ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of Educational Management Systems: A Critical Approach for Empowering Online Communications
Author: Kurubacak, Gulsun
Date: 2006-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Management Systems,Communications,Educational Administration,Research Design,Research Problems,Educational Assessment,Evaluation Methods,Design Requirements,Online Systems,Communication Research,Evaluation Research

The main purpose of this article is to generate a functional model of evaluation that EMSs can be able to empower online communications characterized by imperative decision making task. The evaluation process of EMSs must merge the multicultural strategies of the theory of Media Richness, and the ethical concerns of the critical approach. Media Richness Theory can empower online communications that resolve ambiguity, negotiate varying interpretations, and facilitate understanding. A critical approach can provide online communication designers with the information in detail that elucidate concerns, issues, needs and expectations raised by stakeholders. Therefore, this paper discusses the naturalistic and critical stages of this evaluation process by introducing a critical perspective on Media Richness Theory to provide exact directions for EMSs.
A Pedagogical Framework for the Use of Information and Communications Technology in Initial Teacher Training
Author: Hramiak, Alison
Date: 2006-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Longitudinal Studies,Case Studies,Electronic Learning,Graduate Study,Computer Mediated Communication,Integrated Learning Systems,Asynchronous Communication,Interviews,Online Surveys,Teacher Education Programs,Student Teacher Attitudes,Foreign Countries

This paper describes the initial findings of a longitudinal case study that investigates the use of e-learning and communications technology to enhance the placement experience for full-time post graduate certificate in education (PGCE) students. It is a work in progress examining how a VLE might be used to support trainees while they are on placement. Geographically separated trainees can feel very isolated on placement. The purpose of the VLE site was to try to alleviate some of the loneliness associated with placement by offering a way for trainees to maintain contact with each other, and to offer mutual support for the work they were doing in terms of lesson plans, assignment work resource planning and so on. The Blackboard© (BB) site was set up prior to the students going on their first placement. Asynchronous and synchronous activities and communications were encouraged and provided for on the BB site, on a regular basis by the tutor while they were on placement. This paper describes the initial findings and analysis of the study, giving the depth and breadth of trainee usage of the site over the course of the academic year. The findings from the trainee evaluations of their use of e-learning technologies during the course are also given. A preliminary analysis of the results is used to offer some insight into how this type of support might be improved for future students, and a minimum pedagogical framework is recommended for the implementation of VLEs for initial teacher training.
An Orientation Assistant (OA) for Guiding Learning through Simulation of Electronics Technology in Technology Education
Author: Thorsteinsson, Gisli
Date: 2006-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Computer Simulation,Electronics,Technology Education,Computer Software,Electronic Learning,Orientation,Web Based Instruction,College Instruction,Foreign Countries

The aim of a teacher is to guide a student or group of students to observe, do, and discover what is essential in the curriculum's content, and to create a comfortable context and emotional state for learning. This paper puts forward the theoretical underpinning and central aspects of the development and application of the orientation assistant (OA), and presents results concerning its use in university studies. The OA is a software tool producing an interactive learning environment offering support in teaching and learning that uses local applications. The activity in which teachers guide students' learning will frequently not work in an optimal fashion solely by using the most modern tools (e.g., simulation tools, animation, and video media). Provision must be made at the same time to guide students in using these tools effectively for their own studies, and to empower the student. The project presented in this paper analyses the advantages and disadvantages of different tools and media for the purpose of evaluating their suitability in support of teaching and learning in varying modes of use.
Future Trends of Educational Technology in Nigeria
Author: Adeyanju, J.
Date: 2007-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Educational Technology,Information Technology,Secondary Schools,Computer Literacy,Higher Education,Colleges,Electronic Libraries,Knowledge Management,Access to Information

