The purpose of this quantitative study was to test the theory of connectivism (Downes, 2012) by comparing Twitter educational followership and no Twitter educational followership in terms of the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS) rating scores for elementary, junior high, and high school teachers in a large urban public-school…

Classes of hundreds pose special challenges for teaching and learning. Notable among these challenges is the tendency for students to feel like anonymous spectators rather than active, collaborative participants. To combat this tendency, we used the popular social networking site Facebook to cultivate a sense of community among 200-plus students…

More districts realize that communicating in a clear and engaging way with stakeholders about everything from the district's overall education vision to scholastic and extracurricular success stories can go a long way toward enlisting broad community support. And although face-to-face communications are still important, technology provides a…

Technology has the potential to improve education but only if it is applied with purpose and consideration of the audience. Understanding technology's role in education goes beyond the comparison of tools; there is a need to better understand student acceptance of technology so appropriate educational scaffolding and support can be provided. The…

Five months ago, the author introduced Web 2.0 technology to her students, and already, there is a story to tell. Integrating a social networking site into her teaching has been even more challenging and will prove to be even more beneficial than she could have imagined. By sharing her story, the author hopes that she can provide a road map for…

Technological innovation is driving fundamental changes in all aspects of our lives. This is especially true of digital content, as our use of e-books, downloadable music, streaming television and movies, and online social networks has exploded. However, the explosive growth in our use of digital content seems so far to have eluded many of the 50…

For the thirty-third year, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. This is Volume #2 of the 33rd "Annual Proceedings of Selected Papers on the Practice of Educational Communications and Technology." This volume includes…