<p> Teachers face many barriers regarding technology integration and depend on the campus principal to meet their technology needs. The principalship has shifted from instructional leader to digital instructional leader. The purpose of the current qualitative research study was to investigate teachers&rsquo; perceptions of principal digital leadership behaviors that impact technology use in the classroom. In this qualitative study, 24 teachers who teach reading, English language arts, and/or math were interviewed. The data from the interviews was collected and analyzed to identify themes and patterns using NVivio 11 Pro, a software program for analyzing qualitative data. The researcher analyzed and coded the data as trends and patterns were revealed in the teachers&rsquo; perceptions of principal digital leadership behaviors that impact technology use in the classroom. The data indicated there are several principal digital leadership behaviors teachers perceive impact technology use in the classroom. However, there were three principal digital leadership behaviors teachers perceived to have the greatest impact on technology use in the classroom: principal-led hands-on technology training opportunities, principal attitude towards technology and technology integration, and principal-led technology support.</p><p>

<p> This research study focused on how technology-based tools have changed the 21^st century education arena in elementary school mathematics classes. The research highlighted the inner city schools where many students in the class are achieving below state standards set for third grade level. The research question asked to what extent do students have a higher level of engagement in math classes in which iPads and other technologies are used? Technology continued to advance in 21^st century classrooms where students are daily participants in teaching and learning with acquired experience using technology tools to accelerate their learning experience. Children are technology users with a passion for texting, web surfing, playing interactive games, social media, and more. The research methodology was data collection of achievement levels, using a quantitative method. The quantitative process for the research project supplemented the greater understanding of student achievement growth from integrated iPads in a third-grade math class in inner city schools in Chicago. The test was completed by the students, and the scores were automatically updated on the public website. The students had two hours to complete the test, and the students&rsquo; information was kept confidential. The students that were taught using technology outscored the students that were not taught using technology. The recommendation was to implement technology in all schools and create a challenging curriculum. The final recommendation for teaching with technology included the beneficial factors.</p><p>

<p> Personalized learning for students has been an emerging trend which seeks to support teaching and learning in the 21st century (Netoch, 2017). This study identified beliefs of secondary educators on the different aspects of personalized learning for students. Areas covered in this study included teacher professional development on the personalized learning process, amount or quality of teacher support for the implementation of personalized learning, the impact of technology on personalized learning with classroom instruction, and any obstacles to the personalized learning process. Findings from this study were compared to identify connections between responses as they related to the research questions. Many teachers surveyed indicated they felt instructional technology was needed but not necessary for all aspects of personalized learning. Most secondary teachers indicated some form of personalized learning was prevalent in their school. The majority of teachers indicated their students seldom or never utilized assistance on problem-solving help from automated tutoring services. In another related area, less than 50% of teachers reported students seldom or never used personalized learning systems feedback from automated systems regarding their own learning strengths and weaknesses. A majority of teacher respondents valued professional development offered to them through the school, as well as the support they received. A majority also somewhat or strongly agreed the professional development aided them in implementing technology for personalized learning in the classroom. Finally, one of the major obstacles reported by teachers was the excessive time needed to develop content for technology-based instruction.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this qualitative exploratory single case study was to explore how professional development in blended learning influences teachers&rsquo; self-efficacy in a Title I school district in the southwestern U.S. The importance of this study was to understand how teachers&rsquo; self-efficacy may or may not be enhanced through professional development experience with blended learning approaches. Teachers&rsquo; perceptions of their experience integrating technology after receiving professional development was significant since blended learning is transforming education. The theoretical foundation used for this study was Bandura&rsquo;s social cognitive theory. Purposive expert sampling was used to identify the 32 participants for this study. The data was collected through a questionnaire, interviews, and a focus group, put through a member checking process, then coded and thematically analyzed to answer the research questions. All questions posed in the questionnaire, interviews, and focus group were interlaced in a way that they answered more than one research question, and the data was analyzed from each and then all together. The findings of this study indicated that teacher efficacy increased as a result of professional development experience and the main factors that contributed to this are: teachers&rsquo; sense of self-efficacy related to modeling and collaborative learning, mastery of blended learning skills and strategies through clear communication and positive feedback, and mastery in blended learning to teach self-regulatory strategies to enhance personalized learning. This study extended Bandura&rsquo;s social cognitive theory by seeking to understand teachers&rsquo; perspectives of how professional development in blended learning influences their self-efficacy. </p><p>

