Class meetings: Mondays and Wednesdays, 4:10-5:30 p.m., in 227, CIT
The Educational Software Seminar at Brown combines topics and activities that, at other universities, would almost certainly be encountered only in different courses offered in different departments. The basic idea of the Seminar -- that groups of undergraduates, primarily but not exclusively those with interests and abilities in computer science and education, work closely with local teachers to design, create and implement classroom software that meets the needs and specifications of those teachers -- has made it a model of interdisciplinary and university-school collaboration in the area of educational technology. The goals of the Seminar are to engage and support students in these collaborations while they read about, discuss, and debate some of the historical, cognitive, technical, and sociological issues concerning the use of computers in education generally, and in the creation and use of educational technology in particular.
This syllabus provides a list of the books and articles we'll be reading and discussing, as well as a week-by-week description of the course. The bibliography obviously includes many more works than will be assigned, and is meant to provide a "pro-seminar" reference for students interested in further study. As CS92/ED89 is meant to be a seminar, discussion will be more important than the transmission of any particular body of knowledge, and at least one student will have the responsibility of presenting assigned readings and leading the discussion in each class session.
* Cuban, Larry. Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920. (Teachers College Press, 1986).
* Cuban, Larry. Oversold and Underused: Computers in Classrooms (Harvard University Press, 2001).
* Dewey, John. Experience and Education (MacMillan, 1997 c1938).
Druin, Allison (ed.). The Design of Children's Technology (Morgan Kaufmann, 1998).
Druin, Allison (ed.) Robots for Kids: Exploring New Technologies for Learning (Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2000).
Gardner, Howard. The Unschooled Mind. (Basic Books, 1991).
Gatto, John Taylor. Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. (New Society Publishers, 2002).
Hickman, Larry. John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology. (Indiana Univ Press, 1992)
Leebaert, Derek (ed). The Future of Software. (MIT Press, 1995).
Macromedia Inc. Authorware 4 Authorized. (Peachpit Press, 1997).
Mandel, Theo. The Elements of User Interface Design (John Wiley, 1997)
McGilly, Kate. Classroom Lessons: Integrating Cognitive Theory and Classroom Practice. (MIT Press, 1994).
Norton, Priscilla, and Sprague, Deborah. Technology for Teaching (Allyn & Bacon, 2000).
Oostendorp, Herre van, and Mul, de Sjaak (eds.), Cognitive Aspects of Electronic Text Processing, Advances in Discourse Processes, vol. LVIII (Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1996).
Perkins, David N., Schwartz, Judah, West, Mary Maxwell and Wiske, Martha Stone (eds.). Software Goes to School: Teaching for Understanding with New Technologies (Oxford University Press, 1995).
Raskin, Jeff. The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems (Addison-Wesley, 2000).
Reeves, Byron and Nass, Clifford. The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places (Cambridge University Press & CSLI Publications, 1996).
Russell, Bertrand. Education and the Good Life (Boni and Liveright, 1926).
Russell, Bertrand. Principles of Social Reconstruction (Allen and Unwin, 1916). Published in the United States as Why Men Fight.
Ryan, Alan. Liberal Anxieties and Liberal Education (Hill and Wang, 1998)
* Sandholtz, Judith Haymore, and Ringstaff, Cathy, and Dwyer, David C. Teaching with Technology: Creating Student-Centered Classrooms. (Teachers College Press, 1997).
Schank, Roger, and Cleary, Chip. Engines for Education. (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995). HTML edition at: http://engines4ed.org/hyperbook/nodes/educator-outline.html
Scheffler, Israel. Reason and Teaching. (Routledge, 1973).
Shepherd, John C. Authoring Authorware : A Practical Guide. (Prentice- Hall, 1998)
Smith, Irene and Yoder, Sharon. Inside HyperStudio: Scripting with HyperLogo (ISBN# 1-56484-122-7).
Tiffin, John and Rajasingham. In Search of the Virtual Class: Education in an Information Society. (Routledge, 1995)
Ullman, Ellen. Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents. (City Lights, 1997).
