Spatial data infrastructures, which are Internet-based mechanisms for the coordinated production, discovery, and use of geospatial information in the digital environment, have diffused worldwide in the last two decades. Currently, there are about one hundred spatial data infrastructures at the national level and many other at supra-and sub-national levels. These contemporary spatial data infrastructures operate with two main assumptions: formal organizations are the producers and suppliers of geospatial information; users are the passive recipients of information. The recent phenomenon of volunteered geographic information departs from these assumptions. In this paper, we argue that reconceptualizing the user of a spatial data infrastructure can accommodate this new phenomenon. Such a reconceptualization creates a middle ground between spatial data infrastructure and volunteered geographic information, which has important implications for future research.
We describe a new way of classifying uses of educational technologies, based on a four-part division suggested years ago by John Dewey: inquiry, communication, construction, and expression. This taxonomy is compared to previous taxonomies of educational technologies, and is found to cover a wider range of uses, including many of the cutting-edge uses of educational technologies. We have tested the utility of this taxonomy by using it to classify a set of "advanced applications" of educational technologies supported by the National Science Foundation, and we use the taxonomy to point to new potential uses of technologies to support learning.
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