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Computers and Education in the 21st Century
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Book reviews / Computers & Education 37 (2001) 179–194
covered better elsewhere. They would have done better to assume some computer ability, and concentrate on developing the classroom activities in greater depth. Anthony Lelliott School of Education University of the Witwatersrand Private Bag 3 WITS 2050 South Africa E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0360-1315(01)00030-6
Computers and Education in the 21st Century Manuel Ortega and Jose´ Bravo (Eds.). Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2000, 316 pp. ISBN 0-7923-6577-1 (hardback) £80.00 This book collects 24 selected papers — plus the three plenary lectures in Part I — presented at ConieD’99, the first biennial congress on Computers in Education organised by the Spanish Association for the Development of Computers in Education (ADIE). The common theme in all the papers is use of the Web to provide cross-platform learning systems, which are described in terms of their components, architecture, interface, features, functions and pedagogical approach. Given that most (if not all) authors are academics from Computer Science (Informatics), Electronics or similar departments, it is hardly surprising that the content has a strong technical bias. Readers get to know about intelligent agents, adaptive frameworks, programming and markup languages, platforms, fuzzy relationships, bayesian methods and probabilistic models, amongst other technical concepts. A common feature of the systems described is that they go beyond the concept of interactive learning systems: two new attributes, adaptive and intelligent, are applied to this new generation of Web-based learning tools. They are adaptive systems because they are capable of adapting to each particular student’s needs and learning strategies and to different tutors’ teaching methods. They are intelligent because they learn from student interactions — navigation and level of knowledge — and can select for each student the materials and activities to be presented next. Although many of the systems and tools described are designed and used within a science subject area (computer science, physics, mathematics, electronics. . .), a couple of papers deal with language learning, reading and writing skills; others deal with issues of a more generic nature. An example of the latter is the third plenary lecture (p. 21), dedicated to pedagogical evaluation of educational websites. This paper discusses the difficulty of describing educational resources and systems; it points at the standardisation of metadata as an essential step to achieve reusability and interoperability of electronic educational resources. A brief overview of the Dublin Core initiative provides a good introduction to the world of metadata, whilst the appendix contains a useful set of criteria for evaluating an educational website.
Book reviews / Computers & Education 37 (2001) 179–194
191
Several papers present the work of academics from the Spanish Open University (UNED) and the Catalan Open University (UOC) in developing comprehensive learning environments for distance learning use (pp. 37, 93, 275). In the last of these (p. 275), the authors illustrate UNED’s efforts to design and develop a web-based learning environment which allows for reusability of resources, yet provides a sound, easy to use content design facility based on instructional templates. An interesting paper, ‘Learning Basque in a distance-adaptive way’, achieves a good balance of technical and pedagogical reasoning, revealing an unusual partnership of educational institutions (a university and a secondary school) with industry (a software company) and the media (a regional newspaper); all backed by financial support from the local government. The closing paper is somewhat different from the rest, which makes it stand out but also rounds off the collection on an unexpected, theoretical note. Entitled ‘Computer-Human Learning. Learning through Natural Language on the Internet’, it does not describe any particular system but rather considers the role of natural language in knowledge acquisition and development, recognising the role of linguists and computational linguistics as key contributors to the cognitive sciences and the use of computers in education in particular. Readers need to get over the hurdle of non-native language writing (or more likely poor translations) which makes reading the first two plenary lectures in particular a hard task, but most of the short papers in Part II are written in perfectly good English, with some painful exceptions. The book will be of interest primarily to computer scientists and developers of educational software. For others, it will provide a brief insight into artificial intelligence and the future of educational software, but they must be ready to deal with the abundance of technical terms and concepts presented. At £80, this book is more likely to be found on library shelves than in lecturers’ studies. Merce Rius Riu Education Support Services University of Kent at Canterbury Kent CT2 7NF, UK PII: S0360-1315(01)00038-0
Teaching and Learning with ICT in the Primary School Edited by Marilyn Leask and John Meadows, Routledge/Falmer, London, 2000, 269 pp. ISBN 0415-21505-6, £14.99 paperback. Education lecturers Leask and Meadows have edited an interesting set of relevant papers by a variety of teachers and lecturers experienced in the uses of ICT in primary schools. Their con-
