Literature Review

Terry Gallivan

EDU 637
February 9, 2014

Introduction
One must be open to the constructivists way of thinking for technology to be a viable consideration for learning. Theorists considered constructivists include Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Lave, and Wenger.
Cognitive Developmental

Constructivist

Vygotsky believed to achieve cognitive developmental areas of critical thinking, reasoning and remembering the student must be challenged to look beyond the obvious. Vygotsky emphasizes learning is obtained when there is social interaction; otherwise, the lesson is not meaningful and thereby will not be retained to memory.

Social Interaction

Game-Based Learning for Engaged Learning Trends

1. Digital gaming is on the horizon to be a valuable resource to achieve student motivation, engagement, assess student understanding, as well as, other uses.
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2. Students must be challenged in unprecedented ways, and digital gaming may be the solution for some student success.
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3. The first objective is to use programs promoting the cognitive abilities. These abilities focus on the memory, attention, and self-control. As with any educational game, the objective is to encourage learning in a challenging and engaging approach.

Game-Based Learning for Engaged Learning Trends

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4. Educational gaming if presented in the same captivating content as World of Warcraft and SimCity can produce a student population of eager learners. It would, essentially, be the same as giving a worksheet. 5. Lastly, the trend of social media sparks the social games for more than 98 million players in the United States in 20011 (Epper, Derryberry & Jackson, 2012).
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Game-Based Learning for Engaged Learning Weakness

1. Some commercial games have been designed for learning but can still be expensive to purchase.
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2. Most district networks cannot install and run applications related with the educational serious (learning) games.
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3. Another problem is the games usually do not map out the anticipated learning outcomes. Teachers would have to sieve through games to see if the game could leeway in the classroom. It could take hours of exploration on the teachers part to find a game to meet the desired learning outcomes of the lesson. This approach can be limited and not very proficient.

Game-Based Learning for Engaged Learning Future Issues

1. Educators can build their own games to support their curriculum at a lower cost. Most teachers could not complete this task without recruiting help from people with more skills of developing games.
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2. Games can be highly addictive, keep children from going outside to play, and have been accused of increasing violent tendencies in behavior.

Click on the black screen, please

Game-Based Learning for Engaged Learning Trends

Avatars for Expanding on Retention of Material Learned - Trends

1. Avatars have the potential to enhance social interaction and support collaboration, especially for students with difficulties with public speaking.
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2. Virtual worlds with Avatars give students the ability to carry out tasks that would otherwise be boring to them.
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3. The use of avatars levels the arena, no longer does the student who spends the most on materials or is more artistic, or whose parents help with their project have any advantage.

Avatars for Expanding on Retention of Material Learned - Trends

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4. According to Antonacci & Modaress (2005), Avatars provide opportunities for collaboration, the social interaction and understanding, meaning making, reflection.
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5. The anonymity of the Avatar in the Virtual world enables students to communicate and express themselves on a critical thinking level.

Avatars for Expanding on Retention of Material Learned - Weakness

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4. According

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5. The

Avatars for Expanding on Retention of Material Learned - Future Issues

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4. According

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5. The

Blogging for Student Communication - Trends

1. Blogging encompass interaction, collaborative learning, discussions to form understanding, shared resources and feedback from both the teacher and other students.
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2. A well-developed and implemented blog design will result in a student population of critical thinkers. Objectives would include students who prefer the exploration, brainstorming, discussion and reflections found in the non-threatening atmosphere of the online learning design as opposed to the everyone sees me in the traditional classroom setting.

Blogging for Student Communication - Trends

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3. Discussion boards are a valuable resource for motivation if the topic is interesting and the incentive for participation is substantial. Discussion forums can encourage higher order thinking and reflection, but may be underutilized. (Repman et al., 2005).
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4. Blogging supports collaboration among students to reinforce memory retention and encourage interaction between students to foster the social aspects of learning.