<p> The purpose of this study is to explore the technology high school music students are using to improve musicianship. For this study, research was done to determine how students are using the available devices and the most popular applications, programs, and websites available and used by high school band students. A survey was issued to instrumental music students in two high schools asking questions pertaining to the topic. Then, data was compiled into lists consisting of the devices, uses, and applications that were the most favored. The results showed that a majority of students occasionally used technology to either self-evaluate while practicing or find music on their own. In addition, students favored using smart devices while practicing, and they chose applications based on accessibility or familiarity. The findings from this study were similar to a few sources in the related literature, which determine that students are familiar with the technology in similar ways several educators are. For those reading this thesis, the information will provide them with better awareness of the technology their pupils use for music learning.</p><p>

<p> Recent advancements in the cost, availability, and capability of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) devices and software are spurring their mass distribution to the public. This fundamental shift in the use of AR and VR predominantly from military and academic research laboratories to the public presents new opportunities and challenges for the design of instructional technology. While studies of AR and VR have been conducted to inform the design of individual instructional products, few studies have focused on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) products in which AR and VR learners work together toward shared learning goals. </p><p> The museum education industry possesses unique and inherent characteristics that position it as a strong candidate for the development and deployment of CSCL-ARVR products. Tourism locations, such as museums, provide an exemplary environment for advanced learning technology experimentation in which information technology infrastructure and programs of instruction are often already in place and in which many tourists already possess smartphones and or tablets that may be used to mediate location-based educational experiences. </p><p> The goal was to conduct formative research to develop a tentative instructional design theory that can be used to guide the creation of CSCL-ARVR instructional products. Instructional design theory and software engineering practices were applied to guide the design of a CSCL-ARVR instructional product prototype to support museum education. The prototype, named Co-Tour, was designed and developed to enable remotely-located VR participants to collaborate with AR participants located within a tourism location to jointly navigate the location, examine exhibits and answer questions about exhibits related to a problem-based learning instance. Formative data were collected and analyzed, and the results were used to develop a tentative instructional design theory. </p><p> Mixed Reality Museum Co-Visit Theory is proposed to inform the design and development of CSCL-ARVR co-visitation experiences for museums. A theoretical framework was developed and was informed by CSCL, game-based learning, social constructivist theory, flow theory, and the construct of camaraderie. Five values supporting the goal were elaborated to guide theory methods production including fostering of collaboration, leveraging of informal learning activities, incorporation of motivational elements, favoring of loose organization, and provision an effective user interface. Future research should focus upon replication towards validation and generalizability of results and upon the broader museum going population.</p><p>

