Author Archive for beth

From Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, in Ubiquitous Learning

Exploring the anywhere/anytime possibilities for learning in the age of digital media

This collection seeks to define the emerging field of “ubiquitous learning,” an educational paradigm made possible in part by the omnipresence of digital media, supporting new modes of knowledge creation, communication, and access. As new media empower practically anyone to produce and disseminate knowledge, learning can now occur at any time and any place. The essays in this volume present key concepts, contextual factors, and current practices in this new field.

Contributors are Simon J. Appleford, Patrick Berry, Jack Brighton, Bertram C. Bruce, Amber Buck, Nicholas C. Burbules, Orville Vernon Burton, Timothy Cash, Bill Cope, Alan Craig, Elizabeth M. Delacruz, Lisa Bouillion Diaz, Steve Downey, Guy Garnett, Steven E. Gump, Gail E. Hawisher, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Cory Holding, Wenhao David Huang, Eric Jakobsson, Tristan E. Johnson, Mary Kalantzis, Samuel Kamin, Karrie G. Karahalios, Joycelyn Landrum-Brown, Hannah Lee, Faye L. Lesht, Maria Lovett, Cheryl McFadden, Robert E. McGrath, James D. Myers, Christa Olson, James Onderdonk, Michael A. Peters, Evangeline S. Pianfetti, Paul Prior, Fazal Rizvi, Mei-Li Shih, Janine Solberg, Joseph Squier, Kona Taylor, Sharon Tettegah, Michael Twidale, Edee Norman Wiziecki, and Hanna Zhong.

Bill Cope is a research professor in educational policy studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is coeditor of The Future of the Book in the Digital Age. Mary Kalantzis is the dean of the College of Education and professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is coauthor of Cultures of Schooling: Pedagogies for Cultural Difference and Social Access.

“This book taps directly into seismic shifts occurring in what it means to go about one’s everyday life when access to information and ideas are so readily at hand. The contributors move well beyond the speculative to afford readers a rich range of substantive definitions and concrete examples of ubiquitous learning.”–Michele Knobel, coauthor of New Literacies: Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning

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From Josh Karp, in “Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning.”

When University of California-Irvine associate project scientist Heather Horst and her colleagues at the Digital Youth Project set out to study how children, their parents and families interact with digital media, others thought they would probably come away with a set of “do’s and don’ts” for parents.

That, it turned out, was not the case. There was a lot of variety in how parents were dealing with the situation. Parents’ comfort or confusion depended on their own sense of expertise with new media.

Parents’ Involvement Depends on Their Digital Know-How

Parents with greater technological sophistication (a significant number of Silicon Valley families were interviewed for the study) didn’t view their children as digital natives, nor did they necessarily see themselves as outsiders.

“They knew their kids interests were different [from their own],” Horst says. “But, they weren’t afraid of the technology.”

For these families, the battles were the familiar battles. “[The arguments] weren’t about the media itself,” Horst says. “But, the kind of control debates that go on with adolescents in the U.S.”

But, in other less privileged families, and particularly those where English was not the primary language, the comfort with new media was markedly less, and the fear of online dangers much greater.

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