Anderson, John. "Can Information Technology Change the Curriculum?" in Nick Rushby (ed.), Technology-Based Learning: Selected Readings, (Kogan Page, 1987), pp. 73-78.
Beeman, William O., and Anderson, Kenneth T., and Bader, Gail, and Larkin, James, and McClard, Anne, and McQuillan, Patrick, and Shields, Mark. "Hypertext and Pluralism: From Lineal to Non-lineal Thinking." (Brown University: Insitute for Research in information and Scholarship, 1987).
Bierman, Alan W. "Software Engineering," in Bierman, Great Ideas in Computer Science: A Gentle Introduction, (MIT Press, 1997), pp. 209-219.
Brooks, Ruven. "Comparative Task Analysis: An Alternative Direction for Human-Computer Interaction Science," in John M. Carrol (ed.), Designing Interaction, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 50-59.
Catano, James V. "Poetry and Computers: Experimenting with the Communal Text," Computers and the Humanities, vol. 13, pp. 269-275 (1979).
Ching, Cynthia Carter, and Kafai, Yasmin B., and Marshall, Sue K. "Space for Change: Gender and Technology Access in Collaborative Software Design," Journal of Science Education and Technology, 9 1:67-77.
Clinchy, Evans. "The New Technologies and the Continuing Questions," in Clinchy (ed.) Transforming Public Education (Teachers College Press, 1997), pp. 132-142.
Copeland, Peter. "The Educational Significance of Electronic Media," in Nick Rushby (ed.) Technology-Based Learning: Selected Readings, (Kogan Page, 1987),pp. 79-85.
Cuban, Larry. "Computers Meet Classroom: Classroom Wins." Teachers College Record, vol. 95, number 2, pp. 185-210 (1993).
DeWitt, Scott Lloyd. "The Current Nature of Hypertext Research in Computers and Composition Studies: An Historical Perspective," Computers and Composition, vol. 13, pp. 69-84 (1996).
Druin, Allison. "Cooperative Inquiry: Developing New Technologies for Children with Children," Proceedings of CHI'99 (ACM Press, 1999).
Gray, Robert. "Microcomputer Educational Software Design and Development: Lessons From Learning Theory." International Journal of Instructional Media, Vol. 17, Issue 2, 1990.
Kenney, Martin. "Value Creation in the Late Twentieth Century: The Rise of the Knowledge Worker," in Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl and Michael Stack (eds.), Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution (Verso, 1997), pp. 87-102.
Kranzberg, Melvin. "The Information Age: Evolution or Revolution?" in Bruce R. Guile (ed). Information Technologies and Social Transformation (National Academy Press, 1985), pp. 35-54.
Linard, Monique and Zeiliger, Romain. "Designing Navigational Support for Educational Software," in Brad Blumenthal, et al. (eds.), Human-Computer Interaction, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1015, (Springer, 1995), pp. 63-78.
Lu, Casey, and Voss, Burton E., and Kleinsmith, Lewis J. "The Effect of Microcomputer-Based Biology Study Center on Learning in High School Biology Students," The American Biology Teacher, vol. 59, No. 5, pp. 270-278.
Luiz de Oliveira, O. and Baranauskas M.C.C. "Semiotics as a basis for educational software design." British Journal of Educational Technology, vol. 31, number 2, 2000.
Nicol, Anne. "Interfaces for Learning: What Do Good Teachers Know that We Don't?" in Brenda Laurel (ed.) The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design (Addison Wesley, 1990), pp.113-122.
Papert, Seymour. "An Anthology of Learning Stories," and "Computerists," in Papert, The Children's Machine (Basic Books, 1993), pp. 106-113, 157-178.
Pylyshen, Zenon W. "Some Remarks on the Theory-Practice Gap," in John M. Carrol (ed.), Designing Interaction (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 39-49.
