When the World Wide Web first went mainstream in the mid-1990s, people saw it primarily as a place to store and surf for information. The Web generated a lot of excitement among the education community in those early days. The past few years have witnessed the emergence of new ways to experience the World Wide Web. The term "Web 2.0" is frequently…

When Gloucestershire County Council's adult education service was inspected by Ofsted in October 2008, the processes that were being used for recognising and recording progress and achievement (known as RARPA) were found to be weak. Recognising the benefits of such processes to learners, the author successfully applied for funding from the…

Over the last decade blog (a contraction of "web log") has crept into the national lexicon and culture, transforming the way people communicate. Although exact numbers are difficult to gather, the Web site "Technorati" is tracking more than 112.8 million blogs. Rarely far removed from technology; cell phones, iPods, Facebook…

This article describes an art activity on self-portraiture inspired by artist Tim Hawkinson. Hawkinson created a sculpture titled "Emoter" in which his face, moved by motors, twisted and contorted based on random signals from a TV. This art activity incorporates technology into the art room, brings the work of practicing artists alive, and is a…

A computer algebra system is used to derive a theorem on the existence of roots of a quadratic equation on any bounded real interval. This is extended to a cubic polynomial. We discuss how students could be led to derive and prove these theorems. (Contains 1 figure.)

PhET Interactive Simulations (sims) are now being widely used in teaching physics and chemistry. Sims can be used in many different educational settings, including lecture, individual or small group inquiry activities, homework, and lab. Here we will highlight a few ways to use them in teaching, based on our research and experiences using them in…

Student-created media offer significant opportunities for engagement and learning. For the past five years, the authors have explored ways to incorporate Web-based authoring tools into the curriculum. In this article, they discuss PrimaryAccess, a suite of online tools that provides students with access to primary source documents on websites such…

Animals cannot teach as humans do. Therefore, we lack the experimental support of animal studies that are so important to understand the evolution of our basic learning skills but are useless to explore the development of the teaching skills, unique to humans. And most important: children teach! We have at least two new challenges in our Mind,…

For many years, educators have touted the benefits of learning with educational tools such as spreadsheets and databases that allow students to actively process and manipulate information (Jonassen, 1995). Hundreds if not thousands of Web 2.0 tools have been created in the last few years, taking the "technology as tool" metaphor to a new level. In…

In the last decade, the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) has gained an undeniable momentum. However, it is an easy trap to confuse download and registration rates with actual learning and interest in the adoption and reuse of OER. If we focus solely on access, we cannot differentiate between processes of mere information foraging and…

Many industries in the United States already have seen positive results and increased productivity from the effective use of technology. With the challenges currently facing the nation's education system--including a persistent dropout rate of nearly 30 percent, slashed state and district budgets, and the economically and socially important goals…

The LMS (learning management system) at many schools for delivering, tracking and managing education relies on TEL (technology-enhanced learning), what Nichols called "pedagogy empowered by digital technology" (Nichols, 2008). It includes the "paperless classroom" in traditional (not online) classes in which faculty and students exchange…

(Purpose) This article describes the basis for effective educational technology leadership and a few of the current initiatives and impacts that are a result of the aforementioned effective leadership. (Findings) Topics addressed in this paper include: (1) the role of the educational technology leader in an educational setting; (2) an examination…

This article will expand upon the techniques of Criminologist, D. Kim Rossmo, and Social Psychologist, David Canter for determining a serial criminal's base of operations. The basic framework for our investigation is that of Rossmo, but uses a different criterion for analysing the relationship of points within the hunting area defined by the crime…

As schools increasingly move towards 1:1 computing, research is required to inform the design and provision of this access. Utilising the Activity Theory (AT) notion of contradictions and expansion as a theoretical underpinning, this article suggests netbooks as a viable option to provide 1:1 computing for primary school students. Decisions…