October 4-6, 2006
Lima, Peru

Technologies that Motivate Learning

Main Presenter
Dr. Elliot Soloway
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Department of EECS
College of Engineering, University of Michigan, USA

Co-Presenter
Dr. Cathie Norris
Professor, Department of Technology and Cognition
University of North Texas, USA

While we can dicker about the details, at its core, school is about helping children to be successful, and helping children to learn and to achieve. In order to learn, children need to be motivated and engaged. For the “kids these days,” what deeply engages them is being continuously connected – to each other, to their music, to their games, to digital things that they create. Outside of school, such connections are facilitated by technology – cell phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, etc., which they use for text messaging, for remixing songs to create their own personal ringtones, and for expressing themselves through multiple media. If we think that the kids these days are going to find paper-and-pencil assignments motivating, we are fooling ourselves. Fortunately, there are powerful, but low-cost, handheld, mobile, multimedia computers that schools can provide for children to use on a continuous basis that children do find motivating. Most importantly, teachers can use their existing instructional strategies with these devices; with experience, we find teachers adapting their strategies to better leverage the affordances of these task-appropriate, non-overwhelming devices. In our presentation we will describe classrooms – urban, suburban, rural – all around America where children and teachers are using these truly personal, palm-sized computers to pursue state-mandated curricula to learn and achieve.

Dr. Elliot Soloway For the past ten years, Elliot Soloway and his colleagues in the Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education (Hi-CE) - now composed of over 60 undergraduate and graduate students - have been exploring the ways in which computing and communications technologies can be the catalyst in bringing a constructivist, project-based pedagogy to science classrooms. The Hi-CE group is developing science curricula that embeds technology into the everyday experiences of students and teachers. The Hi-CE group is also developing professional development workshops and materials that support teachers in carrying out these project-based, technology-pervasive curricula in their classrooms.

Dr. Cathleen A. Norris is a Professor in the Department of Technology and Cognition, College of Education at the University of North Texas, in Denton, Texas. Dr. Norris' efforts in research, teaching and service all have a common focus: integrate learning technologies more effectively into classrooms, in K-12 as well as post-secondary education. Cathie is a Past President of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the leading international organization for technology-minded educators. From 1991 to 2001, she was the President of the National Educational Computing Association (NECA) that organized the premier conference, NECC, on technology in K-12.

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