Research databases

Posted on April 7, 2009 by matthewbower

Today the presenter at a research seminar  explained the difference between research databases offered by the  Macquarie University library. Publisher databases like Informaworld, Science Direct, Sage and Informit were preferred over secondary databases due to their speed and reliability. As well, viewing results of searches in HTML rather than PDF format had the advantage of often being able to link directly to related articles in the library database.

Consider searching A+ Education for Australian resources – this is somewhat analogous to ERIC but for Australia. The CSA Illumina database is preferred for ERIC over the direct ERIC database because it has more full-text linking options that Macquarie has integrated.

Setting up alerts on CSA Illumina allowed subscription to alerts for new issues of journals such as Computer Science Education and Educational Technology Research and Development. Setting up alerts on Science Directallowed subscription to Computers + Education. Note that you had to set up an account in order to be able to receive such subscriptions.

mattbower

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ICT Lecture by Dean Groom yesterday

Posted on March 26, 2009 by matthewbower

Yesterday Dean Groom gave an interesting lecture to Macquarie University’s EDUC261 – ICT and Education students. Apparently there are over 200 3D immersive virtual worlds with over 2 million people in each. This includes RPGs (Role Play Games) and MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online). He presented an update of Bloom’s technology with the sorts of Web2.0 technologies that may be used at each level (page 62 of his presentation available at http://www.slideshare.net/pmhs/virtual-words-in-education ).

He provoked a great deal of thought on the use of technology in education, like what would be possible if every student had a Twitter account, ways in which cross-cultural or cross-gender empathy may be developed through the use of avatars in virtual worlds, and conducting webquests in 3D virtual environments. Most interesting!

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Changes to the 2010 HSC Examinations and Assessments

Posted on March 16, 2009 by matthewbower

A release from the Board of Studies:

http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/index.cfm/2009/2/16/Changes-to-the-2010-HSC-Examinations-and-Assessments

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Professor Piet Kommers – a great deal of valuable work

Posted on March 9, 2009 by matthewbower

Professor Piet Kommers has done a great deal of work in the area of technology based learning. His wesite can be found at

http://users.edte.utwente.nl/kommers/

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ARROW Discovery Service

Posted on February 19, 2009 by matthewbower

An important resource for any researcher is the ARROW Discovery Service has hundreds of thousands of Australian research outputs, including theses; preprints; postprints; journal articles; book chapters; music recordings and pictures. The ARROW Discovery Service searches simultaneously across the contents of Australian university research repositories. See http://search.arrow.edu.au/

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First Post – Link to my thesis

Posted on February 10, 2009 by matthewbower

This is my first post! I just received news that a permanent link to my thesis “Designing for Interactive and Collaborative Learning in a Web-conferencing Environment” has just become available at:

http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/26888

It is nice to be out there. If you would like to comment on this thesis I’d value your feedback.

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EDUC261 and Blogs

Posted on October 15, 2008 by matthewbower

Weblogs are particularly useful because they allow a person or group to keep an online record of their learning, which can be shared with others anywhere anytime.

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