Rouet, Jean-Francois, and Levonen, Jarmo J. "Studying and Learning with Hypertext: Empirical Studies and Their Implications," in Rouet, et al. (eds.) Hypertext and Cognition (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), pp.9-24.
Sandholtz, Judith. "A Model, Not a Mold: A Comparison of Four School-University Partnerships," in David M. Byrd and D. John McIntyre (eds.), Research on the Education of Our Nation's Teachers. Teacher Education Yearbook V, Association of Teacher Educators. (Corwin Press, 1997), pp. 258-276.
Scheffler, Israel. "Computers at School?" Teachers College Record 87. 4 (1986). pp. 513-28. Reprinted in Scheffler, In Praise of the Cognitive Emotions (Routledge, 1991), pp.80-96.
Schneiderman, Ben. "Human Values and the Future of Technology: A Declaration of Empowerment." Computers and Society, SIGCAS, Vol. 20, Number 3 (ACM, 1990), pp. 1-6.
Schwartz, Judah. "The Right Size Byte: Reflections of an Educational Software Designer," in David N. Perkins et al. (ed.) Software Goes to School: Teaching with New Technologies, (Oxford University Press, 1995), pp.172-181.
Selfe, Cynthia L. and Selfe, Richard J. "The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones," in CCC 45.4 (December, 1994), pp. 480-503. Electronic version at http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~cyselfe/texts/politics.html.
Spoehr, Kathryn T. and Spoehr, Luther W. "Learning to Think Historically." Educational Psychologist , 1994, 29(2), pp. 71-77.
Svinicki, Marilla D. "New Directions in Learning and Motivation," in New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Number 80, Winter 1999 (Jossey-Bass Publishers), pp. 5-28.
Ward, Robert, and Sewell, David. "How Impoverished is Existing Educational Software for Microcomputers?" in Nick Rushby (ed.) Technology-Based Learning: Selected Readings, (Kogan Page, 1987), pp. 140-148.
Weizenbaum, Joseph. "Science and the Compulsive Programmer." in Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation (W. H. Freeman, 1976), pp.111-131.
British Journal of Educational Technology
Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. (MacMillan, 1916). HTML edition at Columbia University (http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/dewey.html)
Dewey, John. School and Society. (University of Chicago Press, 1907). HTML edition at the Mead Project at Brock University (http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/%7Elward/dewey/Dewey_1907/Dewey_1907_toc.html).
Education and Information Technologies
Educational Media International
Glennan, Thomas K., and Melmed, Arthur. "Fostering the Use of Educational Technology: Elements of a National Strategy," RAND Corporation Report, 1996. http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR682/contents.html
Hanson-Smith, Elizabeth. "Technology in the Classroom: Practice and Promise in the 21st Century." TESOL Professional Paper #2, (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc., http://www.tesol.org/pubs/catalog/downloadable/hanson-smith-2.html, 1997).
Interactive Learning Environments
International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
International Journal of Instructional Media
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
Journal of Educational Television (1990-1995)
Journal of Science Education and Technology
Journal of Experimental Education
Journal of the Learning Sciences
Lemke, Cheryl, and Coughlin, Edward. "Technology in American Schools: Seven Dimensions for Gauging Progress." (The Milken Exchange on Educational Technology, 1998), http://www.mff.org/pubs/ME158.pdf
McNeil, Sara. "Instructional Design." A course offered at the College of Education, University of Houston. Spring 2003. http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6373/.
Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL). "The Impact of Technology." http://www.mcrel.org/connect/tech/impact.html. 1995-1997.
New Directions for Teaching and Learning
Nielsen, Jakob. The Alertbox: Current Issues in Web Usability. 1995-2003. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/.
Nijmegen University. "The History of Education Site." University Nijmegen, Algemene Pedagogie, Netherlands, 1998. http://www.socsci.kun.nl/ped/whp/histeduc/
Quinones, Sherri, and Kirshstein, Rita. An Educator's Guide to Evaluating The Use of Technology in Schools and Classrooms (American Institutes for Research, 1998). http://www.ed.gov/pubs/EdTechGuide/.
