Rick Voithofer

Designing New Media Education Research: The Materiality of Data, Representation, and Dissemination

The current historical moment is marked by the gradual transition from a print culture to a digital new media culture, and this shift carries material effects for how education research contexts are perceived and represented. This discussion uses the concept of materiality to demonstrate how the conceptualization of inquiry through digital representations can be theorized through the histories and discourses of multiple media, computer technologies, research methodologies, epistemological positions, new literacies, and current social and cultural contexts to highlight emerging concerns in education research. Paying attention to the design of materiality encourages scholars to reflect on how inscription technologies influence the ways in which research is conducted and communicated.

Post-IT: Putting postmodern perspectives to use in instructional technology—A response to Solomon's “Toward a Post-Modern Agenda in Instructional Technology”

Following the publication of David Solomon’swinning Young Scholar paper, “Toward aPost-modern Agenda in InstructionalTechnology,” in issue 48(4) of ETR&D,several readers inquired asking for moreconcrete information on the meaning ofpostmodernism and its implications forpractice and research in instructionaltechnology. One reader in particular, RickVoithofer from Ohio State University, asked ifhe could submit a reaction to Solomon’s paper.I agreed to examine a draft, on which Iprovided feedback and encouragement tocontinue. I then invited David Solomon toprovide a brief rejoinder. The products of theseefforts follow.Steven RossResearch Editor

Studying intertextuality, discourse and narratives to conceptualize and contextualize online learning environments

To demonstrate how qualitative methods can be used to guide the planning of online learning within the cultural and intertextual milieu of the Internet, this project gives the data, methods and the results of the contextualization and conceptualization of an online learning environment. The learning environment addressed and invited people with cancer and their supporters to question circulating social and cultural discourses that shape and limit the experiences of and responses to cancer. Cancer‐related websites were analyzed in order to form understandings of how the learning environment would be situated amid similar websites. Four cancer support electronic mailing lists were studied for the types of narratives and discourses engaged with by people living with cancer and their supporters. The results of these two stages provided a basis with which to begin producing a website to support people living with cancer and their supporters in creating non‐linear, flexible, discursive spaces for rewriting social and cultural discourses that shape and inform experiences of cancer. Using this project as a point of reference, suggestions are offered for how to utilize these methodologies to plan other online learning experiences.

Digital Dissonances: Structuring Absences in National Discourses on Equity and Educational Technologies.

This study traces discursive formations surrounding educational technology, equity, and inclusion that have emerged or have been amplified through national policies and initiatives in the U.S., including the Preparing Tomorrows Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) research grant program, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the Ed Tech state funding program, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the 2005 National Educational Technology Plan. Using critical discourse analysis and symptomatic readings, we examine language embedded in national initiatives in relation to educational technology to explore how these policies and initiatives address technology equity. Our analysis underscores the ongoing tendency of national discourses about educational technology to support universal and undifferentiated approaches to educational technology integration. In contrast to these national perspectives we advocate for sustaining interventions that promote contextual definitions of success and achievement rooted in the values, discourses, and resources of community and consider the redistribution of resources in ways that accommodate the complex historical and cultural factors that come into play when defining and addressing equity.

Articulating and Contextualizing Multiple Literacies in an Urban Setting.

This study uses articulation theory to frame how social actors and institutions in an urban community in Columbus, Ohio, form linkages and understandings about computer and information literacies. Using interviews with 33 key educators (e.g., principals, computer literacy teachers, library media specialists, district integration specialists), public librarians, and directors from local recreation and community centers, the results show not only how members of this community construct computer and information literacies but also how the participants support these literacies with available resources. Different structural and cultural barriers and opportunities are identified that impact how computer and information literacies are articulated within this community.

Integrating Service-Learning into Technology Training in Teacher Preparation: A Study of an Educational Technology Course for Preservice Teachers

Abstract Based on a partnership between a teacher preparation program and an urban school district, this study evaluates a project that used a service-learning model to connect preservice teachers to working teachers to help the working teachers integrate technology into their teaching while giving the preservice teachers an authentic context for their assignments. Using multiple data sources including questionnaires, class projects, interviews, and field notes, this study looked at the success of service-learning in technology instruction in terms of student satisfaction and student learning related to technology skills, technology integration strategies, and issues that teachers confront teaching diverse populations. The results of the study provide suggestions for the successful integration of service-learning for technology training in teacher education.

Promiscuous feminisms for troubling times

Looking across the six articles in this issue, this paper argues that promiscuous uses of feminist methodologies offer a unique constellation of conceptual, pragmatic, material, and ethical strategies with which to understand and engage some of the social and cultural tensions that are occurring within and outside schools. It presents a promiscuous etymology of the word “promiscuous” in which a varied set of definitions provide a backdrop against which to study the project of these six scholars. Seven areas are developed with which to cluster the main themes of the articles including: (1) post-critical, (2) feminisms becoming, (3) productive unease, (4) not bound by gender, but always grounded in gender, (5) always already historical, (6) bodies that still matter, and (7) post-representational. These clusters illustrate how the authors are always becoming, sometimes intentionally and sometimes serendipitously, scholars and women who are willing to reconsider, reposition, reclaim, and rewrite a past, present, and future method, angle perspective, or identity.

Genetic Literacy and Problem-Based Learning

The decoding and mass storage of the genetic codes of plants, humans, and animals along with the capacity to manipulate and track those codes has brought about a number of social and cultural shifts, the implications of which are just beginning to be understood. The application of this growing ability to decode, manipulate, and store genetic information has increased the need for all individuals to have some degree of genetic literacy to understand the implications of genetics in their lives. This chapter describes a project to create a cross-curricular computer simulation for middle school students in science, math, and social studies. The design team, including individuals from the College of Education and Human Ecology (http://ehe.osu.edu/) and the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD—http://accad.osu.edu/) at Ohio State University are collaborating with middle school teachers at a large urban school district and a small urban school district in Ohio to create a learning tool that has cultural relevance in traditionally underserved communities.