Chen, Wenli

Personal , Internet-connected technologies are becoming ubiquitous in the lives of students, and ubiquitous computing initiatives are already expanding in educational contexts. Historically in the field of education, the terms one-to-one (1 :1) computing and ubiquitous computing have been interpreted in a number of ways and have at times been used interchangeably. This article examines the development of these computing initiatives in education, discusses the implications of ubiquitous computing for today's teach ing and learning, and suggests future directions for ubiquitous computing.

Learning is interweaved into and across students’ everyday life activities. Technology that is used to support learning should be integrated with everyday life in the same way that learning occurs in everyday life: seamlessly. Mobile technologies, with their reduced size and ease of use, provide the potential to extend students’ learning spaces and enrich the learning experiences in their daily lives where they move between locations, switch from one topic or context to another, and interact with different social groups. This paper proposes mobile technology-supported seamless learning and presents learning scenarios from our research to illustrate how learning occurs seamlessly across time and places mediated by mobile devices.

Little research has examined second language (L2) learning from a Knowledge Building (KB) perspective. Most KB research is conducted in the context of science or mathematics learning which focuses on idea development and refinement. This paper proposes to investigate students' L2 learning using a KB approach, drawing upon our school-based research work which examines how L2 students learn and practice language skills through a Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) tool called GroupScribbles. We hope to develop a theoretical framework with empirical evidence from a real classroom context to explore how KB unfolds in L2 learning.

This study examined the information and communications technology (ICT) ownership, usage and competencies of the new generation of Singapore preservice teachers who were born and had grown up in the Digital Age, roughly after 1980. This project surveyed preservice teachers at the National Institute of Education and interviewed volunteers who were also asked to keep a journal reflecting their ICT-related activities and thinking to provide further insight. Data analysis shows that they had good access to mainstream ICT devices such as computers and mobile phones. The lack of homogeneity with regard to ICT experiences, competencies and improvement was identified. The majority of pre-service teachers were found competent in using the core applications, including email, chatting, searching for information online and frequently for entertainment, using productivity tools, communication and socialization rather than for study and work. And they remained passive consumers instead of active creators of digital content.

This paper presents how a collaboration script informed by the Funnel Model was appropriated by a class of students in a secondary science class lesson. Based on the script, a class of 33 tenth grade students enacted four stages of a technology-supported collaborative learning activity: individual construction, intra-group construction, inter-group rating, and intra-group refining. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of students' behaviors and perceptions were conducted to identify and explain how students appropriated the collaboration script.

This paper outlines an eclectic approach to assist juvenile Chinese as second language (L2) pupils in Singapore in developing linguistic-related micro-skills for writing. The recursive, bottom-up writing process requires the pupils to collaboratively carry out “word/phrase pooling”, “sentence making”, “paragraph writing” and “outlining” on wiki, and eventually composing their essays individually. The intention is to fill up the gap between the current-traditional product-oriented approach and the more cognitively demanding process oriented approach, that is, juvenile L2 learners' limited linguistic and cognitive skills that would hinder them from writing proper essays, not to mention carrying out process writing. The results of our pilot study show that the target pupils' micro-skills for writing were improved significantly due to emergent peer coaching. There is also an implication that through such peer coaching activities, the perceived challenge of pupils' individual differences in linguistic proficiency could be turned into an advantage for motivating pupils' collaboration in learning.

The purpose of this study is to explore the complex nature of Singapore teachers’ beliefs about knowledge and learning and how these beliefs influence pedagogical practices in their classes. This paper presents findings from a large-scale survey study with 1806 teachers in Singapore. Data revealed that while teachers’ beliefs about pedagogies, knowledge and learning were largely consistent, they also believed and practiced both teacher-centered and learner-centered pedagogies and assessment methods.

Effectively integrating and sustaining the use of technology in classroom practices is always a challenge. Our intervention project helps schools adopt a light-weight technology called GroupScribbles (GS) by collaborating with a primary school from 2007-2009 and scaling up to two secondary schools in 2009. In these collaborations, we have worked with nine teachers, three heads of IT departments and three technical assistants in integrating GS technology lessons into the school curriculum. GS lessons have been implemented in Secondary School subjects i.e. Mathematics, Chinese, Higher Chinese, Physics and in Primary School subjects i.e. Science, Mathematics, Chinese and Higher Chinese. We will report the opportunities and challenges that we as researchers faced as we tried to implement technology in the classroom. Some of the wide-ranging challenges include technical problem, attitudes of teachers and school leaders, teachers’ pedagogy and students’ learning (TAPS). More importantly, we will give accounts of how researchers and schools have established mutually beneficial collaborative relationships during the various stages of the research encompassed within the School-based Research Framework (SRF). These stages include the introduction stage, setup stage, enculturation stage, lesson implementation and professional sharing stage and the eventual independence stage. For sustained innovation in schools, teachers and school leaders play a pivotal role.

The concept of Rapid Collaborative Knowledge Improvement (RCKI) refers to quick cycles of knowledge improvement in the short duration of a classroom lesson. We explore the role of RCKI in language learning in our school-based design research by working with teachers to co-design and enact lessons in classrooms. We design a model, called the Funnel Model, to provide a scaffolding structure to enable RCKI practices in the context of reading comprehension. Starting with a stage of individual brainstorming, the model leads to stages of intra-group and inter-group knowledge improvement. The design and implementation of three cycles of RCKI activities in GroupScribbles (GS) supported classroom environment are provided to illuminate the flexibility and diverse uses of the model.

In this paper, we articulate a framework (called AppleTree) for assessing collaborative argumentation with the purpose of evaluating and empowering the development of argumentation skills, collaboration skills and content knowledge in school learning. The framework is motivated by the need to achieve “learning to argue” and “arguing to learn” and the necessity to embed on-going and automated formative assessments for collaborative learning as reflected in existing literature. It builds on existing systems for collaborative argumentation and automated assessment of collaborative learning to achieve assessment for learning and to realize it in authentic classroom environments. We illustrate the framework by instantiating it in the conceptual design of one such system for use in schools.