sociomaterial practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the idea of open education, focusing specifically on the concept of openness. Previous discussions of open education are reviewed, using Knox's discussion of ‘unfreedoms' as a critical lens. Contrasts are then drawn with the concept of ‘flexibility’, to illustrate ways in which openness could be developed. This leads to consideration of ideas from sociomaterial theory, focusing on networks and boundaries. A case study is then used to illustrate how these new developments play out empirically. The discussion then elaborates this in terms of ideas about mobility and fluidity. The paper concludes by arguing that the simplistic binary implied by ‘openness’ is largely irrelevant to the academic practices of teachers and learners. It is proposed that, instead, it should be replaced by a version that recognises the way individuals use infrastructures in pursuit of positive liberty. Such an alternative would help account for the various ways in which Universities are permeated by the personal, andvice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we report on survey and focus group data relating to the activities and perceptions of learning with Web 2.0 technologies of students aged between 11 and 16 years in 27 UK secondary schools. The study confirms that these learners had high levels of access to Web 2.0 technologies and that Web 2.0 activities were prolific. However, patterns of use were complex. The types of activity evidenced by the study suggest that learners can be categorised into four main groups: (1) researchers: mainly in terms of reading with little evidence of critical enquiry or analytical awareness; (2) collaborators: mainly with respect to file sharing, gaming and communicating; (3) producers and (4) publishers: mainly in terms of sharing experience through social networking sites. Whilst most expressed an interest in using online technologies to support familiar school activities, such as presentations or for communication, learners seemed cautious about other values associated with Web 2.0 tools, such as the shared construction of knowledge in a public format. Few learners were familiar with the complete spectrum of Web 2.0 activities and only a small number were engaging in more sophisticated activities, such as producing and publishing self-created content for wider consumption. There was little evidence of groundbreaking activities and only a few embryonic signs of criticality, self-management or metacognitive reflection. The paper concludes that these higher order thinking skills need to be encouraged and supported in any attempt to use Web 2.0 for learning in formal education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the developments of the journal "Learning, Media, and Technology." He recognizes the effort of the journal's retired editor Cathy Lewin for playing a large part of the publication's success. The author stresses that the journal has improved as educational technology and education media become more complex. He believes that theoretical development of such field will be a challenge to all writers and researchers.