This article shows how a group of language teachers use Twitter as a tool for continuous professional development through the #MFLtwitterati hashtag. Based on data collected through a survey (n = 116) and interviews (n = 11), it describes how this collective of teachers use the hashtag and evaluates the impact of their Twitter network on their…

Issues of universities students harnessing and capitalizing the usage of Facebook for their own learning capabilities and effective thinking is always the focus of education scholars, in assessing the quality class assignments and projects produced by them. Therefore, Facebook is now becoming unbearable influence since the internet activation in…

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe and understand how teachers describe the changes in their practices as a result of ten years participation in a one-to-one environment. This research study focuses on one successful middle school's adoption of laptops to support teaching and learning. A qualitative study using interviews of key…

Many researchers have found that the main reason teachers participate in peer-to-peer professional development networks (PDNs) is to seek and share professional knowledge. Yet, the majority of studies about PDNs focus on how and why teachers participate in these virtual spaces rather than how teachers find and distribute knowledge. Each PDN has…

Adult men create zines (self-publications written as alternative to commercial magazines) that advance content learning and knowledge. We describe three of these zine writers who created five zines on topics related to the disciplines of science, social studies, and English/language arts. We collected their zines, interviewed the authors, and…

Situated within an informal learning context, this study examines how a group of pre-service teachers in Hong Kong use Facebook and Google Sites on their own initiative to fulfil their academic and socio-emotional needs during their teaching practice. Also included in the study are the motivating and inhibiting factors that influence student…

In online learning environments, tutors have several problems to carry out their activities, such as evaluating the student, knowing the right way to guide each student, promoting discussions, and knowing the right time to interact or let students build knowledge alone. We consider scenarios in which teaching and learning occurs in online social…

Researchers describe with increasing confidence "what" they observe participants doing in massive open online courses (MOOCs). However, our understanding of learner activities in open courses is limited by researchers' extensive dependence on log file analyses and clickstream data to make inferences about learner behaviors. Further, the…

Because social technologies present illuminating educational, ethical, economic, and structural challenges to existing constructions of public education, they catalyze a fundamental examination of what public education should look like and be like in a democracy. Given their performances in other arenas, mobile and electronic technologies have the…

According to Swain, Kinnear, & Steinman (2011), we use a language with others as a form of shared cognition, and in the process we scaffold each other. This action research investigates how students' online written output affects each other's writing. One thousand twenty online entries written by 21 Japanese university sophomore English majors…

The aim of this research is to determine the effect of an education programme developed based on the school-based outdoor education approach on the academic achievement of visual arts teachers, as well as their self-efficacy beliefs for using museums and the natural environment. The aim is likewise to explore the views of the teachers on the…

The Professors of Instructional Design and Technology (PIDT) conference has been successful since 1985 at providing an opportunity for professors and their advanced doctoral students to learn and grow in ways not possible at traditional conferences. This article reports on the 2012 annual meeting and summarizes the history of PIDT, as gleaned by…

Context: The past decade has witnessed a sustained emphasis on information and communication technologies (ICT) in education, coupled with the rise of online social media and increasing pervasiveness of personal media devices. Research Question: Our research question asked: How has this changing context affected the educational experiences of…

Marcie Boucouvalas, Ph.D., having worked with an array of cultures and contexts, has served for decades as professor and program director of adult learning and human resource development, Department of Human Development, at Virginia Tech's Graduate Center/National Capital Region, offering master of science and doctor of philosophy degrees to…

Although social networking sites (SNS) are increasingly popular among students, their academic application is unfolding on trial basis and best practices for integration into mainstream teaching are yet to be fully realised. More importantly, is the need to understand how these sites shape academic relations and participation of heterogeneous…