Resumo: Os Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais enfatizam a importância de se tratar questões relacionadas à tecnologia. Especialmente na área de Ciências da Natureza, Matemática e suas Tecnologias, essa ênfase fica até mais evidente. Assim, julgamos importante abordar tais problemas no ensino de Física. O presente trabalho de investigação procurou explorar essa simbiose entre Ciência e Tecnologia, bem como seus impactos sociais e ambientais, através de uma intervenção didática com objetos tecnológicos de uso cotidiano dos estudantes. Especificamente, trabalhamos as noções e impressões dos alunos sobre os aparelhos elétricos domiciliares. Os sujeitos da pesquisa foram estudantes da terceira série do ensino médio de um colégio da rede pública do Estado do Paraná. O conteúdo da disciplina de Física ministrada nessa série é o eletromagnetismo, estando, portanto, intimamente relacionado com o objeto de nossa investigação. Nosso problema de pesquisa era investigar a possibilidade de se articular conceitos de eletromagnetismo, questões sociais e ambientais e exploração de aparelhos elétricos domiciliares em geral, na fase preliminar, e lâmpadas elétricas, na fase final. Para o presente trabalho, optamos pela abordagem qualitativa de pesquisa, utilizando como instrumentos questionários, relatórios das atividades didáticas e intervenções dialogadas com os grupos formados pelos sujeitos da pesquisa. Na intervenção didática realizada em nosso trabalho investigatio, buscamos levantar as concepções e representações dos estudantes sobre os dispositivos investigados, incorporando ao processo as relações ciência-tecnologia-sociedade. Como resultados dessa investigação, pudemos perceber que os alunos têm uma certa dificuldade em utilizar os conceitos científico-tecnológicos para a tomada de decisões. Contudo, eles foram capazes de articular alguns integrando resultados experimentais e informações técnicas / Abstract: Brazilian government educational documents stresses the importance of technology related issues. Particularly in the field of natural sciences, mathematics and technologies, this emphasis is even more obvious. Then, we have found very significant to take it into account in physics teaching. This investigation work has looked for the symbiosis between science and technology, as well as the social and environmental impacts, through an educational intervention with technological devices related bo students daily experience. Particularly, we have worked with the pupils conceptions about the household eletrical devices. The investigated people consisted of students coming from a third year of a high school in Paraná state (Brazil). The physics content taught for these pupils in the eletromagnetism, which is linked to the investigation object of this work. Our research consisted basically of investigating the possibility of joining electromagnetism concepts, socials and environmental impacts with the technological devices exploration, in this case, the household electrical devices in general (preliminary stage) and electric bulb (final stage). For this work, we have chosen the qualitative research approach, using the didactical activity reports and group dialogical intervention. In the educational intervention, we have paid attention to the students conceptions concerning the investigated devices, joining to this process the called science-technology-society relations. As a result of this investigation work, we have detected the students difficulty in applying the scientific concepts for decision taking. However, they have associated some concepts to the decision taking concerning the investigated technological devices, joining experimental results and technical information / Orientador: Luis Vicente Andrade Scalvi / Coorientador: José Misael Ferreira do Vale / Banca: Dirceu da Silva / Banca: Washington Luis Pacheco de Carvalho / Mestre

This thesis discusses some applications of activity theory to the analysis and design of collaborative work and learning processes either partially or wholly enabled by the use of information and communication technology (ICT). Activity theory (AT) is a monistic, materialistic psychological meta-theory comprising several distinct strands of historical and theoretical development. Founded in the former USSR in the early 1930s, it became a fundamental approach in Soviet psychology. In the West, AT was first adopted as a conceptual framework for human-computer interaction (HCI) and information systems design (ISD) in the late 1980s by researchers associated with the Participatory Design (PD) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) movements. Mainly drawing on Scandinavian interpretations of AT, this work established a distinctive, predominantly cultural-historical approach to context-aware information technology design now known as ATIT. ATIT is widely recognised as having made significant contributions to the theory and vocabulary of HCI and ISD; the principal aim of this thesis is to further develop its usefulness for ICT design. The research discussed explored the theory, history and development of ATIT while also applying and evaluating various established and new practical ATIT methods. These included the breakdown and focus-shifts analysis approach developed by Bødker and her associates and some novel techniques based on systemic-structural activity theory (SSAT), a modern, explicitly design-oriented synthesis of the cultural-historical and systemscybernetic strands within Soviet activity theory. The empirical investigation involved participatory action research into the uses of ICT at an adult basic education (ABE) Open Learning Centre in south Wales, UK. A longitudinal study of an intensive ICT-enabled ABE course, Computer Creative, was carried out between September 2000 and May 2001 using ethnographic techniques. This was followed-up by a short video-based study in May 2002. In both cases the aim was to use activity-theoretical techniques to identify ways of improving the use of ICT to support the Centre’s learnercentred, empowerment-oriented ABE practice. Using the key ATIT notion of breakdown as a starting-point, a number of factors influencing participants’ effective and creative learning-inuse of and with the available technologies were identified. Among the most significant of these was learners’ motivation during the ICT-enabled work-process. Conditions observed to encourage positive motivation included physical co-location in a material and sociocultural environment favouring self-regulation and mutual coordination through communicative and instrumental means and the structuring of ICT-enabled tasks so as to facilitate the formation and alignment of personally meaningful task-goals. Although user-interface (UI) design emerged as only one among many task-conditions impacting on motivation, some applications were persistently associated with recurrent and/or catastrophic breakdown. The principal UI characteristics identified as likely contributors to such breakdowns were inadequate provision of task-relevant information and under- or over-representation of task complexity. Based on these findings, the thesis presents a number of recommendations and guidelines for researchers and designers on the use of activity-theoretical techniques to create and evaluate interactive information and communication systems, ICT-enabled workprocesses and tasks, and ICT use-settings. In doing so it provides further evidence of the potential applicability of AT to a range of IT-design challenges, while concluding that in order to more fully realise this potential researchers should consider revising and expanding the conceptual framework of ATIT to include ideas from SSAT.

