Teachers as designers of technology enhanced learning

Teachers Learning Technology by Design

Although there has been much debate about what teachers need to know about technology, less attention has been paid to how they are supposed to learn it. Teacher preparation programs need to go beyond merely training teachers in how to use specific software and hardware tools, and instead focus on developing an understanding of the complex set of interrelationships between artifacts, users, too...

Teachers as Designers: Integrating Robotics in Early Childhood Education

This article presents a constructionist approach to introducing technology, in particular robotics, in the early childhood classroom. The authors demonstrate how this approach is well suited, since the four basic tenets of constructionism have a long-standing tradition in early childhood education: (a) learning by designing meaningful projects to share in the community, (b) using concrete objec...

Teachers, Computers, Games, and Designers

Thus we have the conundrum of all schools from the most ancient times to the modern day: how to devise a uniform curriculum and teaching methodology that properly educates a diverse group of students? As class sizes grow, the problem becomes worse, a phenomenon that Quintilian himself recognized. (Quintilian, 1922b) He argues that schools have certain advantages over one-to-one learning with a ...

Evaluating authoring tools for teachers as instructional designers

The REDEEM authoring environment was developed to allow educators with no programming knowledge to design learning environments (simple Intelligent Tutoring Systems) for their students in a time-effective manner. The success of this approach depends on two key factors. Firstly, on the extent to which the authoring tool is usable by its intended author population (classroom teachers, university ...

Implementation of a technology-enhanced problem-based learning curriculum: A year- long study of three teachers