The author and his colleague, Deborah Polin, traveled around the United States to get a first-hand look at how teachers are developing successful Web 2.0 activities for their classrooms. With funding from Intel, they interviewed 39 educators in 22 schools throughout the country about how they employed these tools in their classrooms in innovative…

Because of the potentialities and influences of information communication technologies (ICTs) in facilitating research and instruction in higher education, students' learning products and processes can no longer be restricted to ink on paper. The problem, however, is that ICT use for instructional purposes by staff members at institutions of…

The instructional design and the corresponding research on student learning of two virtual laboratories that provide an engineering task situated in an industrial context are described. In this problem-based learning environment, data are generated dynamically based on each student team's distinct choices of reactor parameters and measurements.…

A hybrid course of Molecular Symmetry and Group Theory which combines traditional face-to-face instruction with an online web enhanced learning environment within a Course Management System was designed, developed, and implemented with a purpose to establish an active and student-centred educational setting. Multi-representational educational…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on one high school English-language-learner's (ELL) breadth and depth of vocabulary as he communicated with his teacher through e-mail across geographic boundaries for over 18 months. Design/methodology/approach: The authors began by separating 358 e-mails into three time periods (first beginning,…

The mounting wealth of open and readily available information and the accelerated evolution of social, mobile and creative technologies call for a re-conceptualisation of the role of educators: from providers of knowledge to designers of learning. This call is reverberated by the rising trend of research in learning design (LD). Addressing this,…

"Making a Difference in the Classroom: The Reality and Truth of Teaching in Schools Today" makes the case that our schools will continue to struggle until we take an honest approach to what we know works in the classroom. This book is a frank discussion about what teachers face and what teacher candidates should know before they enter…

This study examined the nature of communication experienced by ethnically diverse students who participated in an online distance education course. A quantitative survey research design was used to gather data from students enrolled in an online distance education course. The research examined whether the independent variables, (a) instructional…

In this paper, we propose a grouping strategy to enhance the learning and testing results of students, called Pairing Strategy (PS). The proposed method stems from the need of interactivity and the desire of cooperation in cooperative learning. Based on the social networks of students, PS provides members of the groups to learn from or mimic…

The study investigates the use of different multimedia instructional design formats on learning. Undergraduate students from the College of Education at a public university in the United Arab Emirates were randomly assigned to groups corresponding to six instructional design formats, namely; Listen Only, Read Only, Read+ Listen, Listen + Graphics,…

Digital storytelling constitutes a pedagogical tool for teachers to work on different linguistic skills while generating students' interest and attention. This study analyses the usefulness of including digital storytelling within a didactic sequence in order to work on linguistic routines such as greetings and leave-takings in English as a…

Online classroom management issues pose new problems for the online instructor and pose seductive communicative options for students. This exploratory group of studies examined Blackboard/WEBCT[TM] data as collected for the course designer of an online course as possible indicators of "whispering" or backchanneling between students with…

During the past three years, a team from the Centre for Science Education at Sheffield Hallam University, the University of Salford, the University of York, Glasshead and Teachers TV, has been working in collaboration to develop a series of blended media resources to support the teaching and learning of How Science Works (HSW) at Key Stages 3 and…

The article describes and discusses the learning potential of unofficial techno-literacy activities in the classroom with regards to Swedish 7-8-year-olds' exploration of semiotic resources when interacting with computers. In classroom contexts where every child works with his or her own computer, such activities tend to take up a substantial…

In this article, the author investigates the teaching and writing of poetry within public school spaces, illuminating how the work of poetry in an Academic Interventions classroom stirs new visions of who the students and the teacher can be. The study involves five teachers from a range of rural, urban, and suburban districts. These teachers…