ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Disruptive Technology: What Is It? How Can It Work for Professional Writing?
Author: Godwin, Mary
Date: 2010-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Technology Uses in Education,Innovation,Technological Advancement,Teacher Attitudes,Resistance (Psychology),Context Effect,Writing Instruction,Teacher Role,Writing Teachers,Rhetoric,Writing for Publication,Work Environment,Authors,Educational Change,Adjustment (to Environment),Outcomes of Education

Writing in 1995 for the "Harvard Business Review" audience of executive managers, Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen coined the term "disruptive technologies" to describe innovations that improve a product, service, or operation in ways wholly unanticipated by leaders of existing markets. Christensen's economic theory offers a launch point to discuss "technology" as a disruptive force in professional writing pedagogy today. This essay resists Utopian urgings and pedagogical renditions of "if you build it, they will come"; instead, the author argues for a pragmatic cooperation with current student computing practices and an anticipatory confidence that the learning outcomes will surprise them. She situates the writing instructor's role as demonstrating the persistently rhetorical nature of writing--regardless the form or tools employed--and guiding students to the work of more and more intentionally crafting their language patterns to effect the purpose, message, and medium-specific outcome(s) desired. Presuming the situatedness of writing, the author aims any insights offered here at praxis and invite readers to challenge cultural assumptions about the disruptive nature of technology. Her purpose is to argue for the value mobile, cellular, and cloud computing contributes to professional writing pedagogies and to open a dialogue with instructors willing to explore the productive potential of disruptive technologies for creating and protecting a space of critical reflection. (Contains 2 figures and 9 notes.) [Figures containing video footage are not available in ERIC version.]
Music@Microsoft.Windows: Composing Ambience
Author: Rickert, Thomas
Date: 2010-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Music,Computer Software,Computers,Auditory Stimuli,Writing Instruction,Writing (Composition),Educational Technology,Internet

It is well known, of course, that all Windows versions except for 3.1 have a brief (four to six second) piece of music indicating that Windows is booted and ready for use. While the music may indicate Windows has booted, it bears no immediately discernable relation to the various uses we might actually put Windows to--working, gaming, communicating, browsing, and so forth. From this utilitarian perspective, the author sees Window's startup music as dinky, digital cheesecake. It is perhaps pleasant to have, a nice ornament or bit of frill, but ultimately necessary for the functionality of Windows. In this essay, the author argues that examining something as small as an operating system's startup music can open a new window on how they understand their relation to computers and computer software. The author mentions that Microsoft Windows and similar entities are not just operating systems or software programs they use; rather, they constitute an actual environment, and in so doing, they require an extension of their modes of comportment to include more complete reflections of the human. A secondary argument of this essay, then, is to puzzle out some of the deeper, richer relations they want with their technologies and how such understanding reconfigures the grounding assumptions they bring to studies of digital work. (Contains 1 figure, 6 audioclips and 11 notes.) [Figures containing audio footage are not available in ERIC version].
Guerrilla Video: Adjudicating the Credible and the Cool
Author: Sullivan, Patricia
Date: 2010-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Writing Instruction,Authors,Writing for Publication,Video Technology,Internet,Lay People,Business Communication,Citizen Participation,Aesthetics,Criticism,Value Judgment

Because video on the web has spread almost virally, video crafted out of an amateur aesthetic has contributed to a disruption of professional communication economies as it prompts us to ask: Can we use digital video to make work-related communication cool? Professional writing pedagogies are beginning to respond to new student expectations about what and how video can/should represent them, but students' amateur aesthetics sometimes are at odds with professional approaches in ways that lead the students to be thought "amateurs." Thus, students need to know when and how to be credible or cool. This article advocates the rhetoric of guerrilla video, which promotes a rhetorically-based choice of professional or amateur video aesthetics. To make sound choices, we argue, video communicators need to understand professional techniques and conventions, know how to use garage video techniques to approximate that professional video grammar, and know how to adapt an amateur video aesthetic. These processes will assist them in building a sense of which choices are appropriate, and when--or, in adjudicating among the credible and the cool. (Contains 5 figures and 14 notes.) [Figures containing video footage are not available in ERIC version.]
Rhetorical Savvy as Social Skill: Modeling Entrepreneur Identity Construction within Educational Content Management Systems
Author: Spartz, John M.
Date: 2010-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Writing Instruction,Self Concept,Entrepreneurship,Interpersonal Competence,Identification (Psychology),Course Content,Management Systems,Rhetoric

