Volume 4 - issue 1 - 2008
Editorial - Open Access and accessing openness
Seminar.net enters it’s fourth year, and has reached a state of maturity in a number of meanings: 
it receives manuscripts from all continents, the articles are read from 134 countries, of which India represents the highest number of readers, a number of articles have been read by more than 10 000 interested persons, and the frequency of issues is now three per year, and will reach four by next year. Interested parties now approach us in order to learn about our policies and practices.
it receives manuscripts from all continents, the articles are read from 134 countries, of which India represents the highest number of readers, a number of articles have been read by more than 10 000 interested persons, and the frequency of issues is now three per year, and will reach four by next year. Interested parties now approach us in order to learn about our policies and practices.New teacher functions in cyberspace - on technology, mass media and education
Mie Buhl is a lecturer at The School of Education, University of Aarhus, Denmark, where she heads the Department of Pedagogical Anthropology. She addresses the expansion of the professional duties of the teacher to extend beyond merely acting as a disseminator of knowledge and facilitating learning processes for the student. Information technology exposes the teacher’s performative dimensions: how teachers choose their acts in certain situations, and how that demands an intensified reflexivity. The article argues that teachers must meet increasing expectations to perform on the premises of mass media and asks how this displaces the premises for educational practice.
Constructing the challenge of digital didactics:
the rhetoric, remediation and realities of the UK Digital Curriculum
Neil Selwyn works at the London KnowledgeLab, UK. In his paper he uses Bolter and Grusin’s remediation approach in investigating the manner in which new forms of digital media are re-casting the communicative and epistemological import of knowledge, teaching and learning. He critically analyses the disparity between the rhetoric and reality of how information technologies are implemented in the UK. He focuses on the ”Digital Curriculum” project as an example of how didactics are undergoing a remediation in the digital age.
Identifying Needs: A Missing Part in Teacher Training Programs
Hosein Moeini is a faculty member in the department of Management Information Systems, faculty of Commercial Sciences at Baskent University, Ankara, Turkey. His paper addresses the changing compositions of student populations, changing paradigms in teaching and learning, and changing expectations about the quality of education. His concern is to promote a more professional approach to identify what teachers need in terms of professional development, in the area of information technology in particular, and to implement those insights into the training programs.
Dimensions of flexibility - Students, communication technology and distributed education
Ståle Angen Rye is a 1.lecturer at the University of Agder, Norway. He offers an analysis of the term ”Flexibility”. He notes that ”Flexibility” is frequently used when discussing higher education and in distance education or distributed education, in particular. It usually goes with terms like ”change”, but on a whole few more profound investigations of the term are offered. Rye find this surprising, and he aims with this article to clarify the concept of flexibility by relating it to students in distributed education and their study situation.