Month: March 2005

Here is your reading assignment for tonight – Igo, et al. (2005). Exploring differences in students’ copy-and-paste decision making and processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97, 103-116.

A thing I have noticed about technology is that it allows the more elder among us to recycle our research interests from grad school. Back in the ’60s, I was interested in note-taking and note-reviewing. Basically, can student learning from lecture (or possibly text) be improved by improving note-taking and/or note-reviewing. A couple of years ago I began to revisit this old interest by recognizing that lecture outlines and complete accounts of lectures could and are often made available through CMSs and began evaluating student performance as a function of how and when they used these resources. Technology made practical (providing various forms of notes to students) the implementation of ideas that previously were interesting but very different to act on.

The citation I provided again brought me back to some of the research I studied so many years ago. In some situations, students can now “take notes” by cutting and pasting from a source into a personal document. Is this good or bad (say in contrast to writing personal accounts as a note-taking technique)? The study is focused ONLY on the process of note-taking which limits the practical value of what was observed. BUT – the study demonstrates that when student copy and pasting is limited (by the space that was available to hold the pasted material in the study), students appeared to learn more. The message – the more you think, the more you learn. Thinking here was caused by the need to carefully select material.

It would be best if students had to think a lot to take notes, but would have perfect (i.e., complete and accurate) notes to review. What circumstances would encourage this set of outcomes?

An USA Today article does a great job of describing the problem of cyber bullying. If you are unaware of the world of blogs, student web sites, instant messaging, cell phone photography, etc., you probably cannot imagine the potential for harrassment.

This is a good article to share with colleagues (use the email feature).

I have a great collection of tapes from the ’60s – for a reel to reel machine yet. I keep telling myself I need to take the time to digitize this material. The Washington Post has an article on the process. My problem is actually that one of the heads on my player is going out – how do you find a reel to reel player?

I am a member of AERA and I happen to be poking about the organization’s web site when this piece caught my eye. This is one of several “research points” made available to the general public to describe what research has to say about some important educational policy issue.

This comment concerns the issue of Standards and Tests. My interpretation is that contrary to what some might imagine educational practice is being guided more by tests than by standards. For example, the report cites research suggesting that “teachers allocate their time to emphasize the subjects on state tests at the expense of nontested subjects.”

The article also concludes that “the most challenging standards and objectives are the ones that are undersampled or omitted entirely … [and those] that call for high-level reasoning are often omitted in favor of much simpler cognitive processes.”

Don’t do what I say, do what I test!

See my own comments on this problem:
What I wish the National Techology Plan would have said
High Stakes Testing

Wonder how Google works? Susan Kuchinskas of InternetNews provides some insights. The piece provides some information about both the hardware and software employed. Pretty cool if you are interested in this kind of thing.

AT&T has created a demonstration of new text to speech technology. You can try this out yourself. There are important applications for this technology in compensating for disabilities – to speak or read for those who cannot speak or read for themselves.