Blogging for Student Communication - Trends

1. Students do not automatically become self-motivated or self-directed overnight. If teachers are enabled to see those who are network-poor earlier in their candidature, it becomes possible for them to make timely and strategic interventions to address this issue. (Dawson, 2010, p.738).

Blogging for Student Communication Weakness

1. Not all students are eager to jump right into the social networking, which is essential to success in blogging.
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2. Discussion forums can encourage higher order thinking and reflection, but may be underutilized. (Repman et al., 2005).

Blogging for Student Communication Future Issues

1. Students do not automatically become self-motivated or self-directed overnight. If teachers are enabled to see those who are network-poor earlier in their candidature, it becomes possible for them to make timely and strategic interventions to address this issue. (Dawson, 2010, p.738).

Bring Your Own Device Trends

1. There is a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement in grades K-12. The capability of schools to meet the increasing mandate of integrating technology in the classroom can be accomplished with a BYOD program. 2. The implementation of personal mobile devices into existing curriculum solves the challenges and creates an innovative means to enhance the learning experiences of digital natives of the 21st century.
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3. The implementation of BYOD saves schools from purchasing additional workstations or laptops. The crusade reflects the trends in society for ownership and use of personal mobile devices.

Bring Your Own Device Trends

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4. In Downes & Bishop (2012), students were engaged in assignments with technology integration which included a one to one laptop program. Students were able to access the lessons from home and school by using Google Docs, websites, and a variety of resources. Students felt more organized and were more effective in completing their assignments.
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5. Students become connected and involved during collective projects in a student-directed setting with BYOD.

Bring Your Own Device Weakness

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4. In

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5. Students

Bring Your Own Device Future Issues

1. There should be sacrifices made to bring the most up-to-date technology into the class for all students to learn. The community must stand in the forefront for changes to be made which benefit the students. Districts need to create bonds for the voters to make way for the technology needed in the schools. Administrators must collaborate with vendors to ensure technology brought today is not obsolete next week by obtaining upgrades as necessary.
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2. Teachers must be willing to learn the new technology by attending relevant professional development.

Dropbox or the Cloud for Student Work and Collaboration - Trends

1. The teacher can upload lecture notes and assignments for the student using Google Drive. The median is a two-way instructional means for both the teacher and the student. The teacher may additionally choose to have the entire class upload projects and assignments to Google Drive.
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2. Advantages include, but are not limited to: cost effectiveness, ease of access to and storage of documents, timely collaboration with others, and communication among students, parents, peers and administration (Dekeyser & Watson, 2006).

Dropbox or the Cloud for Student Work and Collaboration - Trends

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3. Collaborating and sharing information with peers has never been easier or more efficient. Through Dropbox or Google Drive, sharing and collaborating with peers is literally a mouse click away.
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4. Students no longer require the hard copy printed material to access knowledge just the keystrokes to relay requests for information to the computer to the internet. 5. Communication is the key to a successful educational environment. The challenge is incorporating useful and user-friendly technology. Google Drive is similar in fashion to Dropbox in that it is capable of storing a large amount of data for individual users, which can be shared between multiple users (Google.com).
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Dropbox or the Cloud for Student Work and Collaboration - Weakness

1. Reasons for possible student failure is inability to adjust to the new environment of learning. We need to look back on Vygotskys theory of learning. Vygotsky states students must be instructed within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). ZPD is the optimal learning window of opportunity and students working within their optimal ZDP have a greater excitement and desire for new knowledge.
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2. It

Dropbox /Cloud Future Issues

1. Teachers need to be proficient in technology for teaching to be practical, interesting, engaging and definitely fun.
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2. It is increasingly important for teachers to design and implement lessons requiring students to engage in the mindful use of technology to find useful information, to learn new skills, and to create documents, designs, and other products. Mindful use of technology implies using critical reading skills to decide what is likely to be true. (Slavin, pg. 277).

Example of an assignment placed on Dropbox

Dropbox or the Cloud for Student Work and Collaboration - Trends