This study examines middle school students' learning and motivation as they engaged in a new media enriched problem-based learning (PBL) environment for middle school science. Using a mixed-method design with both quantitative and qualitative data, we investigated the effect of a new media environment on sixth graders' science learning, their motivation, and the relationship between students' motivation and their science learning. The analysis of the results showed that: Students significantly increased their science knowledge from pretest to posttest after using the PBL program, they were motivated and enjoyed the experience, and a significant positive relationship was found between students' motivation scores and their science knowledge posttest scores. Findings were discussed within the research framework.Keywords Motivation Á Engagement Á New media technology Á Problem-based learning Á Middle school science Research shows that motivation plays an important role in influencing learning and achievement (Ames 1990). When sufficiently motivated, students tend to approach challenging tasks more eagerly, persist in difficult situations, and take pleasure in their achievement (Stipek 1993). Strong correlations have been found between intrinsic motivation and academic achievement (Cordova and Lepper 1996;Lepper et al. 2005). Research has also shown that instructional context strongly affects students' motivation. Instructional materials that are challenging, give students choices, and promote perceived autonomy and self-determination can positively effect motivation (Hidi and Harackiewicz 2000).Second through fourth authors are listed in an alphabetical order.
Once writers complete a first draft, they are often encouraged to evaluate their writing and prioritize what to revise. Yet, this process can be both daunting and difficult. This study looks at how students used a semantic concept mapping tool to re-present the content and organization of their initial draft of an informational text. We examine the processes of students at two different schools as they remediated their own texts and how those processes impacted the development of their rhetorical, conceptual, and communicative capacities. Our analysis suggests that students creating visualizations of their completed first drafts scaffolded self-evaluation. The mapping tool aided visualization by converting compositions into discrete persistent visual data elements that represented concepts and connections. This often led to students' meta-awareness of what was missing or misaligned in their draft. Our findings have implications for how students approach, educators perceive, and designers support the drafting and revision process.
In this article, the authors trace teachers' experiences while participating in an educational technology development and research project focused on the creation and use of an online writing and peer review environment. They follow teachers from their initial expectations of the program, to their response to professional development training sessions, planning sessions, student account setup, and to their initial attempts at utilizing the digital learning environment in the classroom. In so doing, the authors suggest that the path toward and away from successful classroom implementation of emerging learning technologies is a multiple, shifting, and interrelational one, influenced by constellations of factors including affect, administrator support, student buy-in, research and development team knowledge and availability, district priorities, and the amount of upheaval in the personal lives of teachers.
In this article the authors examine motivational constructs through the lens of new mediasupported educational efforts. By examining a range of online, new-media-based learning communities and instructional technologies, they analyze the ways in which motivation is positioned within the field of education, how ecologies of motivation embedded within new media might be understood, how motivation might be organized and represented, and how constructions of motivational elements in designed learning technologies might help us better understand their fit in different educational contexts and with different students.
A Web mashup is an application that combines data and functionality from more than one source. By bringing disparate data together in ways that enable users to do new things or accomplish common tasks with newfound efficiency, mashups are rapidly increasing in number and may offer exciting new possibilities for classroom instruction. However, in comparison to more established Web 2.0 applications such as wikis, blogs, and podcasts, which already enjoy a place in the educational conversation, mashups are less well-known and their educational uses are less explored. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to provide an introduction to mashups as part of Web 2.0 technology, describe several mashup examples, and explore their potential use in educational contexts.
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