Information Age Education Blog

I strongly support the participation of women in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). My IAE-pedia article, Women in ICT, was initially written in 2009 and has recently been completely updated. Since 2009, the document has had about 90,000 hits, which makes it #12 in the list of most popular IAE-pedia entries (Moursund, 2016).

I have been a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for about 50 years. and regularly read the Communications of the ACM (CACM) publication. For the most part, many of the technical details in the CACM are now “over my head.” However, a number of the articles provide excellent background information on how computer technology is changing the world and the problems that ICT is addressing. The ACM and CACM are very supportive of the field of computers in education.

I have a large number of Facebook friends located throughout the world. I am very interested in hearing from some of you about how educational systems outside the United States are being affected by major change agents such as:

1. Information and Communication Technology including the Web, Internet, Smartphones, tablet computers, laptop computers, computer games, computer-assisted learning, artificial intelligence, and so on.
2. Research on brain science, especially cognitive neuroscience.
3. Past and current research on learning theory, effective methods of teaching, student assessment, and teacher assessment.
4. Pressures for more equal treatment of all students regardless of gender, ethnicity, race, religion, and level of income.
5. Attempts to deal with education-related problems unique to a specific country. (What are some of the major educational problems in your country?)

Please consider submitting an article to Information Age Education. I am looking for articles that address the questions given above, ones that will help people from outside your country to understand both how well your educational system is doing and any major problems it is addressing. I am interested in three specific types of articles:

“So, how do we learn? And, why do some of us learn things more easily than others?” These are two questions that Lara Boyd asks at the beginning of her TEDx Talk (Boyd, 12/15/2015). Her answers are based on her knowledge of brain plasticity and other aspects of cognitive neuroscience. Dr. Boyd holds the University of British Columbia’s Canada Research Chair in Neurobiology and Motor Learning.

Quoting from the website:

I have recently thoroughly revised and updated my IAE-pedia document, Free Math Software (Moursund, 7/15/2016). This site includes my current philosophy of education that emphasizes current and future roles of computers.

My Philosophy of Education

I am interested in improving education for all people of all ages throughout the world. Recently, I had a delightful time interacting with a grandchild (age 10), three of my adult relatives, and two “senior citizens.” All of us spent a substantial amount of our time using Smartphones, tablet computers, and laptop computers.

Perhaps what was most interesting to me was the facility of the non-senior-citizens at making use of these tools whenever a question arose.