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The purpose of the project was to develop three thematic units for fifth grade that intergrate California State Standards in Reading, Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies with the use of technology. The benefits of doing so allows instructional time to be spent on more in depth study of the disciplines, Students make connections across curriculum which allows them to develop a deeper understanding of what is being taught. Also, integrating curriculum with technology engages students and allows them to have more control over their learning environment. When students are actively involved in what is being taught, they will internalize the information for better understanding.

The purpose of this project was to create a booklet useful to teachers, one that would increase their technological competence and so encourage them to use new technologies.

Students often use the web as a source of help for problems that they encounter on programming assignments.In this work, we seek to understand how students use the web to search for help on their assignments.We used a mixed methods approach with 344 students who complete a survey and 41 students who participate in a focus group meetings and helped in recording data about their search habits.The survey reveals data about student reported search habits while the focus group uses a web browser plug-in to record actual search patterns.We examine the results collectively and as broken down by class year.Survey results show that at least 2/3 of the students from each class year rely on search engines to locate resources for help with their programming bugs in at least half of their assignments;search habits vary by class year;and the value of different types of resources such as tutorials and forums varies by class year.Focus group results exposes the high frequency web sites used by the students in solving their programming assignments.

published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This thesis provides insights into how technology can be and is used as child-centric learning tools within primary school classrooms. The conducted studies look closely at how tablet technology is integrated into the modern classroom, and considers how existing digital writing technologies could support handwriting-based learning exercises in future. This is achieved by conducting three in-the-wild studies, using different approaches, with a total of seventy-four children in school classrooms. In the first study, focus is placed on how tablets integrate into and with existing classroom practices, documenting when and how children use tablets in class. Relevant and complementary to this, the use of traditional writing tools is questioned and two further studies explore the potential and suitability of digital pens to support children's handwriting-based learning. One looks in detail at how children's handwriting is effected by different existing digital pen technologies. The other study, conducted through a creative, participatory design session, asks children to provide their opinions regarding desirable features for digital writing technology. The findings from this research classify and exemplify the role of tablets in the classroom, and explore potential design directions of digital writing tools which could be used by children in the future. This work may be useful and of interest to others who conduct research with children within the fields of Human Computer Interaction, Child Computer Interaction or education.

M.Ed. (Information and Communication Technologies in Education) / The use of ICT at all levels in the schools has been shown to have a positive impact on teaching and learning, in particular of Mathematics. In South Africa, Dinaledi schools have been given ICT resources by the former Department of Education (South Africa) with the aim of improving Grade 12 results, particularly in Mathematics. This study aims to assess the use of ICT for learning in the selected Dinaledi School, with an additional focus on Mathematics learning in grade 8 to 12, and to provide guidelines for the use of ICT in the Dinaledi schools, and specifically to support Mathematics learning. The ‘mixed–method’ study comprised several sets of data, both quantitative and qualitative, using a sequential-mixed-method-explanatory design for the case of the selected Dinaledi School, Kone High School (Fictitious name), situated in the Limpopo Province, to determine how ICT resources are used in the teaching and learning, and also for Mathematics. In the quantitative phase, quantitative data was collected by means of structured questionnaires on the use of ICT from the principal, teachers and students. The University of Johannesburg’s STATKON unit analysed the data, and confirmed the latent theoretical constructs that were embedded in the questionnaire. To clarify the results, in the follow-up qualitative phase, the principal, teachers and students were interviewed on the use of computers. Other quantitative data were sourced from official end-of-year matric results. Both teachers and students pointed that the ICT resources were not sufficiently used in teaching and learning, in particular for Mathematics, although in contrast it appeared that the principal believed that the ICT resources were sufficiently used for teaching and learning. The study concluded that ICT was not an important driver of teaching and learning in this Dinaledi school and it did not play the role in teaching and learning at Kone High School, as is envisioned for Dinaledi schools.

To develop leaders for the 21st century, schools must be able to prepare students to meet the high academic, technical and workforce challenges. Charter schools are increasingly attempting to meet these challenges by educating students through innovative means and by creating effectual educational programs that are more conducive to the needs of the student. This document provides a computer literacy curriculum, which will facilitate student learning of computer literacy skills.