E-Learning and Digital Media
ISSN 2042-7530

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

Web 2.0: challenges and opportunities for media education and beyond

CHI-KIM CHEUNG Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong

doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.328

The nature of knowledge is being redefined by a new media landscape that allows all participants to be media producers and owners. Without a comprehensive strategy to include Web 2.0 tools and social media practices within schools, powerful new skills will be neither harnessed, nor developed. Despite the challenge to the relationship between students (digital natives) and teachers (digital immigrants) that Web 2.0 tools present, teachers are still the vital link to supporting students and giving meaning to the practices they engage in, including developing critical thinking in an information age. This article discusses the challenges and opportunities presented to media education by Web 2.0 tools and social media practices and vice versa. Consistently, it can be demonstrated that these symbiotic potentials are reflected beyond the microcosm of media education in schools. Future performance at work and functioning within a global economy and the effect of collaborative networking skills on local, national and global societies go further than the challenge to school curricula. Local specific effects of ‘co-learning’ and the new status of ‘learner voice’ on learning experiences show the beginnings of a gradual influence that has far-reaching potentials.

‘This Site is Blocked’: K-12 teachers and the challenge of accessing peer-to-peer networks for education

CYNTHIA CARTER CHING University of California, Davis, USA
ANTHONY W. HURSH University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.338

This article examines a little-discussed phenomenon in the study of both peer-to-peer collaborative networks and teaching with technology: that of teachers caught in the middle between open public networks as teaching resources and highly restrictive school policies regarding internet content and online access. Based on their experiences as teacher-educators in graduate programs in educational technology and as facilitators of teacher professional development workshops on technology integration, the authors have collected numerous cases of teachers making use of different types of what are currently described as ‘peer-to-peer’ networks. One goal of this article is to introduce a more nuanced framework for how to characterize the kinds of resources and networks that teachers can make use of, adapting current terminology to include ‘peer to peer’, ‘peer to public’, and ‘public to public’. Examples of the advantages and challenges of each type are described, with accompanying cases of actual teachers and their experiences. A second and related goal is more philosophical. Based on their framework and cases, the authors argue that neither the prevailing utopian rhetoric of grassroots social networks, nor critical protests against internet surveillance and control, are functionally adequate to describe the dilemmas teachers face when they try to find online resources they can actually share with their students in the classroom. The authors want to move beyond this polarizing rhetoric and toward a more pragmatic discussion of possibilities, including strategies for training teachers in how to work within (or even ‘hack’) their local and institutional constraints.

‘I Link, Therefore I Am’: network literacy as a core digital literacy

MARK PEGRUM Graduate School of Education, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.346

Networks have emerged as the dominant organizational structures of our time. In the networked era, social networks underpinned by the internet are crucial to obtaining and filtering information as well as reaching audiences and collaborators. To remain relevant in this era, educational institutions must foster network literacy, teaching students about and through networks, and helping them to establish and manage personal learning networks. This will ensure that all students, and not just the elite, are able to capitalize on the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of the networks which will be an integral part of their social and professional futures.

Collective Information Literacy in Massively Multiplayer Online Games

CRYSTLE MARTIN & CONSTANCE STEINKUEHLER Curriculum & Instruction Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.355

This article explores the forms of information literacy that arise in commercial entertainment games like World of Warcraft. Using examples culled from eight months of online ethnographic data, the authors detail the forms of information literacy that arise as a regular part of in-game social interaction, emphasizing (ironically) the intellectual nature of such purportedly ‘barren’ forms of play and highlighting the ways in which such practices help redefine the current model of what constitutes information literacy by bringing the collective and collaborative nature of such practices to the fore. Implications for future research are also discussed.

Reinventing Education: new technology does not guarantee a new learning culture

HARTMUT GIEST Department of Teacher Training, University of Potsdam, Germany

doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.366

Analyzing the contradictory relation between a media-theoretical and a media-pedagogical point of view, some basic problems regarding a new learning culture using Web 2.0 online tools are discussed. Against this background, data and findings from an empirical investigation (evaluation of an in-service teacher training e-learning project ‘Reinventing Education’ in the state of Brandenburg in cooperation with the IBM Foundation) are presented that point to the principal problems of implementing e-learning projects in educational systems. Conclusions show the necessity for significant changes in the approach of in-service teacher training projects in order to meet the requirements of new media in coherence with a new learning culture. These changes have to address the quality of knowledge to be acquired (competencies which allow a knowledge transfer instead of skills and superficial abilities), collaborative instead of individual learning, and ICT as a tool for knowledge construction instead of a tool for collecting information.

