Section archive - ICT & Teaching

The present paper examines a collaborative study that two teacher educators conducted across two sites. The researchers designed the wiki to support teacher candidates’ critical thinking about learner characteristics; community, classroom, and school factors; and pedagogical content necessary to support elementary school students’ literacy development. Results show that peer collaboration on wiki exchanges supported collaboration and critical thinking about student characteristics and instructional pedagogy. The wiki posts indicated that the wiki supported candidates in considering the developmental needs of students; students’ diverse approaches to learning; and students’ existing skills, abilities, and prior knowledge. The wiki also supported candidates in considering their pedagogical practices in relation to their students’ levels of literacy development.

This research provides a comprehensive look at a constructivist one-to-one computing program’s effects on teaching and learning practices as well as student learning achievements. Findings indicated consistent and highly positive findings of the efficacy of a constructivist one-to-one computing program in terms of student math and reading achievement, differentiation in teaching and learning, higher student attendance, and decreased disciplinary actions.

In this article, the authors reflect upon, revisit, and rethink the original guidelines for using digital technologies to prepare social studies teachers in an effort to facilitate theoretical and practical discussions that may serve as a foundation from which to approach the preparation and development of social studies teachers over the next few years. The authors revisit the guidelines for using digital technologies in light of current scholarship and current contexts. They conclude that 15 years ago they focused on the Internet and the materials accessible online. Since then, the authors have seen the emergence of more advanced technologies. All of these developments have played into the concept of 21st-century classrooms. As a result, they see great value in supporting teachers to develop the critically aware dispositions that enable them to be ready and engage with online professional learning sites.

This article has examined the case of one particular learning activity and the design, development and implementation of that activity to address the particular needs of pre-service teachers in one teacher education programme in New Zealand. The authors considered three core principles which adopted in the design of the docudrama activity: (a) to provide pre-service teachers with an experience of educational technology as an integral part of the learning; (b) for students to experience an example of what ‘student centred learning’ might look like; and (c) to highlight the value of authentic contexts for learning. Results from the evaluation survey indicate that the design of the docudrama activity contributed to participants’ learning about how educational technologies help support alternatives to traditional teaching and learning practices.