Readers have experienced the acceleration in music technology developments in recent years. The ease with which students and teacher can access digital audio files, video clips of music performances, and online instructional resources is impressive. Creativity "environments" were developed in a game-like format for children to experiment with…

CD-ROM storybooks, often referred to as electronic texts, e-books, and interactive stories, are learning tools with supplemental features such as automatic reading of text, sound effects, word pronunciations, and graphic animations which support the development of reading skills and comprehension in beginning readers. Some CD-ROM storybooks also…

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of static images that creates the illusion of movement. This optical illusion is often called perception of motion, persistence of vision, illusion of motion, or short-range apparent motion. The phenomenon occurs when the eye is exposed to rapidly changing still images, with each image being changed…

This article discusses how the "funds of knowledge" approach (FoK) offers a socially just alternative to the logics of capital, by drawing on knowledge assets from students' family and community lifeworlds to build engaging and rigorous learning, supporting school-community interactions that build capacities. We explain how we applied…

In this paper, we describe animations and animated visualizations for introductory and intermediate-level quantum mechanics instruction developed at the University of St Andrews. The animations aim to help students build mental representations of quantum mechanics concepts. They focus on known areas of student difficulty and misconceptions by…

This practical teachers' guide will help you to unlock the enormous potential of new technology in order to enhance pupils' learning, particularly for young people with additional needs. Written by two of the UK's leading technology experts, this new resource will enable you to use ICT effectively to make lessons more accessible, motivating and…

Technology can be a powerful tool to increase motivation, engagement, and achievement (Park, Khan, and Petrina 2009). In this article, the authors describe their collaborative approach to integrating technology with a lab on bacterial transformation. Students view websites and create videos to increase their conceptual understanding. Although the…

Imagination might be understood as letting our senses, perceptions and sensibilities run free for no apparent reason. Here, for this special edition what might be "remarkable" is the "opening" of our imagination provided orally through storytelling. This opening involves the "placing" of our own and our listeners'…

This article provides tips for K-12 educators to help students communicate and create using visual motion media, photography, and technology. One of the most popular and successful techniques in teaching students to create and communicate using media is student-produced animation. Before educators engage students in an animation project of any…

This article describes the process of producing "Snow Soup"--the 2009 Adobe Flash animation produced by the Computer Game Development and Animation seniors of Washington County Technical High School in Hagerstown, Maryland, for libraries in their area. In addition to the Flash product, the students produced two related Game Maker games, a printed…

Animations have become a ubiquitous component of computer-based instruction. Despite their widespread use, however, the evidence concerning their effects on learning is rather ambiguous, suggesting that one needs to have a closer look at the conditions under which animations will aid learning. Accordingly, three sets of moderating variables were…

This paper reports on a design experiment conducted to explore the construction of meanings by 17 year old students, emerging from their interpretations and uses of algebraic like formalism. The students worked collaboratively in groups of two or three, using MoPiX, a constructionist computational environment with which they could create concrete…

In Part 1 ("TechTrends" 52.3), the authors described some of the easier kinds of animation such as Claymation, Pixillation, Cut Outs, People Pix, and FlipBook. Of these, FlipBook has the easiest learning curve. Now, in Part 2, they detail their first simple lesson in animation by describing how an entire classroom of students can create a group…

A vastly influential form of film-making seen by millions of people, educational films provide a catalog of twentieth century preoccupations and values. As a medium of instruction and guidance, they held a powerful cultural position, producing knowledge both inside and outside the classroom. This is the first collection of essays to address this…

As English increasingly becomes the international language, many ministerial and educational organisations have identified the need to improve the competence of Thai students in speaking English. While there is significant research devoted to developing software tools to support the teaching of English as a second language, they are mostly…