Educational technologies for the benefit of students

By Yngve Troye Nordkvelle

Editor

lederThis issue of Seminar.net offers four different experiences on how students can gain from using educational technologies. In the article "Adopting digital skills in an international project in teacher education", associate professor Hugo Nordseth of Nord-Trøndelag University College present the aims of a project aimed at making students in teacher training able to collaborate across national borders and contexts. The project demonstrates the feasibility of training students to use new technologies that offer opportunities for learning. Nordseth emphasizes the importance of proper training in the selected tools.

Adopting digital skills in an international project in teacher education

In the article "Adopting digital skills in an international project in teacher education", associate professor Hugo Nordseth of Nord-Trøndelag University College present the aims of a project aimed at making students in teacher training able to collaborate across national borders and contexts. The project demonstrates the feasibility of training students to use new technologies that offer opportunities for learning. Nordseth emphasizes the importance of proper training in the selected tools.

Digital Network as a Learning Tool for Health Sciences Students

Professor Ragnhild Nilsen, of the University of Tromsø, presents her article "Digital Network as a Learning Tool for Health Sciences Students", as an example from studies in health. She presents how an online learning module for health sciences students with different educational backgrounds was implemented at the University of Tromsø (UiT). The intention was to improve communication and cooperation abilities across professional boundaries. The purpose of this article is to examine how participation in a joint, web-based course can be a didactic tool that helps health sciences students learn from one another by means of collaboration.

Online dating and education

Yvonne Fritze and Yngve Troye Nordkvelle, both editors of the journal present their article "Online dating and education". The research was carried out in their home institution, Lillehammer University College.Taking its inspiration from Luhmann's communication theory, this article looks at online dating from the perspective of teaching and education. The findings of this project indicate that students do use netdating as an experience and that quite a few of them find this valuable for their own communicative skills. The article explores those features of online dating characteristic of distance dialogue, and discusses the extent to which these can be transferred to communication in the teaching context. The article was first presented in a book published in Danish (Michael Paulsen & Lars Qvortrup (ed.) (2007) Luhmann og dannelse, København: Unge Pædagoger). This version provides extended discussions of the implications for flexible education.

Developing Contextual Knowledge Arenas in the Global Classroom

In the final article, with the title "Developing Contextual Knowledge Arenas in the Global Classroom", associate professor Siv Oltedal of Nordland University, discuss challenges in the development of contextual knowledge arenas by focusing on how the contextual perspective is brought into a masters program in social work. She explores the development of different knowledge areas and how they offer different learning opportunities for a group of international students.

Search

Article list vol 8. - issue 2

1. Hugo Nordseth - Adopting digital skills in an international project in teacher education

2. Ragnhild Nilsen - Digital Network as a Learning Tool for Health Sciences Students

3. Yvonne Fritze & Yngve Nordkvelle (Editor) - Online dating and education

4. Siv Oltedal - Developing Contextual Knowledge Arenas in the Global Classroom

Call for papers

Seminar.net welcomes papers and reviews for upcoming issues, and you find guidelines for authors here. Our scope is to publish refereed articles dealing with research into theoretical or practical aspects related to the learning of adolescents, adults and elderly. A vital field of interest for seminar.net is the use of media technology in lifelong learning.

Monitor 2011 - The digital state of the Norwegian school

Lillian Gran

Department of Education and Social Work
Lillehammer University College
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Review of the national digital survey

A yearly digital survey committed in compulsory school in Norway

Keywords: The Digital condition of the Norwegian compulsory school, motivated students, technology, media, digital natives

Monitor 2011(Egeberg, 2012) is a submission on the fifth quantitative survey of the Norwegian digital health situation completed by Egeberg et al. The survey is a qualified comparison foundation with international surveys on digital competence such as, e.g. PISA. Since 2003, the digital surveys have been completed every other year in Norway to identify indications on schools' digital state. The respondents who were chosen are a selection of school leaders, teachers and student in the 8th and 9th grades and level two in upper secondary school. The submissions research and results are also organized according to these three areas of participants.

Read more...

Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories: Self-Representations in New Media

Knut Lundby (red.)

Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2008.

Reviewed by
Jill Walker Rettberg
Associate Professor of Digital Culture
University of Bergen
http://jilltxt.net

We live in an age in which more and more of us are creating our own "digital stories". In 2008, 18% of Norwegian 16-24 year olds were recorded as being active bloggers over the previous three months (Statistics Norway, "ICT in households", 2nd quarter 2008) while more than 2/3 of American teenagers have uploaded self-produced material to the Internet, in the form of YouTube videos, photographs, blogs, stories, remixes etc. (Pew Internet). The numbers of these "user-made" cultural productions are growing year by year and spreading from the younger generation to us adults, who are now the group most increasingly represented on Facebook. In blogs and on Facebook the distinction between amateur and professional is largely meaningless.

Read more...

Story Circle: Digital Storytelling Around the World.

John Hartley and Kelly McWilliam (eds.)

Publisher: Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009

Reviewed by
Birte Hatlehol
PhD student in Media Education
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The anthology Story Circle is an international study of digital storytelling that discusses the phenomenon in a global context. The book contains 20 articles with contributions from a number of key specialists with wide-ranging experience in the field of DST.

Read more...

Moving Media Studies - Remediation Revisited

Edited by Heidi Philipsen and Lars Qvortrup

Publisher: Samfundslitteratur Press: Frederiksberg Press, 2007.

Reviewed by
Stephen Dobson
Professor
Lillehammer University College
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Introduction
Two questions can be asked: firstly, not do we need another book on remediation, but why? And secondly, if this is the case, what kind of book should it be? This review spirals around these questions.
Read more...

Global perspectives on E-learning.

Rhetoric and reality by A. A. Carr-Chellman (Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2005

Reviewed by
Dr. J. Ola Lindberg
Department of Education, Mid Sweden University
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
 
Dr. Anders D. Olofsson
Department of Education, Umeå University
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.


It seems suitable to begin this review by giving a brief description of the context in which the texts of this book are produced. If it fails to be regarded as a description, then we hope at least it can be regarded as one possible understanding of the context. When contextualizing a book, a good idea seems to be to start with a few words about the editor, Alison A. Carr-Chellman.
Read more...