Volume 9 of The Journal of the Learning Sciences marks 10 years of planning, involvement, and work by the journal's editorial board. It was Summer 1989 when Roger Schank, Allan Collins, and Andrew Ortony began work on making a new journal happen. Many in the cognitive science community felt it was time to start a new journal - one devoted to understanding learning and its implication, especially in the real world, and that would be open to publishing big ideas and out-of-discipline groundbreaking work in the area. They conviced LEA to publish the journal and went about the task of finding an editor. The Cognitive Science Conference in 1989 was where much of that work was done. I was one of the people they approached.
In early fall of 1989, I got a call from Roger, telling me I had been chosed. "Don't worry," he said. "Make a trip to Hillsdale, New Jersey. It's near where your parents live - go at Thanksgiving. Talk to Larry [Erlbaum]. He'll tell you everything you need to know about running a journal." That's what I did. I began the work of putting together an editorial board and finding a set of papers for the first volume in January 1990. I had no idea, when I got started making those phone calls, that there were so many people from so many of the areas that "learning sciences" might be who felt the need for a new journal. I began my education in the learning sciences with those phone calls. I learned that it wasn't only those from the cognitive sciences who felt that a new journal was in order, but that there were many focusing on social and sociocognitive issues in education who felt a new journal was needed as well. The journal's scope began to broaden with those calls. It needed to focus on cognitive as well as social and sociocognitie issues associated with learning. It had to focus on a far broader variety of methodologies than any community had focused on before - studying learning in the real world was much messier, I was told, than anything I could imagine. (I was a computational modeler at that time, focusing on case-based reasoning and learning from every-day experience.) Modeling on the computer might be a good centerpiece methodology for the kinds of cognitive science research I was used to, they told me, and laboratory experiments were fine for some things, protocol analysis for some, and controlled experiments and even quasi-experiments for other things. But, they said, these methodologies were not sufficient in order to influence the classroom. I would have to be sure to be open to other methodologies as well.
It became clear that this new journal was needed not only as an outlet for those from cognitive science, but that it needed to bring together those working on cognitive issues with those working on social issues associated with learning. And it needed to focus on work that took into account both theory and practice. And it needed to publish the kind of theory that could influence practice and interpretations of practice that could help us refine our theories. And it needed to help the community to learn about newly developing methodologies for research. And... And... and... The Journal of the Learning Sciences was born.....
Read more of Dr. Janet L. Kolodner's "Note From The Editor" in JLS Volume 9, Number 1.
Everyone who knew Ann will have their own perspective on the essence of her greatness. When I think of Ann I am struck by the brilliance of her insights, the elegance of her experiments, the beauty of her abilities to communicate, and the love she showed for people and life. I believe that Ann aligned all her talents in order to achieve one fundamental goal: To help students (of whatever age) develop competencies and confidence that far exceeded the norms of what was expected or typical.
I still remember hearing Ann present a conference paper over 20 years ago and being astounded by her brilliance. The next time I met her was on a grant review committee. I had read the grants and felt that I had a good grasp of their strong and weak points. After hearing Ann discuss them, I realized that I was a rank amateur. Her insights were amazing, yet she presented her ideas and arguments in a way that graciously acknowledged the ideas of all the others on the committee, including mine. Somehow, she gave me a glimpse of extremely high standards for excellence without making me lose confidence in my abilities. Throughout the 20 years that I have known her, I have continually been awed by her insights and appreciative of her graciousness. My most recent opportunity to work closely with Ann was on the How People Learn report published by the National Academy Press (1999). She was ill for some of that time yet her spirit was always apparent, as was her brilliance. She never lost the ability to graciously help me see that my attempts to write parts of the report had room to improve.
Ann worked in a variety of settings. During her early career she revealed the surprising competencies of children in an impressive array of ingenious laboratory-based experiments; later she demonstrated these points by creating learning environments in schools that were truly extraordinary. She treated the inner-city middle school students with whom she worked as she had treated me when I was first learning to review grants and when I worked with her on How People Learn: With an expectation of exceedingly high standards accompanied by a gracious acceptance of the initial struggles involved in attempts to learn something new.
Ann Brown was truly a treasure to our field and her absence saddens everyone. But her legacy will stay with us. As a scholar, teacher, and friend, the vision of Ann, her work, and her values will motivate and guide all of us - researchers, teachers and learners - as we strive to continually improve.
Connecting schools to the Internet is the subject of much recent discussion. In popular literature and political speech, school districts are urged to get connected, and recent proposals for educational reform include the mandate to get every classroom and library connected to the Internet by the year 2000. Recent information from the national Center for Education Statistics indicates that by the fall of 1998, 89% of U. S. schools, and 51% of instructional rooms were connected to the Internet (National Center for Education Statistics, 1999). Periodicals and research journals are filled with articles about the importance of being connected (Cafolla & Knee, 1997; Dixon & Falba, 1997; Owston, 1997; Windschitl, 1998). The World Wide Web in particular has become a virtual boom-town for on-line education, with teachers , administrators, and parents eager to gain access to this seemingly boundless resource (Milken Exchange on Educational Technology, 1998; Schofield , Davidson, Stocks & Futoran, 1997).
At the same time, research about use of the Web in K-12 classrooms is at an early stage (Windschitl, 1998). The body of research about Internet use in K -12 classrooms includes research on coordinated on-line projects during which students share data and communicate with others about what they have found ( Ruben, 1994; Ruopp, Gal, Drayton & Pfister, 1993; Songer, 1996; Tinker, 1994) ; collaborative projects which feature student to student communication ( Garner & Gillingham, 1996); and design and implementation of projects which deliver content via the Web (Edelson, 1996; Linn, 1996). Additional research is needed to understand the variety of uses of the Internet in K-12 classrooms, including its use as a source of diverse and up-to-date information in stand-alone (non-collaborative) activities.
This study explores sixth grade students' activities as they carry out an assignment on the Web. We look for evidence of how students interpret and carry out the assignment, how they go about finding and using information, and how they use Web technologies. The activity described here was part of the University of Michigan's Digital Library (UMDL) and the Middle Years Digital Library (MYDL) projects (Atkins et al., 1996). These data were collected early in the project before deployment of a digital library. We were seeking to gain a better understanding of student response to the environment of the Web as part of a task analysis for design of digital library tools and structures. We realized that using the Internet with students would present complex challenges for teaching and for designing instruction, neither of which is the subject of this study. Here, we focus on understanding what students make of the Web as an information resource, and what issues their use raises for the design of tools and structures needed to create useful and usable digital information environments.