James G. R. Cronin

Critical survey of information technology use in higher education: Blended classrooms

Reception and use of information technology by lifelong learners within a blended learning environment needs to be articulated within a constructivist paradigm. Increasingly, the term reflective practice is appearing in the vocabulary of adult education discourse. Educators have become familiar with the concept of reflective practice through Donald Schons writings. Schons work is founded on a tradition of learning supported by Dewey, Lewin, and Piaget. As a learning group, lifelong learners are receptive to constructivist learning interventions where facilitated activities provide learners with opportunities to enact and collaboratively construct meaning as interventions unfold. This case study reviews learning enactments through an online discussion forum in an evening diploma in European Art History, University College Cork, Ireland.

Review of 'Subversive Peacemakers, War Resistance 1914–1918: An Anglican Perspective'

A dimension that has been either obscured or silenced in discussions of the First World War is that of the networks of intellectuals and activists who protested against this global conflagration. Attitudes towards these war resisters in the popular consciousness remain obscured by ambiguities such as those visualised in Arthur Wilson Gay’s painting The Conchie from 1931, currently exhibited at the Peace Museum in Bradford, chosen to illustrate Clive Barrett’s Subversive Peacemakers: War Resistance 1914-1918, An Anglican Perspective. Gay’s war resister is bathed in a golden light in contrast to his guards who are shrouded in the dusky gloom of the claustrophobic carriage containing all three young men. The juxtaposition of light against dark infuses Gay’s subject with heroic qualities, but a neat reading is complicated by the painting’s title, which became a term of insult for conscientious objectors after 1916, the year that marked the legislative passage of the military draft in Britain. For historian A. J. P. Taylor, who reassessed the legacy of the First World War through the lens of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament during the 1960s (1), the introduction of the word ‘conchie’ to the English language brought home for the first time to the British public that it was possible to object to the war on high moral grounds.(2) The legislative framing of war resistance as conscientious objection opened a debate on the reasons why the war was fought that continues to resonate during these years of the war’s centenary.

Excavating the future: taking an 'archaeological' approach to technology

Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction. By Kelly C. Pp. 392. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. 2009. ISBN: 978-0-262-01314-7The Aesthetics of Disappearance. By Virilio P., Intro. Jonathan Crary. Pp. 12...

Too much information: Why facilitate information and media literacy?

The Educause Horizon Report states that while web-based tools are rapidly becoming standard in education and in the workplace and technologically mediated communication is the norm, fluency in information, visual, and technological literacy is not formally taught to most students. In the light of this we need new and expanded definitions and paradigms of Information and Media Literacy (IML) that promote mastering critical thinking as well as technical proficiency. This study, forming part of the Irish Integrative Learning Project, attempts to test an assumption that entrants to the humanities are media literate. This assumption, often made by educators in higher education, largely goes unchallenged. This paper reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of a series of media literacy workshops when facilitated in conjunction with the undergraduate History of Art course at University College Cork, Republic of Ireland from 2007–2009. It concludes with an example of how these media literacy workshops, indirectly...