Editorial - Introduction to the special issue on deliberation with computers: exploring the distinctive contribution of new technologies to collaborative thinking and learning

Abstract not available

An advanced telerobotic system for shuttle payload changeout room processing applications

To potentially alleviate the inherent difficulties in the ground processing of the Space Shuttle and its associated payloads, a teleoperated, semi-autonomous robotic processing system for the Payload Changeout Room (PCR) is now in the conceptual stages. The complete PCR robotic system as currently conceived is described and critical design issues and the required technologies are discussed

Dialogue on ‘dialogic education’: has Rupert gone over to ‘the Dark Side’?

ArticleThis is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.This email dialogue that we record and report here between Eugene Matusov and Rupert Wegerif, exemplifies Internet mediated dialogic education. When Eugene emailed Rupert with his initial (mis)understanding of Rupert's position about dialogic pedagogy Rupert felt really motivated to reply. Rupert was not simply motivated to refute Eugene and assert his correctness, although Rupert is sure such elements enter into every dialogue, but also to explore and to try to resolve the issues ignited by the talk in New Zealand. Through this extended dialogue Rupert's and Eugene's positions become more nuanced and focussed. Rupert brings out his concern with the long-term and collective nature of some dialogues claiming that the – "dialogue of humanity that education serves is bigger than the interests of particular students and particular teachers.…" – and so he argues that it is often reasonable to induct students into the dialogue so far so that they can participate fully. On the other hand, Eugene's view of dialogue seems more focussed on personal responsibility, particular individual desires, interests and positions, individual agency and answering the final ethical "damned questions" without an alibi-in-being. Rupert claims that dialogic education is education FOR dialogue and Eugene claims that dialogic education is education AS dialogue. Both believe in education THROUGH dialogue but education through dialogue is not in itself dialogic education. For Rupert dialogic education can include ‘scaffolding’ for full participation in dialogue as long as dialogue is the aim. For Eugene dialogic education has to be a genuine dialogue and this means that a curriculum goal cannot be specified in advance because learning in a dialogue is always emergent and unpredictable. Our dialogue-disagreement is a relational and discursive experiment to develop a new genre of academic critical dialogue. The dialogue itself called to us and motivated us and flowed through us. This dialogue is much bigger than us. It participates in a dialogue that humanity has been having about education for thousands of years. We hope that it also engages you and calls you to respond

Towards a dialogic theory of how children learn to think

notes: IF of journal 1.708publication-status: Publishedtypes: Articl

Students' informal inference about the binomial distribution of "Bunny hops": A dialogic perspective

This is the final version of the article. Available from IASE / ISI via the DOI in this recordThe study explores the development of 11-year-old students’ informal inference about random bunny hops through student talk and use of computer simulation tools. Our aim in this paper is to draw on dialogic theory to explain how students make shifts in perspective, from intuition-based reasoning to more powerful, formal ways of using probabilistic ideas. Findings from the study suggest that dialogic talk facilitated students’ reasoning as it was supported by the use of simulation tools available in the software. It appears that the interaction of using simulation tools, talk between students, and teacher prompts helps students develop their understanding of probabilistic ideas in the context of making inferences about the distribution of random bunny hops.This research was supported by a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme. We would also like to acknowledge the generous support of the school, teachers and students who worked with us in this study

Combining scaffolding for content and scaffolding for dialogue to support conceptual break throughs in understanding probability

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11858-015-0720-5In this paper, we explore the relationship between scaffolding, dialogue and conceptual breakthroughs, using data from a design-based research study into the development of understanding of probability in 10-12 year old students. Our aim in the study was to gain insight into how the combination of the scaffolding of content using technology and scaffolding for dialogue in the expectation that this would facilitate conceptual breakthroughs. We analyse video-recordings and transcripts of pairs and triads talking together around TinkerPlots software with worksheets and teacher interventions, focusing on moments of conceptual breakthrough. The dialogue scaffolding promoted both dialogue moves specific to the context of probability and dialogue in itself. This paper focuses on an episode of learning that occurred within dialogues (framed and supported by the scaffolding. We present this as support for our claim that combining scaffolding for content with scaffolding for dialogue can be effective. This finding contributes to our understanding of both scaffolding and dialogic teaching in mathematics education by suggesting that scaffolding can be used effectively to prepare for conceptual development through dialogue.7th European Community Framework Programme - Marie Curie Intra European Fellowshi

