Seminar.net enters it’s fourth year, and has reached a state of maturity in a number of meanings: it receives manuscripts from all continents, the articles are read from 134 countries, of which India represents the highest number of readers, a number of articles have been read by more than 10 000 interested persons, and the frequency of issues is now three per year, and will reach four by next year. Interested parties now approach us in order to learn about our policies and practices.
Mie Buhl is a lecturer at The School of Education, University of Aarhus, Denmark, where she heads the Department of Pedagogical Anthropology. She addresses the expansion of the professional duties of the teacher to extend beyond merely acting as a disseminator of knowledge and facilitating learning processes for the student. Information technology exposes the teacher’s performative dimensions: how teachers choose their acts in certain situations, and how that demands an intensified reflexivity. The article argues that teachers must meet increasing expectations to perform on the premises of mass media and asks how this displaces the premises for educational practice.
the rhetoric, remediation and realities of the UK Digital Curriculum
Neil Selwyn works at the London KnowledgeLab, UK. In his paper he uses Bolter and Grusin’s remediation approach in investigating the manner in which new forms of digital media are re-casting the communicative and epistemological import of knowledge, teaching and learning. He critically analyses the disparity between the rhetoric and reality of how information technologies are implemented in the UK. He focuses on the ”Digital Curriculum” project as an example of how didactics are undergoing a remediation in the digital age.
Hosein Moeini is a faculty member in the department of Management Information Systems, faculty of Commercial Sciences at Baskent University, Ankara, Turkey. His paper addresses the changing compositions of student populations, changing paradigms in teaching and learning, and changing expectations about the quality of education. His concern is to promote a more professional approach to identify what teachers need in terms of professional development, in the area of information technology in particular, and to implement those insights into the training programs.
Ståle Angen Rye is a 1.lecturer at the University of Agder, Norway. He offers an analysis of the term ”Flexibility”. He notes that ”Flexibility” is frequently used when discussing higher education and in distance education or distributed education, in particular. It usually goes with terms like ”change”, but on a whole few more profound investigations of the term are offered. Rye find this surprising, and he aims with this article to clarify the concept of flexibility by relating it to students in distributed education and their study situation.
The Dream conference is titled Digital
Content Creation: Creativity, Competence, Critique and takes place in Odense, Denmark, 18-20 September 2008. Keynote speakers include professor David Buckingham, John Hartley, Angela McFarlane and Roger Säljö.Deadline for submission of abstracts is 15 April.
Reviewed by
Stephen Dobson
Professor
Lillehammer University College
Email: stephen.dobson@hil.no
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.
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: Ola.Lindberg@miun.se
Dr. Anders D. Olofsson
Department of Education, Umeå University
Email: Anders.D.Olofsson@educ.umu.se
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.
by George Lakoff, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006
Reviewed by Geir Haugsbakk
Ph.D.-candidate in Education
Lillehammer University College
Email: Geir.Haugsbakk@hil.no
“To lose freedom is awful; to lose the idea of freedom is even worse.”
This statement by George Lakoff is at the core of his attention in his
last book. And his opinion is that the loss of the concept of freedom
is a tragic incident that has struck a large part of the American
people, not least since September 11, 2001.