This article focuses on one aspect of rhetorical training that writing instructors have an opportunity--if not an obligation--to inculcate (or at least introduce) in students studying to be entrepreneurs and taking their writing classes. Specifically, through the use of an open source Content Management System (CMS) (e.g., Drupal or Moodle), instructors are able to model, foster, and provide a safe place for students to practice constructing or cultivating an "ethos," an entrepreneurial identity(ies) in response to the social demands of the course, its projects, and this disruptive technology itself. For the author, and for his students, the discussion and understanding of "ethos" "necessarily assumes some notion of the self and . . . any notion of the self is necessarily reflected in how one approaches "ethos"" (Rivers 286). As part and parcel of a comprehensive course curriculum, "ethos"/identity education in the writing classroom that is managed through a CMS provides these aspiring entrepreneurs an opportunity to contextually practice creating "the narrative[s] that he or she is" (Corder 16) or might be as an entrepreneur. Ultimately, this article will explicate the relationship between "social skills" and entrepreneur success, its inextricable link to "ethos"/ identity construction, and ways in which a CMS plays a role in the practiced cultivation of said "ethos." (Contains 1 figure and 1 note.)
Globalization amid the Cornfields: Teaching Sustainable Practices in the American Midwest
Date: 2010-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Technical Writing,Business Communication,Global Approach,Competition,Motor Vehicles,Disabilities,Manufacturing,Knowledge Management,Innovation,Agricultural Production,Work Environment,Authors,Writing for Publication

This article discusses three sites that disrupt accustomed expectations and roles for technical communication. These sites include an agricultural processing site that is requesting tax abatements in exchange for decreased emissions so that it can remain competitive in the global market. The second is also an agricultural manufacturing site that remains globally competitive by increasing efficiencies and expanding the range of products made at the site. Finally, the essay discusses a manufacturing facility that takes finished products-automobiles-and remanufactures them for a niche market of users. Each of these Midwestern sites is globally competitive and challenges expectations for high technology work. Taken together, they gesture toward new definitions of work, in new postindustrial context, and offer insight for defining  technical communication in the postindustrial age. The remaining challenge, for scholars and teachers, is to articulate emerging literacy practices supporting postindustrial manufacturing, and to participate in the knowledge management that supports innovation. Here, each site takes something that would have previously been considered either finished product or waste and rearticulates it as an ingredient in a new product. At the least, technical communicators will need to learn to document such organization's innovation and change. At best, such change invites technical communicators, acting as knowledge managers, to articulate opportunities for innovation. Research, a traditional strength of technical writing preparation, allows organizations to better prepare and understand change, turning disruption into opportunity. Postindustrial business practices are no longer the work of futurists, but the reality and structure of the workplace today. Each work site described in this article presents opportunities for basic  research into emerging workplaces in need of the expertise of technical and professional writers; each is an example and potential model for knowledge work.
Networking Pedagogies for Professional Writing Students
Author: Bay, Jennifer
Date: 2010-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Writing Instruction,Authors,Writing for Publication,Educational Technology,Relevance (Education),Economic Factors,Influence of Technology,Experiential Learning,School Business Relationship,Conflict,Networks,Work Environment,Change,Technical Writing,Virtual Classrooms,Internship Programs

This essay proposes that in light of what has been called the "new economy," writing instructors need to rethink some of the pedagogical approaches and theories they use to professionalize their students. While at one time the concept of experiential or situated learning was useful for maximizing educational possibilities, everyone has moved into an era where technologies, economies, and global phenomena necessitate a reexamination of the ways that students learn and can potentially learn. Students are learning in networked ways much more than they are learning from traditional pedagogical approaches, even approaches that incorporate technologies in the classroom. In this essay, the author argues for a move from attention to the concept of situated learning toward what she would call networked learning, and she delineates networked learning according to four descriptors: horizontal, peripheral, nomadic, and independent. Such a move might allow writing instructors to (1) connect the classroom with what students are already doing in their own lives; (2) account for the current economic and technological influences; and (3) diffuse the conflict between academic and workplace interests, building bridges between these two interested parties. (Contains 78 online resources.)
The Politics of Peer Response
Author: Hall, Mark
Date: 2009-07-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Writing Processes,Writing Teachers,Writing Instruction,Peer Influence,Feedback (Response),Writing (Composition),Teaching Methods,Teacher Role,Peer Evaluation,College Students

