Foundations 2009

Foundations of Educational Technology

Group News & Discussion:

Paper, Hill Air Force Base, and Second Life Tour

Hi, as a reminder, your research paper draft is due in a week and a half, please see the research paper assignment page and writing tips for guidance.

The MS foundations class is taking a field trip to visit the instructional design teams at the Hill Air Force base early Thursday afternoon of next week (Nov 19th).  If any of you would like to meet there and join us you are welcome, but please email me to let me know.  I'll send you more details.

As a last class activity after Thanksgiving, we (the MEd class) will also be taking a "virtual field trip" to explore educational applications in Second Life on the night of December 1st at 7pm (Tuesday).  Second Life is a popular 3D multiuser world.  If you can't make that time, you can try out Second Life on your own, and indeed I recommend you do so before December 1st so that you can learn how to move around and change your appearance (see info on how to join below).  The tour is optional and I will make a video of it, but you'll need to check it out in preparation for our final assignment (other than the final version of your research paper), which is a short reflection "paper" (really a blog post).  I'll post more details later, but basically you can blog about your thoughts on using Second Life and virtual worlds in education, or reflect on ADDIE and your own instructional design processes.  This is not due until Finals Week (Dec 10th).

In preparation for the virtual world tour, please fill out this form to join Second Life, then download the Second Life client program, install it and run it, and login with your Second Life account name and password. I recommend checking out the new members orientation island so you can learn how to move around and how to change your appearance.

I'm "Dug Digital" in Second Life. More details about the places we'll be visiting will be posted after Thanksgiving.

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Submitted by Doug Holton on Wed, 11/11/2009 - 7:58pm

Reminder: Finding References and a Research Topic This Week

Hi, as a reminder, you should be searching Google Scholar and other places for references to help pick a topic for your research paper assignment (literature review).  I'd highly recommend doing the searching for references first to help guide and constrain your topic.  Email me and I can help you find references.  Then by the Sunday before Thanksgiving the draft is due - there also I'd recommend not waiting until the last minute.  Double check your APA citations and these writing tips, and remember the how to summarize a journal article reading we did earlier.

Some folks have already posted some great ideas for topics:

http://itls.usu.edu/blogs/amy-hall/2009/oct/29/research-topic-and-resources

http://itls.usu.edu/blogs/kandyce-barber/2009/oct/28/research-topic-and-references

http://itls.usu.edu/blogs/mike-mitchell/2009/oct/22/edupunk-research-paper

http://itls.usu.edu/blogs/michael-archibald/2009/oct/30/using-clickers-classrooms

http://itls.usu.edu/blogs/sharee-dickey/2009/nov/02/use-social-software-adult-education

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Submitted by Doug Holton on Thu, 11/05/2009 - 2:48pm

Weeks 10 & 11: Review and Research

For the upcoming 2 weeks, the big task is to start working on your research paper assignment.  The first and hardest step is to identify a topic related to educational technology for which there is research.  There is a list of suggested topics on the research paper assignment page, or you can review our knowledge base for ideas, and also I'd recommend browsing the list of journals for ideas, especially those that focus on educational technology.  Use Google Scholar to find more research references (you'll need to find at least 5 in the next 2 weeks).  Create a summary paragraph about your topic and list the 5 references you found sometime within the next 2 weeks (post them to your blog).  See the research paper assignment page for guidance.

For help on this assignment, I'd also recommend these readings: how to summarize a journal article, writing a literature review, and these guidelines for writing a literature review.

The goal of your literature review is not to write it for me or to pursuade someone about something or write about personal experiences, but to summarize and critically analyze recent research on an educational technology topic for the purpose of aiding/improving education.  The Review of Educational Research journal has many sample literature reviews that can give you the idea.  Our How People Learn book too is basically a big lit review.

I look forward to hearing about your topics.  If you need any help finding references or whatever, please email me or comment here, thanks!

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Submitted by Doug Holton on Sun, 10/25/2009 - 8:23am

Students Create ITLS Knowledge Base

New MEd students in the Foundations 2009 course finished a wiki-based knoClick here to read more »

Submitted by Doug Holton on Fri, 10/16/2009 - 10:29pm

MEd Foundations Research Paper Assignment

I've posted details about the research paper assignment, which will be a literature review of research on some edtech-related topic.  You have 3 weeks (November 8th) to come up with a topic and find some references (which you'll blog about), then another 2 weeks to turn in your draft (November 22nd, or anytime before the end of the Thanksgiving break), and the final draft is due during finals week, December 10th.

On the research paper page is a bunch of guidance for helping you get started, including a list of possible topics (basically the same stuff we've created wiki pages about), as well as some writing tips and a sample paper and outline.  Email me if you have any questions!  As a reminder, we won't have any assignment due next week-there is just the optional FETC conference you can blog about and you can comment on others' blog posts about a controversy/issue.

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Submitted by Doug Holton on Fri, 10/16/2009 - 12:44pm
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