Book reviews / Computers & Education 37 (2001) 179–194
covered better elsewhere. They would have done better to assume some computer ability, and concentrate on developing the classroom activities in greater depth. Anthony Lelliott School of Education University of the Witwatersrand Private Bag 3 WITS 2050 South Africa E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0360-1315(01)00030-6
Computers and Education in the 21st Century Manuel Ortega and Jose´ Bravo (Eds.). Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2000, 316 pp. ISBN 0-7923-6577-1 (hardback) £80.00 This book collects 24 selected papers — plus the three plenary lectures in Part I — presented at ConieD’99, the first biennial congress on Computers in Education organised by the Spanish Association for the Development of Computers in Education (ADIE). The common theme in all the papers is use of the Web to provide cross-platform learning systems, which are described in terms of their components, architecture, interface, features, functions and pedagogical approach. Given that most (if not all) authors are academics from Computer Science (Informatics), Electronics or similar departments, it is hardly surprising that the content has a strong technical bias. Readers get to know about intelligent agents, adaptive frameworks, programming and markup languages, platforms, fuzzy relationships, bayesian methods and probabilistic models, amongst other technical concepts. A common feature of the systems described is that they go beyond the concept of interactive learning systems: two new attributes, adaptive and intelligent, are applied to this new generation of Web-based learning tools. They are adaptive systems because they are capable of adapting to each particular student’s needs and learning strategies and to different tutors’ teaching methods. They are intelligent because they learn from student interactions — navigation and level of knowledge — and can select for each student the materials and activities to be presented next. Although many of the systems and tools described are designed and used within a science subject area (computer science, physics, mathematics, electronics. . .), a couple of papers deal with language learning, reading and writing skills; others deal with issues of a more generic nature. An example of the latter is the third plenary lecture (p. 21), dedicated to pedagogical evaluation of educational websites. This paper discusses the difficulty of describing educational resources and systems; it points at the standardisation of metadata as an essential step to achieve reusability and interoperability of electronic educational resources. A brief overview of the Dublin Core initiative provides a good introduction to the world of metadata, whilst the appendix contains a useful set of criteria for evaluating an educational website.
Book reviews / Computers & Education 37 (2001) 179–194
191
Several papers present the work of academics from the Spanish Open University (UNED) and the Catalan Open University (UOC) in developing comprehensive learning environments for distance learning use (pp. 37, 93, 275). In the last of these (p. 275), the authors illustrate UNED’s efforts to design and develop a web-based learning environment which allows for reusability of resources, yet provides a sound, easy to use content design facility based on instructional templates. An interesting paper, ‘Learning Basque in a distance-adaptive way’, achieves a good balance of technical and pedagogical reasoning, revealing an unusual partnership of educational institutions (a university and a secondary school) with industry (a software company) and the media (a regional newspaper); all backed by financial support from the local government. The closing paper is somewhat different from the rest, which makes it stand out but also rounds off the collection on an unexpected, theoretical note. Entitled ‘Computer-Human Learning. Learning through Natural Language on the Internet’, it does not describe any particular system but rather considers the role of natural language in knowledge acquisition and development, recognising the role of linguists and computational linguistics as key contributors to the cognitive sciences and the use of computers in education in particular. Readers need to get over the hurdle of non-native language writing (or more likely poor translations) which makes reading the first two plenary lectures in particular a hard task, but most of the short papers in Part II are written in perfectly good English, with some painful exceptions. The book will be of interest primarily to computer scientists and developers of educational software. For others, it will provide a brief insight into artificial intelligence and the future of educational software, but they must be ready to deal with the abundance of technical terms and concepts presented. At £80, this book is more likely to be found on library shelves than in lecturers’ studies. Merce Rius Riu Education Support Services University of Kent at Canterbury Kent CT2 7NF, UK PII: S0360-1315(01)00038-0
Teaching and Learning with ICT in the Primary School Edited by Marilyn Leask and John Meadows, Routledge/Falmer, London, 2000, 269 pp. ISBN 0415-21505-6, £14.99 paperback. Education lecturers Leask and Meadows have edited an interesting set of relevant papers by a variety of teachers and lecturers experienced in the uses of ICT in primary schools. Their con-