The use of peer groups to respond to student papers is a long-established practice in the composition classroom, so well entrenched, that they may sometimes employ peer response without thoroughly evaluating underlying assumptions and beliefs about how such groups operate. As a central tenet of the writing process movement, peer response was originally devised as part of a comprehensive, totalizing writing theory. Post-process theory demands that both the fundamental premises and the practice of peer response be reevaluated. This essay invites both experienced and novice writing teachers to (re)consider the ways they theorize peer response groups. It also proposes strategies for teaching peer response. Theorizing the uses of peer response is important because their underlying assumptions directly affect the ways they design peer response activities. (Contains 1 figure.)
The Mystery in Science: A Neglected Tool for Science Education
Author: Papacosta, Pangratios
Date: 2008-03-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Textbooks,Science Interests,Science Instruction,Teaching Methods,Student Motivation,Scientific Concepts,Case Studies

Of the many valuable tools available to science education, the mystery in science is the one that is most ignored, underused, or misunderstood. whenever it is used, it is only as mere entertainment or as an attention grabber. In this article, the author discusses how the mystery in science can improve student attitudes, generate a life-long interest in science, and may even prompt students to take a closer look at science as a possible career. In their ongoing efforts to seek more effective ways of improving science education, science educators are faced with the following questions. How can they best use this mystery in science towards their educational endeavors? Can their students fully understand what science really is, without the awareness of this ever-present mystery in science? The author mentions that it can be unsettling that the image of science, as described in textbooks, is only one of glory and uninterrupted success. However, some science educators choose to present a more realistic image of science by going beyond the textbook. They do that by incorporating case studies from the history of science in their teaching of science. The author suggests that instead of shying away from the mystery in science, teachers should embrace and celebrate it in their teaching. (Contains 3 footnotes.)
Evaluating Science Education Reform via Fourth-Grade Students' Image of Science Teaching
Author: Yilmaz, Hulya
Date: 2008-03-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Educational Change,Foreign Countries,Science Education,Grade 4,Student Attitudes,Intermode Differences,Program Implementation,Change Strategies,Educational Strategies,Curriculum Development,Illustrations,Freehand Drawing,Childrens Art,Imagery

The purpose of this study was to investigate fourth-grade students image of current science teaching by using a Draw-A-Science-Teacher-Test Checklist (DASTT-C), and give a glance whether the new restructured science education reform in Turkey is implemented successfully or not. Fifty-five (34 girls and 21 boys) fourth-grade students from three different primary schools participated in this study. The results of study showed that 18.2% of Turkish fourth-grade students view their science classrooms as student-centered, 56.4% as neither student-centered nor teacher-centered, and 25.4% as teacher-centered. These results indicate that Turkey is in the process of a big positive change, and that traditional education perspective started switching over to constructivist perspective, while attempts for implementing the reform put emphasis on elementary teachers and their professional development. (Contains 5 figures.)
Conceptualizing Awareness in Environmental Education: An Example of Knowing about Air-Related Problems
Author: Pata, Kai
Date: 2008-03-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Environmental Education,Questionnaires,Climate,Pollution,Teaching Methods,Models,Student Attitudes,Teacher Attitudes,Student Centered Curriculum,Grade 8,Grade 9,Foreign Countries

The notion of environmental awareness has been controversial in environmental literacy. Environmental awareness has been traditionally understood as conceptual awareness, but this study takes into consideration activity-related aspects of awareness, which should be integrated into an ontological model of developing environmental literacy. The empirical part of the study investigated the components of conceptual awareness using the model of air-related environmental issues. Eight classes of students (N=204) filled in an open-ended questionnaire one week after teaching about environmental issues was completed. The questionnaire investigated the extent of their awareness regarding the greenhouse effect, the depletion of ozone layer, acid rain and air pollution at general and local level. The teachers of the eight classes answered a different questionnaire relating to the teaching methods they used. The findings indicated that the students exhibited in their answers both conceptual and activity-related components of environmental awareness, and they faced difficulties in combining global and local aspects of environmental issues. Three types of students were identified on the basis of their awareness about the examined air-related issues: with mainly task- and process related and contextual awareness, with mainly social and contextual awareness, and with awareness where all aspects were combined. The active student-centred teaching method was related with the development of mainly the social and contextual awareness. Some students who participated in student-centred activities outdoors belonged to the awareness type in which task- and process-related contextual awareness was prevalent. The teacher-centred traditional methods developed both task-and process-related, and social and contextual awareness components. (Contains 7 tables and 2 figures.)
Day/Night Cycle: Mental Models of Primary School Children
Author: Chiras, Andreas
Date: 2008-03-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Concept Formation,Models,Interviews,Time Perspective,Student Attitudes,Mental Computation,Concept Teaching,Earth Science,Astronomy,Etiology,Comparative Analysis,Scientific Concepts,Cognitive Style