Things make us smart. Tools are made by humans aiming not only at solving technical problem but also developing high-order thinking. In a manner different from traditional mathematics lessons involving direct transmission of knowledge from teachers to students, tool-based mathematics classrooms fabricate an interactive teaching and learning environment. This environment fosters teachers' professional guidance based on students' manipulation of tools. The design of tool-based task aims to formulate students' learning experience via their own acquisition of knowledge through tool manipulations. Mathematics concepts can be visualized and manipulated by students through engaging in activities with tools generating tool-based signs and mathematics signs in a semiotic process. The role of mathematics teachers in tool-based mathematics classrooms is to provide well designed tool-based tasks and implement tool-based lessons in order to orchestrate students' learning, coupled with the endeavour of students' manipulating of tools.;Two new ideas, named didactical interactions and Tool-Task dialectics, were proposed in the study to effectively enforce mathematics teachers' instruction through tool-based pedagogy in interactive classrooms. The main objective of this study was to holistically investigate the implementation processes of tool-based lessons by mathematics teachers based on some theoretical perspectives. A multiple-case study, consisting of three cases with similar and different backgrounds, was conducted. Didactical cycle was one of the main theoretical frameworks, which framed analysis of the study. Based on in-depth analysis within and across cases, didactical interactions and Tool-Task dialectics were empirically developed to enrich tool-based education theories allowing teachers to demystify the cognitive development of students in tool-based lessons. The analysis of flows of the lessons uttered transition directions of critical phases ground on the theory; while pragmatic manipulations of tools operated by students and teachers' orchestration provided strong evidence to illustrate interplay between tools and tasks. Thus, the findings of the study potentially contributed to some aspects of tool-based mathematics education research.;Keywords: tool-based task design, tool of semiotic mediation, didactical cycle, didactical interactions, tool-task dialectic, mathematics classroom.

<p> A large career-centered university in the state of Florida has received a grant to fund what is known as a multidisciplinary center (MDC), which will utilize innovative information communication technologies (ICT), such as video conferencing, to support educators of students with disabilities in eight primarily rural school districts in south-central Florida. Through using video conferencing technologies (VCT), rural educators can request and receive 1:1 consultation, training, and technical assistance from non-rural MDC staff on instructional strategies and interventions geared toward students with complex disabilities. Research on technology acceptance suggests that technology systems aimed at improving job performance may go underutilized if organizations fail to understand the ways certain variables impact end-user decisions to accept and use a given technology system (Venkatesh &amp; Davis, 2000; Venkatesh, Morris, Davis &amp; Davis, 2003). This instrumental collective case study utilizes the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) framework theorized by Venkatesh et al. (2003) to guide the exploration and understanding of end-user perceptions of a video conferencing technology system. Findings suggest that the collective case base their overall decision to accept and use VCT on the belief that using the system provides more timely access to service providers and that these services add value to job-related duties.</p><p>