Traditionally in rural Africa it was the drum, reports of gun shot, or perhaps the smoke of a burning bush that served as a primary form of communication. However it was Gutenberg's discovery of the printing press that paved the way for the age of mass communication. These methods were taken over by radio waves that communicate to millions of people at the same time. The television (big-media) was developed and has brought distant places closer together. Radio, cassettes, tape recorders, video, fax, e-mail and the computer have become the bedrock upon which the future of the development of Educational Technology rests. In the secondary school education system in Nigeria, the ICT race has led to the school's compulsory computer education. Aside from the school, it is becoming apparent that most disciplines of study have adopted the use of the computers. In line with the current trends, the federal government of Nigeria has made it mandatory for institutions of higher learning to develop computer literacy programmes. The work force of Nigerians have also been given a period to upgrade themselves on computer literacy. Developing nations of the world are expected to continue providing Educational Technology the opportunity to analyze and reorganize the existing institutions within available budgets. Since knowledge is not static, it is anticipated that there will be a world-wide collaboration among Departments of Educational Technology with other higher education institutions. Virtual libraries will change the roles of traditional libraries, and knowledge will become less expensive to process and use. With the growth of computer literacy in Nigeria, most institutions of higher learning, including those in the industrial sector, will use the newly-found access to global data for increasing enrollment into virtual classrooms.
Unorganized Cognitive Structures of Illiterate as the Key Factor in Rural E-Learning Design
Author: Katre, Dinesh S.
Date: 2006-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Cognitive Structures,Illiteracy,Rural Education,Electronic Learning,Instructional Design,Memory,Serial Ordering,Computer System Design,Usability,Computer Interfaces,Cognitive Tests,Performance Factors,Design Requirements

Cognitive Structures and Linguistic Sequential Memory or Memory of Serial Order are not very well developed among illiterate people contrary to educated people. It affects the comprehension of abstract ideas and the usability of the system. Therefore the cognitive limitations of illiterate must be considered for instructional design and user interface design to achieve better results out of rural e-learning. The paper also throws light on the reasons behind the unorganized cognitive structures of illiterate.
Using Multiple Literacies to Create a Multimedia Product
Author: Browne, Susan
Date: 2007-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Multimedia Materials,Multiple Literacies,Educational Technology,Undergraduate Students,Literacy,Video Technology,Courseware,Technological Advancement,Technological Literacy,Student Projects

This article describes and documents the teaching and learning in a new undergraduate course at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, USA. Students investigate the meaning of literacy in today's rapidly changing, technological world. They explore multiliteracies, ultimately weaving them into a multimedia statement--a mini documentary on a topic of choice. Students learn and use iMovie software to create their final projects. They experience success and satisfaction as well as a new found understanding of literacy today.
Play, Healing, and Wellness as Seen by a Physician Who Clowns: An Interview with Bowen White
Date: 2009-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Play,Wellness,Health Promotion,Physicians,Interviews,Recreational Activities,Humor,Hospitals,Patients,Medical Services,Intervention,Interpersonal Relationship,War

Bowen White is a physician. He founded the Department of Preventive and Stress Medicine at the Baptist Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1983 and later established the center's Department of Wellness and Health Promotion. White is also a clown who goes by the name of Dr. Jerko. For years he mixed these dual interests, skills, and egos while practicing medicine, and more recently he combines them as a writer, speaker, and consultant to a wide range of institutions and corporations. He is the author of &quot;Why Normal Isn't Healthy: How to Find Heart, Meaning, Passion, and Humor on the Road Most Traveled&quot; and has lectured and clowned across the globe, in hospitals, rehabilitation centers, homes for the aged, hospices, schools, refugee camps, prisons, and more. Play and playfulness lie at the center of how he views the world, and here he discusses how, in his opinion, clowning, play, and playfulness intersect with healing and good health.
Is Text Cohesion a Precursor to Reading Success?
Author: Salmani-Nodoushan, Mohammad Ali
Date: 2007-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Success,Reading Comprehension,English (Second Language),Cloze Procedure,College Students,Text Structure,Readability,Reading Tests,Foreign Countries,Reading Achievement

This paper underscores the effect of text cohesion on EFL reading comprehension. 160 EFL (n = 80) and non-EFL (n = 80) university students took two versions of a cloze test based on a passage of 750 words length one developed with every nth word deletion and the other with cohesive word deletion. The results of analyses of variance indicated that text cohesion positively affected text comprehension. Pedagogical implications of the study are discussed.
&quot;Sometimes I Pounce on Twigs Because I'm a Meat Eater&quot;: Supporting Physically Active Play and Outdoor Learning
Author: Perry, Jane P.
Date: 2009-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Play,Physical Activities,Social Development,Cognitive Development,Adults,Role,Peer Relationship,Outdoor Education,Ecology,Playgrounds,Leisure Time,Recreational Activities,Preschool Education,Preschool Children

This article looks anew at the important role of physically active, outdoor play in children's social and cognitive development and the role of adults in supporting active, child-directed outdoor play. The authors describe the concept of play ecologies to highlight how children experience their environment as enlivened by their interactive inquiry. Using two episodes of physically active play, the authors discuss the purpose and sequence of the play in the context of the children's peer culture. They make policy recommendations to help teachers, parents, and organizations increase and enhance physically active play among young children.
The Importance of Fantasy, Fairness, and Friendship in Children's Play: An Interview with Vivian Gussin Paley
Date: 2009-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Play,Child Development,Friendship,Fantasy,Imagination,Young Children,Authors,Interviews,Kindergarten,Story Telling

