This report is by J.D.Lasia provides some back ground on the topic as it gives the reader the benefit of the considerable insights that emerged from the round table dialogue. It begins, as the conference did, with description and definition of the cloud.

إن كتاب التكنولوجيا والتعلم الإلكتروني والتعليم عن بعد دليل لا غنى عنه لكل من يريد النصح والارشاد حول كيفية اختياره للتكنولوجيا المناسبة وبالتكلفة الملائمة لمقرر دراسي او برنامج تعليمي يتميز بالمرونه

كثيرا ما يسألني الكثير، عن الدافع الذي جعلني أستخدم نظام التعليم اإللكتروني في تدريس مقرراتي؟. كنت أجيب على هذا التساؤل بدون تردد: إن دافعي، هو الرغبة في تقدمي أسلوب تعليمي متطور ومتقدم، وذلك بعدما رأيت سرعة انتشار وتزايد استخدام اإلنترنت في كافة املجاالت، والسيما في مجال التعليم، ورأيت ما ميكن أن يقدمه اإلنترنت من مزايا وإمكانيات كثيرة ومفيدة للتعليم ولتطوير نظم تدريسه.

With the abundance in education technology (edtech) tools and apps currently available, and new ones popping up in app stores daily, how do you find the right ones for your practice? How do you ensure the digital tools and apps that you select for use in your classroom will enrich and extend your teaching, provide an accessible learning experience, and protect students' privacy? What should you look for when evaluating the user experience of apps and tools? This free, open access eBook highlights the key steps and considerations for finding, evaluating, and teaching with digital tools and apps!

This report utilizes massive datasets to summarize trends and patterns in educational technology (EdTech) communications, interest, use, research, and adoption across the U.S. Utilizing public social media posts, public school website data, and research indexing APIs, this report provides educators, principals, policymakers, and researchers with a birds eye view of what has been happening in the field of educational technology in recent years. Results for each section are provided as prose, tables, and infographics. This free, open access eBook highlights the key steps and considerations for finding, evaluating, and teaching with digital tools and apps!

يقع هذا الكتاب في ثلاث ابواب, شملت موضوعات اساسية ومهمة في تكنولوجيا التعليم, وجاء الباب الاول كمقدمة في تكنولوجيا التعليم وجاء في الباب الثاني والثالث مواضيع العصر في تكنولوجيا التعليم والوسائل التعليمية, تكنولوجيا التعليم الالكترونية دور وسائل التعليمية في التعلم الصفي

There is much innovation to be found in the field of Educational Technology, both in its design and in its use. However, this innovation is patchy and inconsistent and rarely informed by research evidence or effective research practice. When reviewing work from within academia, commerce and educational practice it is clear that vital information about the context of the innovative work is unrecorded and that the relationships between researchers, developers and practitioners rarely exist. The production of effective innovations in the design and use of educational technology will rely upon these key relationships being fostered and strengthened. Developers need to be aware of existing evidence and able to use sound research methods to evaluate their products, researchers need to work with developers to help them acquire the knowledge and skills, and educators must be part of the process through their input to the design and evaluation of the technologies being developed.

In his recently published book Is Technology Good For Education? Professor Neil Selwyn encourages us to think critically about the trend of a wide adoption of technology in education and to consider, in a dispassionate manner, the unintended consequences of digital education. He calls for more ‘grown-up debates to take place around the complexities and contradictions of technology and education’ (p.159) and challenges us to reflect on whether technology makes education more democratic, personalised, measurable and commercial.

EDUCATE is a London-based programme that supports the development of research-informed educational technology (EdTech), allowing entrepreneurs and start-ups to create their products and services, and simultaneously grow their companies in a more evidence-informed manner. The programme partners businesses with researchers who mentor, guide and support this research journey, a key aspect of which is the evaluation of the company’s EdTech product or service. However, conducting impact evaluations of technology in education is challenging, particularly for early stage technologies, as rapid cycles of innovation and change are part of their essence. Here, we present the pragmatic approach to evidence-informed education technology design and impact evaluation, as developed and adopted by the EDUCATE programme. The research process is shaped by the core principles of evidence-informed decision making detailed in the paper. The contributions of the paper are threefold. First, it defines and details an academia-industry-education collaboration model centred on a research training programme. Second, it presents emerging impact results of the programme. Third, it provides clear reflections on the challenges encountered during the implementation of the model in the EdTech ecosystem of London, which should be addressed if we are to move towards evidence-informed EdTech globally.

