Educating Learning Technology Designers (Edited by Chris DiGiano, Shelly Goldman, and Michael Chorost), Routledge, New York, 2009

Most chapters in this book were so soft as to be incapable of manifesting any movement in practice. Chapter 11 on Creating Educational Gamelets (By Clayton Lewis and Alexander Repenning, pp. 203-229) outlined ways to support learning and encourage engagement, which would be useful to people like Cathy Howes. Chapter 13 discussed the use of a project gallery reflection system called “Gorp” (http://trails-project.org/webapps/gorp/), however the system is not open source. Chapter 8 provided an interesting commentary on the virtues of “studio” based learning. However Chapter 9 by Chris Quintana (pp. 165-181) was the most interesting chapter by far (in my opinion). Entitled “A learning technology design course, deconstructed”, it outlined the curriculum and resources used for a learning technology design course. Several relevant references included:

• Sharp, Rogers and Preece (2007), Interaction design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction
• Shneiderman and Paisant (2004), Designing the user interface
• Cennamo and Kalk (2005), Real world instructional design
• Norman (1986), Cognitive engineering
• Norman (1988), The design of everyday things
• Soloway, Guzdial, and Hay (1994), Learner-centred design
• Quintana et al (2003), Issues and approaches for developing learner-centred technologies
• Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000), How people learn
• Sawyer (2006), Cambridge handbook on the learning sciences
• Anderson (1996), ACT: A simple theory of complex cognition
• Koedinger and Corbett (2006), Cognitive tutors: Technology bringing learning sciences to the classroom
• Fosnot and Perry (2005), Constructivism: A psychological theory of learning
• Wilson (1996), Introduction: What is a constructivist learning environment?
• Honebein (1006), seven goals for the design of constructivist learning environments
• Oliver (2000), methods for developing constructivist learning on the web
• Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989), Situated cognition and the culture of learning
• Collins, Brown, and Hollum (1991), Cognitive apprenticeship: Making thinking visible
• Quintana et al (2004), A scaffolding design framework for software to support science inquiry
• Reiser (2004), Scaffolding complex learning: The mechanisms of structuring and problematizing student work
• Gruen (2003), Storyboarding for design: An overview of the process

The chapter also explains how these are integrated into the curriculum.