Vivian Gussin Paley is a teacher, writer, lecturer, and advocate for the importance of play for young children. Author of a dozen books about children learning through play, she has received numerous honors and awards including an Erickson Institute Award for Service to Children, a MacArthur Foundation Fellows award, and a John Dewey Society's Outstanding Achievement Award. Paley taught early-childhood classes for thirty-seven years--chiefly at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools--and in her books she describes and reflects on her own learning experiences shared with thousands of students. Her writings focus primarily on three major areas of concern she sees in children: fantasy, friendship, and fairness. Paley learned early the value of observing and listening to children, recording and studying what they said and did in her classroom, and using what she discovered to improve her teaching and children's lives. In all of this, Paley has been a gatherer and teller of stories, and she remains so in this interview and in her continuing work as a sought-after speaker and consultant. Her latest book, forthcoming in 2010, is &quot;The Boy on the Beach: Building Community through Play.&quot;
Exploring the Uncanny Valley to Find the Edge of Play
Author: Eberle, Scott G.
Date: 2009-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Play,Emotional Response,Psychological Patterns,Psychology,Technology,History,Authors,Toys,Photography,Films,Imagination,Story Telling,Robotics,Neurosciences

Play often rewards us with a thrill or a sense of wonder. But, just over the edge of play, uncanny objects like dolls, automata, robots, and realistic animations may become monstrous rather than marvelous. Drawing from diverse sources, literary evidence, psychological and psychoanalytic theory, new insights in neuroscience, marketing literature, robotics, and new testimony from survey respondents, this article pinpoints a moment when surprise turns to shock and play drains away. Play is surely difficult to define, but demarcating its porous boundary--where what one moment creates joy can, in the next, cause dread--is a useful step toward describing this shifting phenomenon.
Laughing Rats? Playful Tickling Arouses High-Frequency Ultrasonic Chirping in Young Rodents
Author: Panksepp, Jaak
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Animals,Animal Behavior,Play,Emotional Response,Physiology,Developmental Stages,Fear,Inhibition,Brain Hemisphere Functions,Arousal Patterns,Conditioning,Age Differences

In this reprint of a seminal article, once considered quite controversial, the authors discuss their radical claim that rats laugh. Even more provocative, the authors found that this rat-joy sound, especially evident during play, could be amplified dramatically by what they formally call heterospecific (cross-species) handplay (tickling). The authors tickled rats during the most playful juvenile period of their development (older rats sometimes resisted tickling), then studied the ultrasonic chirping the rats produced in response. When analyzed, these vocalizations, occurring during playful rough-and-tumble bouts, suggested analogies to human laughter. The authors also found that fear inhibits playfulness and precludes laughter in rats: sudden, startling bright lights and rough handling reduces the chirping, but even more than these, the smell of a predator's urine suppresses rat &quot;laughter.&quot; The similar positive emotional responses evident in humans and rats suggests a shared brain anatomy and similar neurochemistry, which, in turn, suggests new ways to investigate the ancient origin of human laughter. This article was the first publication to summarize the full set of groundbreaking experiments that changed the way many researchers and scholars consider animal feelings, human nature, and the field of play.
How the Brain Makes Play Fun
Author: Vanderschuren, Louk J. M. J.
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Brain,Play,Neurological Organization,Brain Hemisphere Functions,Learning Activities,Positive Reinforcement,Motivation,Interpersonal Relationship,Animal Behavior,Rewards

In this article, the author describes the empirical studies that have investigated whether play (mostly social play) is rewarding. He then discusses the brain circuits and neurotransmitters that underlie the pleasurable aspects of play. He concludes that the pleasure of play has the ability to reinforce learning activities and that the brain's neurotransmitters and the brain regions that are deeply involved in motivation and pleasure also mediate the pleasures and motivations that social play produces.
Blended Learning: Creating the Right Delivery Systems to Solve Business Problems
Author: Knoll, Elisabeth
Date: 2007-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Blended Learning,Delivery Systems,Computer Mediated Communication,Definitions,Intellectual History,Learner Controlled Instruction,Web Based Instruction,Case Studies,Instructional Effectiveness,Time Management,Cost Effectiveness,Flexible Scheduling,Reliability,Expertise,Teacher Attitudes,Motivation,Instructional Design,Instructional Development,Evaluation Methods,Educational Practices,Educational Technology,Teaching Methods

