New Directions Alternative Education Center, Prince William County Public School's (PWCS) alternative high school, serves approximately 1000 students on a rolling-enrollment basis each year. The 2009-2010 school year marks the sixth year of operation for the center. The school program continues to develop and grow in exciting and "new…

Using a response to intervention framework, this study investigates the efficacy of a classroom-based intervention for struggling readers with decoding deficits in the upper elementary grades. Twenty two students in the fourth and sixth grades from four classrooms in low-performing schools received either a short 20-minute intervention delivered…

This study focused on training students in skills essential to making oral presentations based on original and independent research work as part of their English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course. As a result of the training, students showed an increase in the successful use of research-related skills and a great improvement in their ability to…

Textbook illustrations of 3D biopolymers on printed paper, regardless of how detailed and colorful, suffer from its two-dimensionality. For beginners, computer screen display of skeletal models of biopolymers and their animation usually does not provide the at-a-glance 3D perception and details, which can be done by good hand-held models. Here, we…

The ethics of engaging in sociological research involving children has primarily been shaped by a set of general principles and codes that are applied to all situations. Whilst this has been a crucial guideline for researching children's experiences, it is inadequate in addressing the moral complexities that confront researchers in specific…

We present findings regarding the state of the field of Algorithm Visualization (AV) based on our analysis of a collection of over 500 AVs. We examine how AVs are distributed among topics, who created them and when, their overall quality, and how they are disseminated. There does exist a cadre of good AVs and active developers. Unfortunately, we…

Spatial representation and thinking have evolutionary importance for any mobile organism. In addition, they help reasoning in domains that are not obviously spatial, for example, through the use of graphs and diagrams. This article reviews the literature suggesting that mental spatial transformation abilities, while present in some precursory form…

While diagrams make the text more visually appealing and provide an image of the text, they also do much more. Subsequently, the authors designed a series of lessons for students to discover the many purposes of graphics in science. A particular utility of these interdisciplinary lessons is that they are used with any science text featuring visual…

The National Science Education Standards prescribe that an understanding of the importance of classifying organisms be one component of a student's educational experience in the life sciences. The use of a classification scheme to identify organisms is one way of addressing this goal. We describe Conifer ID, a computer application that assists…

For the forty-fourth time, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented online and onsite during the annual AECT Convention. Volume 1 contains papers dealing primarily with research and development topics. Papers dealing with…

Photographs have always played a major role in geographical studies. Ever since the invention of photography in the 1830s, it has been assumed that photographs are perfectly suited to help answer that eminently geographical question, "what is this place like?". Photographs can convey a great deal of information about the appearance of a place far…

Spring is a time for gardening, blossoms, and baseball. At American college and universities, it is also a time for commencement ceremonies. Students are recognized for their scholastic achievements as faculty and staff close out another academic school year. Family and friends applaud the graduates and celebrate their success. Students show their…

This study tested the effects of two instructional aids in a complex, dynamic environment, specifically, a business simulation. Participants studied (1) a "causal map," which depicted key variables in an interconnected network, (2) a textual outline of the same relationships, or (3) no-aid. With the relevant aid still available, the participants…

This paper presents the qualitative results of a study of students' reading of multimodal texts in an interactive, online environment. The study forms part of a larger project which addressed image-language interaction as an important dimension of language pedagogy and assessment for students growing up in a multimedia digital age. Thirty-two Year…

Bystander-focused in person sexual violence prevention programs provide an opportunity for skill development among bystanders and for widening the safety net for survivors. A social marketing campaign was designed modeling prosocial bystander behavior and using content familiar to target audience members by staging and casting scenes to look…