The Opportunity in Higher Education: how open education and peer-to-peer networks are essential for higher education

DAVID J. ONDERCIN Education Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.377

The university’s role in the nation’s economy is to increase its ability to transfer research to industry, generate new inventions and patents, and spin-off its technology in the form of startup companies. As such, there has been a movement in the USA and around the world to make universities ‘engines of innovation’, and to enhance their ability to commercialize their research. In accordance with these principles, the idea of open learning innovation in the peer-to-peer system of higher education has been put into the forefront of economic, social, and cultural creative concepts. Open learning and open innovation provide educators and administrators in the peer-to-peer networks, which provides the ability for them to take a step back and view the educational process through the lens of the creative economy. There is growing momentum to embrace open innovation and the necessity to use peer-to-peer networks for educational institutions. The author contends that open education along with peer-to-peer networking is the new direction for higher education; otherwise, higher education could face the possibility of disengaging new generations of students and problems could exist in higher education.

Understanding Wikibook-Based Tensions in Higher Education: an Activity Theory approach

ILIAS KARASAVVIDIS Department of Preschool Education, School of the Humanities, University of Thessaly, Greece

doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.386

Research has indicated that the integration of wikis in higher education is very challenging. The present article focuses on the tensions emerging from the integration of a wikibook as a required assignment in an undergraduate course. Drawing on data from a case study, the article uses Activity Theory as a theoretical framework in order to identify the tensions and determine their origins in a systemic way. The results indicated four main tensions, one within the object of activity and three between the components of the activity system. The article is concluded with a discussion of findings and the measures which can be taken to resolve these tensions.

Understanding the Evolution of Technology through P2P Systems and its Impact on Learning Environments

TOMAS RAWLINGS Digital Cultures Research Centre (DCRC), University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.395

The purpose of this article is to explore the development of new methodological approaches that draw on ideas and concepts from natural sciences and apply them within the humanities. The main research example this article looks at is the re-application of a palaeontological process; it looks though the geological layers of sediment for fossilised remains from which it can attempt to reverse-engineer the process and forms of change from these finds. This research re-engineers this basic method by looking at the layers of software iteration to understand the relationships between media artefacts over time. This article uses as its test subject, peer-to-peer software (p2p). The method developed involved sifting though the layers of digital sediment using change-logs, release schedules, forms, mailing lists and release repositories to reconstruct a time-line of change. It then used this data to construct a proto-phylogenetic tree of familial relationships between different p2p software clients. The article examines these findings next to existing works on technology evolution, suggests a mechanism by which these findings can be interpreted and then has suggestions as to the possible implications of these findings for learning and educational technologies.

Catalyzing Collaborative Learning: how automated task distribution may prompt students to collaborate

CHANDLER ARMSTRONG Department of Sociology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.407

Collaborative learning must prompt collaborative behavior among students. Once initiated, collaboration then must facilitate awareness between students of each other’s activities and knowledge. Collaborative scripts provide explicit framework and guidance for roles and activities within student interactions, and are one method of fulfilling the requisites for collaborative learning. Such explicit framework is intrusive and replicates the one-way flow of knowledge, from instructor to students, that is characteristic of standard learning methods. Parallels between traditional and non-traditional learning environments demonstrate that non-traditional learning environments, such as workplaces or peer-to-peer communities, often utilize equally proactive but less intrusive methods for initiating and guiding collaboration. Open source communities have used automated task distribution systems that will notify users of changes in the status of shared knowledge objects. Theory and research suggest that awareness of shared knowledge prompts individuals to adopt group roles and share their own knowledge. The author suggests that automated task distribution may be equally applicable to traditional learning environments, especially those environments utilizing computer-supported collaborative learning.

CoLab: a collaborative laboratory for facilitating code reviews through a peer-to-peer network

SHWETHA KINI Ignite Research Labs, Tata Consultancy Services, Chennai, India

doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.416

CoLab is a collaborative tool for peer review of software programs for providing constructive feedback to first-time programmers. It targets two kinds of users: a trainer (who is the facilitator) and a trainee (whose programming skills have to be assessed and, if needed, improved). The tool provides real-time information on the reviewing ability of and common mistakes made by the programmers. As a result, it allows trainees to develop their programming skills without much assistance or intervention from the trainer. This article describes the design of CoLab and how it can be used as a tool for learning software programming in large classrooms.

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