Editorials

English/Language Arts Education

Video-Based Response & Revision: Dialogic Instruction Using Video and Web 2.0 Technologies

by Anne Heintz, Carlin Borsheim, Samantha Caughlan, Mary M. Juzwik & Michael B. Sherry
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This article documents the curricular decisions made by a teacher educator research team whose guiding theoretical focus for intern practice is dialogic instruction. Over a 2-year sequence, teaching interns used video and Web 2.0 technologies to respond critically to and revise their teaching practices in collaboration with peers and instructors. This article describes how a focus on dialogic instruction and an adoption of a multiliteracies pedagogy guided the implementation and use of technologies within the project. Through multiple examples of curriculum, including excerpts from course materials, screencasts of the adopted networking platform, Voicethread, and video of class sessions, the authors describe how a focus on the dialogic creates spaces for interactions that allow responsive and revisionary attitudes toward not only teaching practices, but the potential and place of technologies in teacher education.

Reframing Multimodal Composing for Student Learning: Lessons on Purpose From the Buffalo DV Project

by Suzanne M. Miller
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In a study of urban secondary teachers moving out of professional development and into their classrooms, the research team documented the learning processes of teachers and student groups during their digital video composing to make sense of the curriculum. Taken together, these ethnographic case studies provide evidence that digital video composing can be a potent literacy tool that leads to increased student engagement and learning. Important to English educators is this finding: Learning to use and to teach digital composing can induce changes in teachers’ epistemology and social practices that promote changes in their teaching and student learning. In this article, a framework for a multimodal literacy pedagogy is elaborated, generated from these analyses of teachers changing over time. Teachers who have transformed themselves and their classrooms to enact student multimodal composing on curricular concepts have these transacting principles in common:  They (a) design social spaces for mediating students’ multimodal composing activities; (b) co-construct with students authentic purposes for these composing activities about curricular concepts; (c) focus explicit attention to multimodal design and critique of multimodal texts; and (d) persistently open opportunities for students to draw on their identities and “lifeworlds” (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 2001).

Social Studies Education

Images Over Time: The Intersection of Social Studies Through  Technology, Content, and Pedagogy

by Elizabeth Wilson & Vivian Wright
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In this study, the authors examined the intersections between technology, pedagogy, and content through two social studies teachers’ development from preservice to in-service teaching. Qualitative data were collected during their teacher education programs, student teaching experiences, and 5 years into their in-service teaching.  Teacher narratives illustrate the connections between technology, pedagogy, and content in these teachers’ social studies classrooms. The researchers note the complexity of technology integration and recommend that teacher educators support and promote opportunities for continuing education and professional development in teachers’ growth of technological pedagogical content knowledge.

General

Web 2.0 in the Classroom? Dilemmas and Opportunities Inherent in Adolescent Web 2.0 Engagement

by Sandy Schuck, Peter Aubusson & Matthew Kearney
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The paper discusses the implications of the current phenomenon of adolescent engagement in digital spaces. Young people are increasingly active Web 2.0 users, and their interactions through these technologies are altering their social identities, styles of learning, and exchanges with others around the world. The paper argues for more research to investigate this phenomenon through the use of virtual ethnography and identifies the ethical challenges that lie therein. It raises questions for school education and presents an argument for studying the area in culturally sensitive ways that privilege adolescents’ voices. 

Current Practice

Best Practices for Producing Video Content for Teacher Education

by Stein Brunvand
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Through the use of Web 2.0 technologies the production and distribution of professional digital video content for use in teacher education has become more prevalent.  As teachers look to learn from and interact with this video content, they need explicit support to help draw their attention to specific pedagogical strategies and reduce cognitive load.  This support can be provided through the use of different design strategies that include providing access to prompts, teacher commentary, reflective tools, and multiple representations of a particular observation.  This article provides a review of these design strategies and discusses the ways in which they can be used to produce effective video for teacher education.