Mimi McClure
Assistant Program Officer
Education
Graduate Education
National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, FL 22203
Arlington, FL 22203
Phone:
703.292.5197
FAX:
703.292.9048
What are, to you, the key issues in creating learning resources that support your teaching style and your student's learning styles?
It is critical that information resources become responsive to new innovations, are of interest and meaning to learners, and accurate in content.
What is your vision for the "textbook" of the future and what impediments do you see to realizing that vision? I see the future learning media as being multimodal in delivery of content. Different learners have varying needs for information gathering. Current textbooks are designed for visual learners, period. Providing multimodal learning media for all learning styles would be ideal. Interactive learning is also important. "Virtual texts" could have the means to be quite diverse in delivery of information as well as interactive. With our current abilities to store vast amounts of information on very small devices certainly opens the door for imagination of curriculum on a Palm-Pilot. I see alge-palm, and physi-palm or perhaps calc-i-pod, and chem-i-pod visual, auditory, interactive, small, and nimble.
The impediments then become our dependence on technology, a lack of access to technology by certain individuals/groups, teachers roles as learning facilitators and classroom management, expense, intellectual property, ease of plagiarism, the problems common today will not be vastly different in nature but as different in delivery as the delivery of the information. Kids will figure out how to test the boundaries to be sure.
Describe briefly any research you have undertaken on teaching or learning. The impediments then become our dependence on technology, a lack of access to technology by certain individuals/groups, teachers roles as learning facilitators and classroom management, expense, intellectual property, ease of plagiarism, the problems common today will not be vastly different in nature but as different in delivery as the delivery of the information. Kids will figure out how to test the boundaries to be sure.
Research in understanding the impact and interest of technology for critically at-risk students.
Have you created publicly accessible learning resources? I would certainly like to contribute to the discussion.
What would you like to take away from the workshop? A greater understanding of the issues, problems, and arguments both for and against.
