Rural schools face unique and complex challenges and opportunities specific to rural contexts. Recognizing this, the Region 15 Comprehensive Center (R15CC) created and facilitates a community of practice (COP), the Rural COP, focused specifically on rural education in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. The goals of this COP are to share…

The Networking "Menu" is a customizable learning experience for online students to explore various ways to network virtually and to sharpen their networking skills. The "menu" offers four networking options for students to select from. Some networking options require that students network with their peers via virtual platforms…

To travel hopefully is to have faith that an investment today will pay dividends tomorrow. In this article, the authors discuss several different kinds of professional investments that have paid off for them throughout their academic careers. Some of these dividends are obvious. They can be measured in dollars and cents earned as a result of…

The relevance of the study is due to the problem of finding optimal solutions for organizing training sessions, the need to form the personality of a teacher in a difficult social and pedagogical situation. The leading research method is a pedagogical experiment on the organization of distance learning for students, the method of theoretical…

For school librarians, being part of a "connected" community provides support for getting specific needs met, solving personally relevant and meaningful problems, and developing professional expertise. AASL provides many avenues for members of the profession to learn with and from one another. These include AASL and subgroup electronic…

The challenges that massive open online courses (MOOCs) bring to the learning arena spur adult educators to improve delivery. A framework for a new type of MOOC is presented to address some of the challenges presented by earlier models. This new MOOC, called a mesoMOOC, can bridge several challenges that hinder current effective delivery of MOOCs…

Community, while inherent in assumptions about online education, rarely materializes as an integral component of the experience. Misconceptions and misguided motivations can derail participation and engagement in the online setting. Creating a successful online community is dependent on knowing what works in the face-to-face environment and…

This presentation examines child and adolescent social networking with an emphasis on how this unprecedented form of communication can be used to contribute to healthy growth and development. Most literature about child and adolescent relationships reflects yesterday's world, a time when face-to-face encounters were the only concern. Students saw…

The first five articles of this series on technologies that enable collaboration, highlighted ways to foster shared learning experiences among students. For this, the final installment, focus is shifted to teachers. States, districts, and groups of teachers are enhancing their collaboration opportunities through synchronous online meetings and…

Although arguably one of the most popular education conversations to follow on Twitter, #edchat is hardly alone. Hashtag conversations have been popping up over the last few years, and many have caught on for specialized conversations on elementary schools, technology, professional development, mobile learning, principals and administrators, among…

While e-mail remains the official method of communication on most campuses, colleges are expanding their presence in the virtual world, trying to reach students where they hang out. But without careful planning, that can lead to a scattershot approach as new platforms keep popping up and students' attention becomes increasingly dispersed. The…

Being a solo librarian today is certainly challenging; however, because of technological interconnectedness, today's solo librarian is definitely not alone. Technology allows a school librarian to immediately and constantly connect and interact with other school librarians. This article discusses online resources and websites that will allow a…

This article describes how some school districts are using social networking Web sites like Twitter and Facebook to tout their accomplishments and communicate with the public. In addition to informing users of upcoming school events and showing pictures from school activities, a district's Facebook site has links to local news stories about…

According to (P21), Partnership for 21st Century Skills (n.d.), unless the gap is bridged between how students learn and how they live, today's education system will face irrelevance. The way people work and live has been transformed by demographic, economic, political, technological, and informational forces. Schools must adapt to these…

It's the end of an era in alumni relations. For many alumni associations, events and programs continue to have declining attendance and participation while the costs of offering them continue to increase. Social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts, and other Web 2.0 tools offer new ways to communicate with alumni, not to mention new ways for…