Overview and goals

Required Activities

1) Attending class weekly and actively participating. These sessions will be devoted to discussion of readings or assignments, and work on projects with educational multimedia programs. You should notify me before class if you know you will not be able to attend, and as soon as possible if something unexpected arises. Missing more than two class meetings will require makeup work.

2) Weekly participation in discussions on our email listserve.

You are expected to post at least one message per week to discussions on the class email listserve, mailto:edtec340@lists.umsl.edu You must make at least one post before 6pm Tuesday evening, the day before class. Please read other studentsÌ responses to the discussion before you post, and make an effort to build on their ideas (we want a discussion, not a set of isolated comments). Before class, make sure and read any emails that are posted after yours, because we are likely to use the online discussion as a jumping off point for face-to-face discussion.

3) Together with another student, learning how to use an educational multimedia program such as a simulation or exploratory environment, evaluating that program, and making an explanatory and critical presentation of it to the rest of the class.

4) Completing multimedia projects utilizing PowerPoint and web pages, and optionally HyperStudio. These projects will incorporate text, graphics, audio, and video.

Grading

• Class participation (20%)
• Weekly participation in online discussion group (20%)
• Critical evaluation and presentation of an educational hypermedia program (20%)
• Two hypermedia development projects (40%)

Class Readings

Goldman, S. R., Williams, S. M., Sherwood, R. D., Hasselbring, T. S., & the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt (1999). Technology for teaching and learning with understanding: A primer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Any additional readings will be available on the World Wide Web

Class Schedule

Assignment, due next Wednesday: short paper (2-3 pages) on your personal experience with educational technology in learning settings, and your perspective on the possibilities for Ed Tech.

Week 2: Jan 17-21, Class Wednesday, Jan 19: Perspective on Educational Technology

• Read Introduction and Chapter 1 of handbook for class
• Pam Ashmore from the Center for Human Origin and Cultural Diversity (CHOCD) will explain their programs to the class, and students working on CHOCD-related projects will schedule to attend a program.
• I will give an overview of the Macintosh and how to get into PowerPoint, Netscape Communicator, and Pagemill during class.
• We will discuss your personal experiences and ideas on possibilities for Ed Tech from your short papers, and relate them to the reading. Ideas will be incorporated into Inspiration.

Week 3: Jan 24-28, Class Wednesday, Jan 26

• Read Chapter 2 of handbook for class
• You will be analyzing the three cases in the handbook and preparing a PowerPoint presentation about them in class. I will review PowerPoint at the beginning of class.
• You should make sure you have a web site to which you can load pages for next week's session.

Week 4: Jan 31-Feb 4, Class Wednesday, Feb 2

• At the beginning of class, you will give your Powerpoint presentations created last week, and we will discuss the cases and four principles further.
• I will review web architecture and web searching, as well as present web page editing with Pagemill.
• Everyone will begin creating a web site today.

Week 5: Feb 7-11, Class Wednesday, Feb 9

• Read Chapter 3 of handbook for class
• You will work on your web sites today. You will have an opening page with links to two other pages. One will be a translated lesson plan from CHOCD for use on the web. Another will be a "resource page" of your choice with links and annotation to web resources you find useful for some educational purpose. You will upload the pages to your website.

Week 6: Feb 14-18, Class Wednesday, Feb 16

• After discussing the ideas in Chapter 3, we will begin the educational hypermedia evaluation project. I will have some standalone and web-based environments to choose from (including ones mentioned in the reading), but you can bring your own ideas too if you have them on CD-ROM or they are accessible on the Web. You will work in pairs on this project.

Week 7: Feb 21-25, Class Wednesday, Feb 23

• You will continue the educational hypermedia evaluation project. You will prepare to present your package to the rest of the class, using the program itself and PowerPoint.

Week 8: Feb 28-Mar 3, Class Wednesday, Mar 1

• Complete educational hypermedia evaluation project.
• Begin presentations of educational hypermedia programs (15 minutes each)

Week 9: Mar 6-10, Class Wednesday, Mar 8

• Complete presentations of educational hypermedia programs (15 minutes each)
• Return to educational resource web pages using PageMill.

Week 10: Mar 13-17, Class Wednesday, Mar 15

• Discussion of ethical issues, critical viewing, and selection of educational resources.
• Development project begins

Week 11: Mar 20-24, Class Wednesday, Mar 22

• Development project continues
• Introduction of basic image editing and conversion

Spring Break March 25-April 2
 

Week 12: April 3-7, Class Wednesday, April 5

• Development project continues

Week 13: April 10-14, Class Wednesday, Apr 12

• Development project ends

Week 14: April 17-21, Class Wednesday, Apr 19: Wrapup (last class)

• Read Chapter 4 of handbook for class
• Discussion of reading and projects

Week 15: April 24-28

No Class: I will be out of town at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.