Purpose: Applications of online Second Life (SL) prevail over the world. The purpose of this paper is to make a review and synthesis of recent research studies on SL. Design/methodology/approach: Documental analysis is employed. Totally, 135 research publications, published in 2006-2008, are reviewed and synthesized. Findings: Findings are as…

Case-study descriptions of secondary and middle school classrooms in diverse contexts provide examples of how teachers implement connected classroom technology to facilitate formative assessment in science instruction. Connected classroom technology refers to a networked system of handheld devices designed for classroom use. Teachers were…

Since the consent to the Salamanca Statement on special needs education from 1994, e-learning developers have focused on tools aimed to support dyslexic learners. The importance of these efforts is on display every year in the Special Aids exhibition area at the BETT-event in London. ICT and e-learning is now widely used in the special needs…

In this article, we present the results of a qualitative research project on the effect of motion analysis activities in a Video-Based Laboratory (VBL) on students' understanding of position, velocity and frames of reference. The participants in our research were 48 pre-service teachers enrolled in Education Departments with no previous strong…

The authors designed a computer-based approach to enhance motivation and self-regulated learning. Participants of the quasi-experimental study were 6th-grade students (N = 151) who worked with a mathematics-learning software program during regular classroom instruction. In the 1st condition, students received attributional software-generated…

This paper reviews the literature related to the learning and teaching of debugging computer programs. Debugging is an important skill that continues to be both difficult for novice programmers to learn and challenging for computer science educators to teach. These challenges persist despite a wealth of important research on the subject dating…

This study documented efforts to facilitate ideas of beginning inference in novice grade 7 students. A design experiment allowed modified teaching opportunities in light of observation of components of a framework adapted from that developed by Pfannkuch for teaching informal inference with box plots. Box plots were replaced by hat plots, a…

This qualitative work analyzes what parents, teachers, and children say about reading when Accelerated Reader and Reading Renaissance are used for reading instruction. Critical discourse analysis offered a glimpse at beliefs about reading and how power relations were embedded in what teachers, parents, and children said about AR and reading.…

This article is a review of the pedagogical experience obtained with systems for algorithmic animation. Algorithms consist of a sequence of operations whose effect on data structures can be visualized using a computer. Students learn algorithms by stepping the animation through the different individual operations, possibly reversing their effect.…

When integrated appropriately into the curriculum, technology can support the achievement of specific learning outcomes. To help newcomers to technology, the paper lists professional journals, technology organizations, and quality software and multimedia catalogs and presents a list of strategies teachers can use to evaluate whether technology can…

This electronic utility promises to instantly deliver to the classroom a vast array of constantly updated instructional materials--software, textbooks, news services, video, databases, reference sources, word processing, and spreadsheet tools--and to bring all of technology's capabilities together into one integrated system. (Author)

The author offers information on 11 modification techniques that may make commercial software programs more appropriate for learning disabled students. (CL)

The article argues that even extremely young children can be taught to program microcomputers from their very first contact. A teaching strategy is proposed, having more in common with the teaching of language than with the more traditional didactic-reinforcement cycle commonly employed in the text books. (Author/CL)

Seven software programs for spelling instruction are reviewed, and the author notes that such programs use creative ways to reduce the drudgery of rote memorization. Programs also incorporate graphics, recordkeeping, initial sound emphasis, rules of syllabication, sight work instruction, and speech synthesizers. (CL)

Reviews some computer-assisted language programs now in use. Sees the benefits of computer-assisted instruction as: (1) allowing teachers to structure the students' interaction with the material, (2) allowing the process to be displayed as a process, and (3) providing efficient use of the stored material by various levels of users. (SED)