Investigating and promoting trainee science teachers’ conceptual change of the nature of science with digital dialogue games “InterLoc”

The purpose of this study is to explore how an online-structured dialogue environment supported (OSDE) collaborative learning about the nature of science among a group of trainee science teachers in the UK. The software used (InterLoc) is a linear text-based tool, designed to support structured argumentation with openers and ‘dialogue moves’. A design-based research approach was used to investigate multiple sessions using InterLoc with 65 trainee science teachers. Five participants who showed differential conceptual change in terms of their Nature of Science (NOS) views were purposively selected and closely followed throughout the study by using key event recall interviews. Initially, the majority of participants held naïve views of NOS. Substantial and favourable changes in these views were evident as a result of the OSDE. An examination of the development of the five participants’ NOS views indicated that the effectiveness of the InterLoc discussions was mediated by cultural, cognitive, and experiential factors. The findings suggest that InterLoc can be effective in promoting reflection and conceptual change.InterLoc was developed by a team led by Andrew Ravenscroft with funding from the UK JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) 'e-learning tools' programme, and from the JISC Capital Programme

Buber, educational technology, and the expansion of dialogic space

Buber’s distinction between the ‘I-It’ mode and the ‘I-Thou’ mode is seminal for dialogic education. While Buber introduces the idea of dialogic space, an idea which has proved useful for the analysis of dialogic education with technology, his account fails to engage adequately with the role of technology. This paper offers an introduction to the significance of the I-It/I-Thou duality of technology in relation to opening dialogic space. This is followed by a short schematic history of educational technology which reveals the role technology plays, not only in opening dialogic space, but also in expanding dialogic space. The expansion of dialogic space is an expansion of what it means to be ‘us’ as dialogic engagement facilitates the incorporation, into our shared sense of identity, of aspects of reality that are initially experienced as alien or ‘other’. Augmenting Buber with an alternative understanding of dialogic space enables us to see how dialogue mediated by technology, as well as dialogue with monologised fragments of technology (robots), can, through education, lead to an expansion of what it means to be human

Metafora: A Web-based Platform for Learning to Learn Together in Science and Mathematics

This paper presents Metafora, both a platform for integrated tools as well as an emerging pedagogy for supporting Learning to Learn Together in science and mathematics education. Our goal is to design technology that brings education to a higher level; a level where students not only learn a subject matter, but also gain a set of critical skills needed to engage in and self-regulate collaborative learning experiences in science and math education. We first discuss the core skills we hope students will gain as they learn to learn together. We then present our design and implementation that can achieve this goal; a platform and pedagogy we have developed to support the learning of these skills. Finally, we present an example use of our system based on results from pilot studies that demonstrates interaction with the platform, and potential benefits and limitations of the tools in promoting the associated skills

Exploring creative thinking in graphically mediated synchronous dialogues

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleThis paper reports on an aspect of the EC funded Argunaut project which researched and developed awareness tools for moderators of online dialogues. In this study we report on an investigation into the nature of creative thinking in online dialogues and whether or not this creative thinking can be coded for and recognized automatically such that moderators can be alerted when creative thinking is occurring or when it has not occurred after a period of time. We outline a dialogic theory of creativity, as the emergence of new perspectives from the interplay of voices, and the testing of this theory using a range of methods including a coding scheme which combined coding for creative thinking with more established codes for critical thinking, artificial intelligence pattern-matching techniques to see if our codes could be read automatically from maps and ‘key event recall’ interviews to explore the experience of participants. Our findings are that: (1) the emergence of new perspectives in a graphical dialogue map can be recognized by our coding scheme supported by a machine pattern-matching algorithm in a way that can be used to provide awareness indicators for moderators; (2) that the trigger events leading to the emergence of new perspectives in the online dialogues studied were most commonly disagreements and (3) the spatial representation of messages in a graphically mediated synchronous dialogue environment such as Digalo may offer more affordance for creativity than the much more common scrolling text chat environments. All these findings support the usefulness of our new account of creativity in online dialogues based on dialogic theory and demonstrate that this account can be operationalised through machine coding in a way that can be turned into alerts for moderators