Review of Designing Instruction for Technology-Enhanced Learning (Hardcover)

Patricia Rogers' ambitious book includes valuable contributions from educators in all kinds of institutions and from all over the world.This book tries to be everything you need if you are new or fairly new to technology-enhanced learning, covering history, relevant educational theory, and how-tos for K-12, higher education, and business training.Clearly written and carefully organized, it's easy for any teacher to get something from this book.For any library with teachers as patrons, this book is essential.

If there is a fault to this book, it's that breadth of coverage means limited depth of coverage.This is a strong book for getting started, but most teachers will find sections of the book that are very helpful and others that can be skipped.Also, although each chapter is well-documented and scholarly, there is relatively little acknowledgement of objections to technology-enhanced teaching.Some of the strongest objectors are acknowledged and answered, but more subtle issues about technology and teaching could be dealt with more seriously.The book's general attitude is that technology-enhanced teaching is a realm of vast possibility as long as it is designed properly.

For teachers who want to get started exploring that realm, this is a great guidebook.



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Review of Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing (Hardcover)

This book is a germinal work for anyone who cares about the critical intersections of education, race, and computing. It is shocking and sad and uplifting and it is essential reading for educators, administrators, parents, community leaders, policy makers, and anyone who cares about the future. Margolis and her team show that when it comes to education and computing, the emperor has no clothes. Schools may be filled with shiny new machines but this is no guarantee that students are learning the high level critical thinking skills they require. The writers also lay bare a pervasive and systemic racism that virtually guarantees that even the best and brightest minority students receive nothing more than rudimentary point and click computing education, severely diminishing their abilities to succeed at the post secondary level and to thrive in the increasingly technological world in which we live. Set all of this in a bureaucratic quagmire where actually educating the students (rather than just managing them) is a near impossibility and one begins to feel as though this is a hopeless situation. But this is where Stuck in the Shallow End actually triumphs. In the midst of grim reality it offers hope, showing how researchers, teachers, and administrators can work together to acknowledge and overcome the ingrained inequalities that keep so many of our students from achieving their full potential. And it should also be mentioned that this is not just a thoughtful book, it is also extremely well-written and accessible, even to the most dedicated non-techie.



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