Rogers, Patricia L. Designing Instruction for Technology-Enhanced Learning (Idea Group Publishing, 2002). (Brown student access through books24x7.com)
Schank, Roger, and Cleary, Chip. Engines for Education (1995).
"Technology and the New Professional Teacher: Preparing for the 21st Century Classroom," National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 1997. http://www.ncate.org/accred/projects/tech/tech-21.htm
"Technology Counts: Schools and Reform in the Information Age," Education Week, vol. XVII, No. 11, November 10, 1997. http://www.edweek.com/sreports/tc/
Introduction to the Seminar. We'll begin with an explanation of the CS92 approach to the creation of educational software and the analysis of educational technology, and then discuss why it's interesting to combine education and computer science in a seminar setting. Details of the seminar will be discussed along with the syllabus and the pool of projects for the semester. We'll also devote some time to talking about what makes for a successful seminar, and for successful project work in CS92.
Teachers and Machines. We'll read Larry Cuban's classic, Teachers and Machines, and discuss nature and purpose of effective schooling, teaching and learning. We'll turn to the question, not persuasively answered by Cuban, of whether the educational fate of computers has been or will be different than previously classroom technologies. At the end of class on Wednesday, everyone will rank their three choices for the semester's project.
Required reading: Cuban 1986.
Recommended reading: Cuban 2001, and the
1998
Cuban-Pea debate at tappedin.org.
CS92/ED89 Project Pool, Spring 2003
Quotations from Teachers and Machines
Blumberg's Notes: January 27th
Blumberg's Notes: January 29th
The Philosophy of Education I. Careful discussions about educational software inevitably lead to discussions about the purpose of education and educational institutions. This week we'll read Dewey's Experience and Education, a general and influential philosophy of schooling, and then we'll read the philosopher Scheffler about issues arising from the use of computers in schools.
Required reading: Dewey 1938 (Monday) and Scheffler 1986 (Wednesday)
Recommended reading: Dewey 1916, Russell 1916, Russell 1926,
Ryan 1998.
Assignment Due on Friday: Project teams should meet with your
sponsoring teacher and send a summary of the meeting to the
list. The team should then begin their revised project description.
Emily Bolon's Questions About Dewey 1938
Blumberg's Notes: February 3rd
Blumberg's Notes: February 5th
Learning and Technology I. We'll turn to thinking about what and how technology can contribute to learning, and what the characteristics of effective learning tools should be. We begin the week with an overview of learning theories and then read excerpts from a book by a research team who grounds their educational (and software) philosophies in a cognitive psychology of the student. As we read and discuss these materials, we'll pay special attention to the relationship between learning and thinking.
Required reading: "New Directions in Learning and Motivation," by Marilla D. Svinicki (1999) (Monday) and
Schank and Cleary 1995, (at least "Time for A Change", "Natural Learning," "Learning
By Doing," "Incidental Learning," and "Learning By Reflection.") (Wednesday)
Recommended reading: Schank and Cleary 1995, Gardner 1991.
Assignment Due on Friday: Each team should
complete the revised project description and post it to the CS92 list.
Blumberg's Notes: February 10th
Blumberg's Notes: February 12th
All About (our) Authoring Tools. We'll meet in the Multimedia Lab for a demonstration of and discussion about the various authoring tools that have been used and are currently available for use in the Seminar.
Required reading: For background, you can read the
Authoring Tools Overview and,
as the projects begin to gather steam and take time,
you may want to read ahead in the syllabus, and get
some of the required and recommended readings out of the way.
Assignment Due Friday: Project Pages should exist on
the Web.
Evaluating Educational Software. This week we begin to develop criteria (and an appropriate vocabulary and framework) for judging and discussing the quality of educational software and educational technology. We'll read articles that reflect different critical perspectives and approaches of computer scientists as well as educational technologists and educators.
Required reading: Gray 1990 and
Luiz de Oliveira and Baranauskas 2000.
