Will instructional technology (IT) ever be integrated into public schools? An interesting question—or rather a series of related questions of interest to educators and parents: What do we mean by “instructional technology”? What is

Music today is more ubiquitous, accessible, and democratized than ever. Thanks to technologies such as high-end home studios, audio compression, and digital distribution, music now surrounds us in everyday life, almost every piece of music is a few minutes of download away, and almost any western musician, novice or expert, can compose, perform and distribute their music directly to their listeners from their home studios. But at the same time these technologies lead to some concerning social effects on the culture of consuming and creating music. Although music is available for more people, in more locations, and for longer periods of time, most listeners experience it in an incidental, unengaged, or utilitarian manner. On the creation side, home studios promote private and isolated practice of music making where hardly any musical instruments or even musicians are needed, and where the value of live

In providing learning materials for the digital era, a thorough knowledge of the context and the conditions under which the learning process takes place is essential. This is especially true for museums, informal learning environments open to a public of all backgrounds and ages, where one of the latest trends observed is the use of mobile multimedia guides as communication and interpretation means. The body of literature is steadily growing; however, most studies focus either on purely technical or human computer interaction issues while there has been little concern on museum learning theories and visitor studies, as to which lessons could be learned in order to inform the design of a mobile museum guide. This reflection paper aims to provide a first approach on this topic and serve first as a stimulus and then as a discussion basis both for museum specialists as well as IT professionals implicated in the design of mobile museum guides.

In this invited talk, I examine how the technologies of networking and desktop virtual reality can be used to enhance the quality of student learning. I use the C---VISions (Collaborative Virtual Interactive Simulations) system, developed at the National University of Singapore, as an exemplar system to help the audience appreciate the unique advantages that the technology affords for student learning as well as to highlight issues related to the design of networked virtual environments for collaborative learning. I begin by tracing the evolution of networked virtual environments and related work oriented toward supporting learning. I examine the promise of virtual networked environments for learning. I then outline the pedagogical basis of our work on the C---VISions collaborative virtual environment and briefly describe the C---VISions system. Next, I attempt to critically evaluate the C---VISions learning environment with respect to Brnas hypercube (Brna, 1998). Finally, I share some initial findings drawn from our first pilot study using C---VISions, and I conclude by pointing to future work. Keywords: networked virtual environments, virtual worlds, collaborative learning, experiential learning 1

Abstract. More than a century of research shows that increasing the gap between study episodes using the same material can enhance retention, yet little is known about how this so-called distributed practice effect unfolds over nontrivial periods. In two three-session laboratory studies, we examined the effects of gap on retention of foreign vocabulary, facts, and names of visual objects, with test delays up to 6 months. An optimal gap improved final recall by up to 150%. Both studies demonstrated nonmonotonic gap effects: Increases in gap caused test accuracy to initially sharply increase and then gradually decline. These results provide new constraints on theories of spacing and confirm the importance of cumulative reviews to promote retention over meaningful time periods.

It is odd, very odd, to be writing about "transfer, " given that my imagination has been preoccupied of late by young schoolchildren like 6-year-old Denise, the author of the preceding text. Denise liked to play KMEL (the local hip hop radio station) and, along with her friend Vanessa, often displayed her sense of the rhythmic rhyming style of the current youth scene. She sometimes transferred this material from her unofficial school activities to her official ones, including her daily writing workshop entries. The text shown is an entry about an upcoming family move, and those familiar lines about family and sisters were quite deliber-ately taken from Whoopi Goldberg in the film Sister Act II (Steel, Rudin, & Duke, 1994). Although Denise and Vanessa were unique personalities, not so unique was the ease with which they transferred unofficial cultural materials to official school contexts (i.e., applied them in new ways). Cartoons, video games, recent films, and radio songs--as well as school reading materials--all were potential sources of genres, textual elements, and appealing utterances ("We are family") for child writing. In an ongoing project, I am focusing on what schoolchildren appropriate from textual practices located outside the official school world and, thus, the cultural, social, and semiotic negotiations that ensue inside the official world between and among children, teachers, and texts. In the midst of this work, then, comes an invitation to write about "transfer, " and I, of course, am at least partially oriented the wrong way around. In educational psychology circles, transfer has been set firmly within an official school frame: It involves learners ' possession of the necessary intellectual The research reported herein was supported in part by the Spencer Foundation. I would likc to thank my project research assistant, Soyoung Lee, and my consulting editors, Celia Genishi and Sonia Nieto. Although I have benefitted enormously from the thoughtful support of all named, the responsibility for the findings and opinions expresmd here rcsts solely with me. 141

Abstract: Most research on electronic play has focused on its possible negative effects for children and adolescents, and contextual factors such as socioeconomic status (SES) and culture are rarely considered. This article considers the potential benefits of electronic play from a psychological perspective, as well as individual and contextual factors that may shape the influence of electronic play for children and adolescents. Demographics of players and the games themselves are presented, and recommendations for research and policy are discussed.

This article provides a review and analysis of research targeting the rift separating history written for adults and the historical texts aimed at K-12 audiences--specifically history textbooks. The role of per-sonal agency in historical writing, both for those who write and those who read, is emphasized as an important element separating the two rhetorical genres. A body of research exploring what students learn from reading and the complex process of reasoning that goes along with interpreting their history textbooks is reviewed. In particular, it focuses on how students learn from texts and on recent trends in the study of teaching and learning history that underscore the role of authorship in historical texts. The author discusses the relative silence of authorial voices within the discourse of history textbooks, arguing that this anonymous, authoritative style of writing may be an impor-tant contributing factor to the impoverished conception of history noted in the literature of school history reform. The first law for the historian is that he shall never dare to utter an un-truth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice. (Cicero,

At the time the International Reading Association was created in 1956, the reading research community was poised at a new juncture in its history (Monaghan & Saul, 1987). The efforts of researchers during this period gave rise to extensive literature on learners and the learning process that remains an enduring legacy for the domain of reading. Yet, this was not the only period of significant change the reading community has experienced in the past 50 years. In fact, reading has periodically responded to internal and external forces resulting in both gradual and dramatic transformations to the domain— transformations that have altered reading study and practice. Our purpose here is to position those transformations within a historical framework. As with others (e.g., VanSledright, 2002), we hold that such a historical perspective allows for reasoned reflection and a certain wisdom that can be easily lost when one is immersed in ongoing study and practice. That is because a historical perspective broadens the vista on reading and adds a critical dimension to the analysis of present-day events and issues. To capture

International trends in post-primary mathematics education