This paper presents a summary of the key findings of the TTF TPACK Survey developed and administered for the Teaching the Teachers for the Future (TTF) Project implemented in 2011. The TTF Project, funded by an Australian Government ICT Innovation Fund grant, involved all 39 Australian Higher Education Institutions which provide initial teacher…

It's time to prepare teachers to take the plunge to teach in virtual worlds. Students are already there and their teachers need to follow. Unfortunately, teachers are often resistant to change their teaching practice, especially regarding the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) such as virtual worlds. The authors report on the…

This article reports on a survey of more than 2,300 students and 250 staff members conducted at the University of Tasmania as part of a wider review of e-learning practice, demand and capacity which aims to improve planning, decision-making and the quality of the online experience of students and staff. Data was collected on access to technology,…

Based on a three-semester design-based research study examining learning and teaching in a web-conferencing environment, this article identifies types of synchronous collaboration competencies and reveals their influence on learning processes. Four levels of online collaborative competencies were observed--operational, interactional, managerial,…

This paper presents the findings of a study that focused on developing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) competency in pre-service teacher education Units of Study. The study adopted a collaborative-learn-technology-by-design conceptual framework. One-hundred and twenty pre-service teachers participated in the semester-long study.…

The Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF) project engaged teacher educators from all Australian institutions in a professional learning network that provided targeted professional development and fostered collaboration within and between teacher education institutions and relevant teacher education partners to build capacity within each…

In this increasingly convergent and digital world, young people are reportedly using new media with high engagement outside school, yet disengaged in those schools where technology access is low or restricted. Such an apparent disconnection is magnified when predictions of their futures are tied to requisites including technological expertise,…

The current generation of young children has been described as "digital natives", having been born into a ubiquitous digital media environment. They are envisaged as educationally independent of the guided interaction provided by "digital immigrants": parents and teachers. This article uses data from the Longitudinal Study of…

The mature-age learner's re-engagement with a formal learning environment may be somewhat akin to the novice Paintball player who, unless well positioned and attuned to the rules of the combative game, is bombarded and worn down by constant "hits". For the mature-age learner, such "hits" may come in the form of tensions…

Significant efforts have now been made to identify the generic competencies required to succeed across different workplace contexts. The aims of this paper were to: (i) outline factors that contributed to the increased demand for generic competencies seen over the last three decades; and (ii) review the early generic competency frameworks…

This article assumes that literacy practices are social practices. Based on the New Literacy Studies (Street, 2005) this view of literacy provides an understanding that the ways a person reads and writes change, depending on that person's identity, the type of texts that are involved and the context in which those texts and identities are located.…

This article presents the results of a study into the provision of Internet training for adult public library clients. The study, which was completed in 2008, forms part of a larger investigation into the characteristics, preferences and needs of adult public library clients in New South Wales. The aim of this section of the investigation is to…

Research has shown that girls do not participate as much as boys in Information Technology (IT) in the senior years of high school. Despite research in the 1990s which identified the under-representation of girls in IT, the same pattern still continues. In addition, the complex reasons for this gender divide, and how to counter it, remain unclear.…

Research has established young children's increasing use of computers and other new technologies in the home. Yet, teaching about digital texts and digital practices most often appears as an addition to early literacy instruction in classrooms where "business-as-usual" maintains an emphasis on print and print-based texts. This article…

Classroom teachers routinely make judgments on the quality of their students' work based on their recognition of how effectively the student has assembled key features of the genre or the medium. Yet how readily can teachers talk about the features of student-created multimodal texts in ways that can improve learning and performance? This article…