Recommended reading: Doll 1987, Mandel 1997, Raskin 2000
Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
Instructional Design Models by Martin Ryder
Jonas Linderoth's
Page (at CHAT)
Blumberg's Notes: February 24th
Blumberg's Notes: February 26th
Studying Educational Technology We'll discuss the 10-year study of the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow Project. The recommended reading will be drawn from Allison Druin's The Design of Children's Technology, as well as recent articles from the journals listed above.
Required reading: Sandholtz, Ringstaff and Dwyer 1997 (chapters 1-5 for Monday and chapters 6-11 for Wednesday).
Recommended reading: Cuban 2001, Druin 1999.
Assignment Due Friday: All students should decide whether they will write about a research article or a piece of instructional software relevant to their team's project.
Saori Taichi's
notes on storyboards
The CS92 Program Inventory
Storyboard Presentations I. Project teams will present their projects and storyboards to the class beginning on Wednesday, and will receive feedback on their approach to the program, their documentation of the project and their prospects for success. Readings may be assigned by the project teams (e.g. course curriculum), but the work of the next two weeks will be in creating and documenting "sketches" or prototypes of the software, and then responding to the class' comments.
Recommended reading: "Techno-Promoter Dreams, Student Realities," by Peck, Cuban and Kirkpatrick. Phi Delta Kappan,February 2002, Vol. 83, Issue 6. Electronic version at: http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?an=6033826&db=aph
Assignment Due by March 19th: Storyboards should be posted or discussed on the project pages, and all project teams should decide on the tool they will use to create their software.
Storyboard Presentations II. Project team presentations continue, and we'll identify patterns and critical issues in the design of classroom software. Wednesday's session will consist of the teams' responses to the feedback and our first discussion of readings on interface design.
Synthesis I: Learning From Learners and Educational Software. As project work is well underway, we'll begin to bring together ideas from the various disciplines (and readings), both for the sake of developing keener critical faculties concerning educational software, and for thinking about the role of computers in education generally. On Monday we'll motivate the discussion by looking at further examples of commercial software, and on Wednesday we'll read a chapter from The Design of Children's Technology (Druin 1999).
Required Reading:: "Space for Change: Gender and Technology
Access in Collaborative Software Design," by Ching, Kafai and Marshall,
in
Journal of Science Education and Technology, 9 1:67-77.
"Cooperative Inquiry: Developing New Technologies for Children with
Children", by Allison Druin, in Proceedings of CHI'99
(ACM Press, 1999).
Recommended Reading: "Software for Kids by Kids", by Yasmin B. Kafai, in
Communications of the ACM, Volume 39 , Issue 4 (April 1996).
Kafai's KIDS page at UCLA.
Kids Design
the Future Home Page, Allison Druin's site at UMaryland.
Recommended Reading: "Examining the Effects of Different Multiple Representational Systems in Learning Primary Mathematics", by Ainsworth, Bibby and Wood. The Journal of the Learning Sciences 11:1, pp. 25-61 (2002).
For Evaluation: Starchild: A Learning Center for Young Astronomers (NASA, 2003).
Synthesis III: Further Issues in Educational Software Design. We'll spend Monday discussing Overbaugh's article, and how the different teams are handling issues of user control, feedback, motivation, retention, memory, and orientation. On Wednesday we'll discuss several CS92 programs from the point of view of Overbaugh's framework.
Recommended Reading:: "Perform a Task Analysis" (part of the Instructional Design Knowledge Base at gmu.edu)
For Evaluation: Decisions, Decisions by Tom Snyder Productions
Software testing and technology assessment. We'll complete our own testing and analysis of the software created by the project teams, and discuss ways to analyze the effectiveness of the classroom software over time.
Final Presentations. A final session, either in the MSLab or the MMLab, at which teams will present their finished products. We'll reflect on the course, brainstorm about how it might be improved next year, and plan for the presentation/party for our teachers, and Brown faculty members.
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