In research about the Internet, too much attention is paid to its ability to provide access to information. This thesis argues that the Internet can be used not just as a conduit for information, but as a context for learning through community-supported collaborative construction. A "constructionist" approach to use of the Internet makes particularly good use of its educational potential. The Internet provides opportunities to move beyond the creation of constructionist tools and activities to the creation of "constructionist cultures." These issues are explored through a specific example: MOOSE Crossing, a text-based virtual world (or "MUD") designed to be a constructionist learning environment for children ages 8 to 13. On MOOSE Crossing, children have constructed a virtual world together, making new places, objects, and creatures. Kids have made baby penguins that respond differently to five kinds of food, fortune tellers who predict the future, and the place at the end of the rainbow--- answer a riddle, and you get the pot of gold. This thesis discusses the design principles underlying a new programming language (MOOSE) and client interface (MacMOOSE) designed to make it easier for children to learn to program on MOOSE Crossing. It presents a detailed analysis, using an ethnographic methodology, of children's activities and learning experiences on MOOSE Crossing, with special focus on seven children who participated in a weekly after-school program from October 1995 through February 1997. In its analysis of children's activities, this thesis explores the relationship between construction and community. It describes how the MOOSE Crossing children motivated and supported one another's learning experiences: community provided support for learning through design and...

This paper details an empirical pilot study that explores the development of several conceptual measures and models regarding intellectual capital and its impact on business performance. The objective of this pilot study is to explore the development of items and constructs through principal components analysis and partial least squares (PLS). The final retained, subjective measures and optimal structural specification show a valid, reliable, significant and substantive causal link between dimensions of intellectual capital and business performance. These results should help both academics and practitioners more readily understand the components of intellectual capital and provide insight into developing and increasing it within an organization. Suggestions are then made to advance and improve this research programme

Many people are exposed to more information than they can process eectively. We describe an approach to building an information immune system that eliminates undesirable information before it reaches the user. This approach

1 Situated Support for Learning: Storm’s Weekend with Rachael While much attention has been paid to the content of support for learning, less attention has been given to its context. This paper introduces the notion of “situated support, ” and argues that the identity of the source of support and the connectedness of that support to other elements of the learning environment are of primary importance. MOOSE Crossing is a text-based virtual reality environment (or “MUD”) designed to be a constructionist learning environment for children eight to thirteen years of age. A microanalysis is presented of the situated nature of support for learning on MOOSE Crossing over the course of one weekend where a twelve-year-old girl learned to write simple computer programs.

The dramatic multiplication of computer, information, communication, and multimedia technologies has been changing everything from the ways people work, to the ways they communicate with each other and spend their leisure time. This technological revolution is often interpreted as the beginnings of a knowledge or information society, and therefore ascribes education a central role in every aspect of life. It poses tremendous challenges to educators to rethink their basic tenets, to deploy the new technologies in creative and productive ways, and to restructure schooling to respond constructively and progressively to the technological and social changes currently underway. At the same time, important demographic and socio-political changes are taking place throughout the world. Emigration patterns have created the challenge of providing people from diverse races, classes, and backgrounds with the tools and competencies to enable them to succeed and participate in an ever more complex and changing world. In this chapter, I argue that educators need to cultivate multiple literacies for contemporary technological and multicultural societies, that teachers need to develop new literacies of diverse sorts, including a more fundamental importance for print literacy, to meet the challenge of restructuring education for a hi-tech, multicultural society, and global culture. In a period of

A healthy civil society is essential in order to deal with "wicked " societal problems. Merely involving institutional actors and mass media is not sufficient. Intermedia can play a crucial complementary role in strengthening civil society. However, the potential of these technologies needs to be carefully tailored to the requirements and constraints of the communities grown around them. The GRASS system for group report authoring is one carefully tailored sociotechnical system aimed at unlocking this potential. Such systems may help to develop stakeholder communities that are more productive in societal conflict resolution.

The great advance of electrical science in the last generation was closely associated, as effect and as cause, with the application of electric agencies to means of communication, transportation, lighting of cities and houses, and more economical production of goods. These are social ends, moreover, and if they are too closely associated with notions of private profit, it is not because of anything in them, but because they have been deflected to private uses: a fact which puts upon the school the responsibility of restoring their connection in the mind of the coming generation, with public scientific and social interests.-- John Dewey (1916) The ongoing debate about the nature and benefits of technoliteracy is without a doubt one of the most hotly contested topics in education today. Alongside their related analyses and recommendations, the last two decades have seen a variety of state and corporate stake holders, academic disciplinary factions, cultural interests, and social organizations ranging from the local to the global weigh in with competing definitions of “technological literacy. ” Whereas utopian notions such as Marshall McLuhan’s “global

• Create a metaphor for teaching. • Create a metaphor for learning.

Background: Media can influence aspects of a child’s physical, social, and cognitive development; however, the associations between a child’s household media environment, media use, and academic achievement have yet to be determined. Objective: To examine relationships among a child’s household media environment, media use, and academic achievement. Methods: During a single academic year, data were collected through classroom surveys and telephone interviews from an ethnically diverse sample of third grade students and their parents from 6 northern California public elementary schools. The majority of our analyses derive from spring 2000 data, including academic achievement assessed through the mathematics, reading, and language arts sections of the Stanford Achievement Test. We fit linear regression models to determine the associations between variations in household media and per-Author Affiliations:

Since the dawn of civilization, few full-fledged media have emerged as vehicles for thought and interaction. The spoken word, the written word, still images, and full-motion images are the major representational methods that people have evolved to symbolize and communicate ideas. Enthusiasts for hypermedia (the associative, nonlinear interconnection of multimedia materials) are now claiming that a new medium has emerged. If this assertion is true, then a host of direct and indirect consequences for civilization will follow. Few technological innovations have greater potential to transform society than a new medium (e.g. the long-term effects of the invention of writing). CLAIMS ABOUT HYPERMEDIA AS A MEDIUM In the light of current knowledge, this article examines claims that hypermedia is a fundamentally innovative means of thinking and communicating. Alternative developmental directions for hypermedia research are depicted; also, some probable consequences for civilization of hypermedia's evolution and widespread dissemination are described. In addition, our discussion prefigures and frames the other articles in this special issue, since the specialized uses of hypermedia they discuss all illustrate different aspects of cognition