While the use of Twitter for communication and assessment activities in online courses is not new, it has not been without its challenges. This is increasingly true of high enrolment courses. The use of a Twitter Evaluation application which leverages a Learning Management System's (LMS's) application programming interface (API) provides a…

Recently, with the development of more powerful and accurate computational tools, the inclusion of new didactic materials in the classroom is known to have increased. However, the form in which these materials can be used to enhance the learning process is still under debate. Many different methodologies have been suggested for constructing new…

Classroom Web sites have the potential to support and enhance student learning by targeting 21st century skills, such as collaboration among teachers, students, parents, and other teachers, media literacy, and interpersonal and self-directional skills, as well as thinking and problem-solving skills. Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, vokis, and podcasts…

Any school interested in preparing students for learning and working in 21st century academic and job settings needs this resource to explain to teachers the new skills students need and provide teachers with tools to teach and reinforce these skills. Based on the work of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, this action tool defines what…

As many educators and parents have observed, today's children are exposed to advanced technology at an early age, with tablets, e-readers, and smartphones being some prevalent choices. Experiences with technology can pave the way for unprecedented learning opportunities. However, without an education component, technology cannot reach its full…

Emergent technologies offer opportunities to understand concepts in deeper, often different, and more meaningful ways. However, this growth in understanding will occur only if teachers learn to use these technologies in effective ways. The federal initiative Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) was launched in 1999 to address this…

Experienced e-learning faculty members share strategies for implementing a comprehensive postsecondary faculty development program essential to continuous improvement of instructional skills. The high-impact META Model (centered around Mentoring, Engagement, Technology, and Assessment) promotes information sharing and content creation, and fosters…

Several studies have shown the complexities that teachers faced when planning for instruction in technology enhanced learning environments (TELE). Although classroom-oriented instructional development (ID) models have the potential to help teachers think and plan for effective instruction with technology, teachers are often reluctant to use these…

To prepare 21st Century school leaders, educational leadership professors need to learn and teach the utilization of increasingly sophisticated technologies in their courses. The co-authors, a professor and an educational specialist degree candidate, describe how the use of advanced technologies--such as Wikis, Google Docs, Wimba Classroom, and…

At Michigan State University the two medical schools, College of Human Medicine (CHM; M.D. degree) and College of Osteopathic Medicine (COM; D.O. degree), have offered the same science courses to first year students for many years. Science departments report to both colleges, and the same faculty can effectively teach the content required in the…

A participatory culture driven by user-generated content has emerged in the world outside schools. Each day, more than 100,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube alone. According to the Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State University, 80% of the two-minute video clips are created by the users who post them--teenage authors working outside school.…

The purpose of this study was to pilot an instructional planning tool grounded in guided self-reflection on the instructional planning practices and instructional behaviors of a small sample of teachers. I designed the instructional planning tool, which was named the Informed Technology Integration Guide (ITIG). Participants used the instructional…

This book, written by authors representing 12 countries and five continents, is a collection of international perspectives on distance learning and distance learning implementations in higher education. The perspectives are presented in the form of practical case studies of distance learning implementations, research studies on teaching and…

The present moment in the history of higher education requires setting strategies and specific action plans to guarantee a place in the highly competitive and demanding world scenario. The incorporation of information and communication technologies is one of the feasible paths to be considered, but this requires formulating proposals insuring…

The book consists of 46 chapters by numerous authors, divided into six parts. Part 1, "The Moving Target: Instructional Development from a Philosophical Vantage Point," addresses the questions: To what extent is instructional design in fact a valid and thriving area? and To what extent and in what quarters is it considered to be a dying or…