"Education Matters" is the monthly newsletter of the Association of American Educators (AAE), an organization dedicated to advancing the American teaching profession through personal growth, professional development, teacher advocacy and protection. This issue of the newsletter includes: (1) You Speak Out: 2010 AAE Member Survey; (2) Five Ways to…

"Teaching Middle School Language Arts" is the first book on teaching middle school language arts for multiple intelligences and related twenty-first-century literacies in technologically and ethnically diverse communities. More than 670,000 middle school teachers (grades six through eight) are responsible for educating nearly 13 million students…

Facebook (FB) is currently considered as the most popular platform for online social networking among university students. The purpose of this study is to investigate if university students consider FB as a useful and meaningful learning environment that could support, enhance and/or strengthen their learning of the English language. A survey was…

This report explores the first iteration of a teacher professional development courselet grounded in constructionist theory and activities. This online teacher professional development (oTPD) courselet provided opportunities for teachers to engage in just-in-time, ongoing TPD within a social networking site for educators. The topic of the oTPD was…

A proper use of e-collaboration technologies in the teaching/learning process is provided by varied cooperative networks, which penetrate teachers' and students' activity more thoroughly with the availability of broadband services. However, the successful use of e-collaboration technologies in teaching/learning activity within a multicultural…

Social tagging, familiar to most students because of the great popularity of YouTube and Flickr, has emerged as a social networking tool for organizing the vast quantities of information available on the Internet. We incorporated one of the more popular social tagging utilities, del.icio.us, as a teaching tool in two different chemistry classes.…

As support and professional-development opportunities for teachers begin to move from conference rooms to chat rooms, a burgeoning number of states and districts are drawing on features from course-management software and popular social-networking sites to establish online networks connecting teachers to peers who may live dozens or even hundreds…

When it comes to technologies like digital games, simulations, and social networking, teachers and students may find themselves at cross purposes. Often, students find that these technologies, so prevalent in their lives outside of school, are unwelcome in their classrooms. Many teachers can tell stories about the disruptive influence of video…

Background: Numerous surveys, articles, ephemera and online information sources indicate that "Second Life" has been the predominant virtual world, for educational purposes, in UK universities for the latter half of the 2000s. However, the infrastructure required to operate "Second Life" presents a number of technical concerns…

This paper discusses the outcomes of a professional development project offered to faculty of Arizona State University's College of Teacher Education and Leadership. The goal of this project was to assist instructors with progressing technologies and to help them transform their pedagogy to leverage the affordances provided through the integration…

In today's society, the professional development of teachers is urgent due to the constant change in working conditions and the impact that information and communication technologies have in teaching practices. "Online Learning Communities and Teacher Professional Development: Methods for Improved Education Delivery" features innovative…

This update to Garrett (1991), "Technology in the Service of Language Learning: Trends and Issues," explores current uses of technology to facilitate the teaching and assessment of second languages. In this article, I discuss the changes that have taken place over the last 18 years regarding selected topics from the 1991 article, including the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of literature on the role of Web 2.0 or social software tools in education. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is a critical and comprehensive review of a range of literature sources (until January 2009) addressing the various issues related to the educator's perspective of pedagogical…

Online education continues to permeate mainstream teaching techniques in higher education settings. Teaching upper-level classes in an online setting is having a major impact on education as a whole and is fundamentally altering global learning. "Cases on Critical and Qualitative Perspectives in Online Higher Education" offers a…

Representatives from more than 20 institutions making up a research and teaching network met to discuss and investigate a web application designed to promote knowledge sharing and understanding. The web application, called Fieldtrip, enables students, professors and researchers to virtually share their experiences and findings from real field…