Discussions of technology and education often promise revolution, and freedom from the constraints of campuses and classrooms. There is less discussion of why such infrastructures were needed in the first place, or of the challenges facing learners when these are no longer available. In order to explore such critical alternatives, we can begin to ask different kinds of question. What is the cloud made of? What do learners work with, when they study? Where are they, and what places do they move between? From a sociomaterial perspective, such questions draw attention to the ways in which academic work is encoded, transmitted and stored; how the cloud, far from being nebulous, relies on undersea cables and server farms; and how learners try and coordinate all this as they take bus journeys, sit in class or meet with friends in the bar. These points will be illustrated with examples from a longitudinal study of University students’ uses of technology, in which they recorded and described how, where and when they studied. This analysis has implications for the design of e-learning, raising questions about whose responsibility it is to build the infrastructure that students need to learn, and introducing a note of caution to discussions about the transformational potential of technology.

Educational technologies occupy a significant and high profile position within higher education with some technologies widely used across the sector. However, although the use of new technologies is often encouraged through institutional policy, training and funding, there is significant variation in actual practices - especially with regards to teaching and learning. Research on teacher thinking suggests that this variation is related to university teachers‟ beliefs and knowledge about technology and learning. A mixed-methods approach was used to investigate university teachers‟ thinking about their use of technology. The first stage of data collection was a quantitative survey of 795 higher education teachers from a sample of 27 UK universities. This identified institutional and subject-related differences in teachers‟ perceptions of impact and use of particular technologies in their teaching. The second stage of data collection was a qualitative multi-site case study of eleven university teachers from three universities that identified their perceptions and beliefs about technology and the contexts in which they act. It investigated how these individuals formed and reinterpreted their beliefs about technology and how they made decisions about when and how to use (or not use) technology. The thesis shows how university teachers‟ thinking about technology is situated in the culture and contexts in which they live and work. It explores the relationships between pedagogic beliefs, beliefs about technology and teachers‟ perceptions of „control‟ over how they use technology. It identifies how some teachers used technology to communicate their personality and build relationships with students but, also, how some used technologies despite believing that these did not have a positive effect on student learning. It shows how, in making sense of their use of technology, academics draw on multiple sources including understandings of the impact of technology on culture and society, perceptions of higher education and their institution, their subject disciplinary background and their identity as teachers and academics.

This study investigated the value of technology education to elementary school students’ learning of technology concepts and processes as a result of technology education experiences. The research questions were (1) How do elementary school students learn technology concepts as a result of technology education experiences?, (2) How do elementary school students learn technology processes as a result of technology education experiences?, and (3) What are elementary school students’ beliefs and attitudes toward technology and technology activities? This study employed a qualitative research methodology. Evidence has been collected from several major sources for five months: participant observation; semi-structured interviews with students and teacher; and documents including students’ journals, notebooks, written works, and the teacher’s handouts. I presented the evidence through using inductive analysis and interpreted the evidence through the lens of the constructivist perspective. The findings revealed that technology education provided elementary school students with a constructivist learning context. Elementary school students were introduced to meaningful hands-on activities of technology education and encouraged to involve themselves in creative problem solving processes and social interactions. In addition, they conceptualized technology as making, invention, new things, and computers and perceived technology and technology activities as fun and exciting. This study has two major implications for educational practice and further study. First, classroom teachers’ efforts are needed to bridge the gap between elementary school classrooms and cognitive science throughout technology education activities. Second, continued examination of students’ learning of technology concepts and processes is needed in order to investigate the value of ESTE.