This paper addresses the concept of blended learning, an approach that has been gaining popularity in recent years with the advancement of computer-mediated training solutions. It begins with an effort to define blended learning and a description of its historical context. A discussion of blended learning as a learner-centric approach follows, including a brief examination of the advantages and disadvantages of both instructor-led instruction and Web-based training in relation to the learner. The benefits and challenges of blended learning are identified, as well as the basic steps necessary for creating a blended program. Examples from corporate and military environments are included. The paper concludes with a look to the future of blended learning, whose growth and influence promises to soar in the coming years.
Friedrich Froebel's Gifts: Connecting the Spiritual and Aesthetic to the Real World of Play and Learning
Author: Provenzo, Eugene F., Jr.
Date: 2009-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Play,Spiritual Development,Aesthetics,Toys,Learning Activities,Early Childhood Education,Young Children,Teaching Methods,Profiles,Manipulative Materials,Creativity,Concept Formation

Friedrich Froebel, the German educator and founder of the Kindergarten Movement, developed a series of play materials including geometric building blocks and pattern activity blocks designed to teach children about forms and relationships found in nature. Froebel's notions about using activity and play in preschool education complement many principles of early childhood education used in contemporary schools. But few modern teachers and educators study the nineteenth-century education pioneer or his ideas. This article explores how his system of learning through directed play focused on his play materials, called gifts, is still important and relevant to children and learning today.
Play and Adversity: How the Playful Mammalian Brain Withstands Threats and Anxieties
Author: Siviy, Stephen M.
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Brain,Animals,Play,Anxiety,Coping,Correlation,Stress Variables,Stress Management,Animal Behavior,Fear,Mothers,Drug Therapy,Anxiety Disorders,Child Health,Neurosciences

Most mammals play, but they do so in a dangerous world. The dynamic relationship between the stresses created by their world and the activity of play helps to explain the evolution of play in mammals, as the author demonstrates in evidence garnered from experiments that introduce elements of fear to rats at play. The author describes the resulting fearful behavior and quantifies the fluctuation in play that results, and then he investigates how these are modified by increased maternal care or the use of benzodiazepines. In conclusion, he discusses how such research can help shed light on the neurobiology underlying human anxiety disorders, especially in children.
Checkmate: Linguistic and Literary Play in Salman Rushdie's &quot;Haroun and the Sea of Stories&quot;
Author: Bongartz, Christiane
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Play,Theories,Creativity,Story Telling,Novels,Games,Fantasy,Language Usage,Children,Authors,Imagination,Grammar

The authors use Noam Chomsky's theories about generative grammar to discuss the notion of linguistic creativity they believe lies at the core of storytelling as Salman Rushdie pictures it in his novel, &quot;Haroun and the Sea of Stories.&quot; The production of meaning through the use of narrative helps explain the rules of the literary game, presented in part as a fantasy chess match, for the young readers at whom the work is aimed.
The Function of Play in the Development of the Social Brain
Author: Pellis, Sergio M.
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Play,Brain Hemisphere Functions,Child Development,Interpersonal Relationship,Animal Behavior,Neurological Organization,Animals,Interpersonal Competence,Age Differences,Psychomotor Skills,Training,Aggression,Hypothesis Testing

Rough-and-tumble play, or play fighting, is common in the young of many mammals. Research on play fighting among rats shows that there are many levels of neural control over this behavior: subcortical mechanisms mediate the motivation and behavior of such play, and the cortex provides mechanisms by which the play changes with age and context. The cortical mechanisms help to explain the advantages playing offers the brain. The cortically induced modulations of the content of play with age ensure that exposure to particular kinds of experiences are enhanced during the critical juvenile period. These experiences, in turn, modify the development of other areas of the cortex. Such cortical changes appear to mediate the effects of play on the refinement of social skills. As a result, rats that play as juveniles are more socially competent as adults. This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.
Orderly and Disorderly Play: A Comparison
Author: Henricks, Thomas S.
Date: 2009-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Play,Cultural Influences,Social Influences,Psychological Patterns,Child Behavior,Children,Child Development,Standards,Games,Social Status,Interpersonal Relationship,Creativity,Social Attitudes,Competition,Cooperation,Philosophy,Power Structure,Interaction

Play is sometimes said to be paradoxical because it displays one quality and the opposite of that quality at the same time. One of the best examples of this is the copresence of order and disorder. This article explores the differences between orderly and disorderly play. The author emphasizes the ways in which any event can be said to be orderly or disorderly; the identification of cultural, social, and psychological sources of order; and the importance of this theme in the work of some prominent play scholars. Following this, the author suggests a variety of functions for both orderly and disorderly play.