The study investigated the mental models of primary school children related to the day/night cycle. Semi-structure interviews were conducted with 40 fourth-grade and 40 sixth-grade children. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data indicated that the majority of the children were classified as having geocentric models. The results also indicated that a large number of primary school children did not appropriately conceptualize the essential prerequisites for understanding the day/night cycle, and that their observational skills were limited. It was also concluded that children's age (class) and their mathematical achievement were good predictors for the quality of their mental models. (Contains 5 tables.)
Health and Safety in Practical Science in Schools: A UK Perspective
Date: 2008-03-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: School Safety,Laboratory Safety,Safety,Safety Education,Health Promotion,Hazardous Materials,Risk,Risk Management,Class Size,Accident Prevention

The tendency for the press and public to over-react on safety. The need to balance risk against benefit. The difference between hazard and risk. Preventative or protective steps (control measures) to reduce the risk from particular hazards. Examples in school science, including the use of eye protection and alternative strategies, if eye protection is not available. The ability of teachers to supervise a class dependent on the size of the class. The need for supervision dependent on the nature of the practical activity and the risk involved in it, as well as the nature of the class, and the skills and behaviour of the students. (Contains 1 footnote.)
Construction and Validation of Textbook Analysis Grids for Ecology and Environmental Education
Author: Caravita, Silvia
Date: 2008-06-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Environmental Education,Textbooks,Ecology,Textbook Content,Textbook Evaluation,Textbook Research,Comparative Analysis,Comparative Education,Evaluation Criteria,Evaluation Methods,Research Methodology,Foreign Countries,Values,Program Development,Program Validation

Knowledge about ecology and environmental education (EE) constitutes a basic tool for promoting a sustainable future, and was a target area of the BIOHEAD-Citizen Project. School textbooks were considered as representative sources of evidence in terms of ecology and environmental education, and were used for comparison among the countries participating in BIOHEAD-Citizen Project. The main goal of the analysis was to highlight the implicit and explicit values conveyed both by images and text in the respective textbooks from each country. This paper presents the theoretical background that guided the process of designing and development of several grids that were then used for analyzing samples of textbooks from 19 different countries. The paper also provides brief information indicating how EE is contextualized within each participating country's curriculum. (Contains 4 tables.)
Comparing Health Education Approaches in Textbooks of Sixteen Countries
Author: Carvalho, Graca S.
Date: 2008-06-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Health Education,Health Promotion,Textbooks,Biomedicine,Foreign Countries,Textbook Content,Textbook Evaluation,Textbook Research,Comparative Analysis,Comparative Education,Teaching Models,Intermode Differences,Illustrations,Educational Practices

Classically, health education has provided mainly factual knowledge about diseases and their prevention. This educational approach is within the so called Biomedical Model (BM). It is based on pathologic (Pa), curative (Cu) and preventive (Pr) conceptions of health. In contrast, the Health Promotion (HP) approach of health education intends to improve health by promoting healthy habits (He) and by developing empowerment (Ep) for a healthy decision-making with regard to environmental (Ev) challenges. The aim of the present study focused on a comparison of the emphasis on either model (BM or HP) as it is presented by textbooks from 16 countries. Each country team analysed the textbooks that are more frequently used at each educational level. Text and image analysis identified that some countries, such as France and Italy, as more associated with the Biomedical Model, whereas Germany, Mozambique and Finland were more linked to the Health Promotion approach. Data organised for four pupils' age groups (6-9, 10-12, 13-15, 16-18 years old) showed that text and images of the same textbooks gave similar results in terms of following either the BM or HP model, and showed different indicators of consistency (Pa, Cu, Pr for BM; and He, Ep, Ev for HP). Furthermore, although the analyses might be, to a certain extent, subjective (depending on the researcher), it was shown to be very reliable, since all countries, whose textbooks were analysed for the 4 age groups or only the 3 age groups, showed a similar tendency of evolving from a HP (early ages) to a BM approach (elder ages). The interesting finding that the younger pupils' textbooks were more associated with the Health Promotion pole, whereas the older pupils' textbooks were consistent with the Biomedical Model pole seems to be a matter of further and deep investigation. (Contains 1 table and 7 figures.)