This edited volume covers the range of critical trends in the use of computers and other devices for classroom teaching, online learning, professional development, school improvement, and student assessment. "Spotlight on Technology in Education" draws on expert sources including teacher-leaders, librarians, researchers, and trainers who…

Given the challenges facing higher education in the fast-changing educational and social environment, what can be learned from an instructor who has braved the rapidly changing stream of technologies and has subsequently developed a personal and productive approach to using emerging technologies to teach better and farther? What aspects of…

Collaborative learning is well suited to online learning environments built around threaded discussion. Research frameworks have developed around these practices providing methodological guidance for examining learning as a collective endeavor within the boundaries of a course. Understanding how to use the powerful learning techniques involved in…

Internet is a new media for distance education that provides students with a low-cost, flexible option to expand into global markets (Casey, 1998). By 2004 at least two million higher-education students in the U.S. were engaged in distance education utilizing various technologies that allow learners to take courses independent of time and location…

Distance education is becoming a more common method of curriculum delivery across grade levels in Australia, the United States and throughout the world. Especially in remote rural areas with sparse student populations, distance delivery of course work is often the only available means for students to learn and for teachers to teach. The days of…

Distance education (DE) practices around the world use a wide range of audio-visual technologies to overcome the lack of direct contact between teachers and students. These are not universally adopted by DE teachers, however, nor even encouraged by their institutions. This article discusses the organisational attitudes that can lead to outdated…

In our modern world of cellular phone calls, text messaging, and electronic mail, letter writing has become a lost art. What better way to motivate today's youth to experience the pleasure of "snail mail" than by reading a tale told through a series of such correspondence? The winning combination of a good story line and entertaining…

Blogs are a hot topic in academia. A search on "blog" in the "Chronicle of Education's" Web site returns nearly two hundred articles, covering such topics as the dangers an impolitic blog can do to an institution's leaders (Read, 2006) or the blogger's career (Tribble, 2005) and the mutual use of blogs by instructors to lambaste students (Lipka,…

This article explores the usefulness and validity of self-selected online student ratings of faculty. These ratings appear to be increasing in importance, particularly as students utilize them as guides in their choice of instructors. Validity is investigated by analyzing the pattern of relationships of online ratings for 399 randomly selected…

Originally, blogs served as personal journaling tools. Recently, blogs have facilitated the formation of online communities and have thus expanded to more extensive uses in education. Little has been learned about using blogs as a collaboration tool in educational contexts. In this article, the authors share their experiences with using blogs to…

One technology made possible through Web 2.0 is podcasting. Podcasts are audio, video, text, and other media files that can be played on the computer or downloaded to MP3 players. This article discusses how to create a podcast and ways to use this technology in education. Benefits and issues related to podcasting are also provided.

As any instructor knows, the easy availability of internet content has greatly increased student opportunities for work that is less than original. Today, the term plagiarism can range in meaning from using an unattributed phrase or sentence (accidentally or intentionally) to submitting entire purchased works as one's own. The profusion of online…

There are many mathematics teachers now who, when entering a classroom without a data projector and internet connection, feel as though they are flying on one wing--such are the amazing opportunities that these relatively new gadgets can offer. The author believes that teaching with dynamic images (from software and the web) makes mathematics…

One fifth of Americans smoke; many have no plans to quit. Motivational Interviewing (MI) is an effective approach to intervention with precontemplative smokers, yet a substantial number of healthcare practitioners lack training in this approach. Two interactive online tutorials were developed to teach practitioners to deliver brief tobacco…

Training, organizational support, attitude and national culture were explored in relation to college students' Internet usage. Samples were drawn from India, Mauritius and Reunion Island (an overseas Department of France). Each nation differs culturally from the others. Questionnaire data was collected on students' Internet usage as well as the…