SMART Board is a technology that combines the functionality of a whiteboard, computer, and projector into a single system. The interactive nature of the SMART Board offers many practical uses for providing an introduction to or review of material, while the large work area invites collaboration through social interaction and communication. As a…

Problem solving is a critical skill for engineering students and essential to development of creativity and innovativeness. Essential to such learning is an ease of communication and allowing students to address the issues at hand via the terminology, attitudes, humor and empathy, which is inherent to their frame of mind as novices, without the…

Teachers, speech and language therapists, teaching assistants and nursery nurses are required to work together in a range of contexts in Foundation Stage (FS) school settings in the UK. In some cases these groups of practitioners are mutually involved in the implementation of a strategy or intervention and in the use of a particular tool or…

The dramatic growth in the number of children learning English as a second language in our country has led to a corresponding increase in the need to understand how teachers and schools can effectively teach children who are learning English as a second language. Many teachers report not feeling prepared to meet the needs of these children…

Over the past 40 years, the goal of using technologies within learning and teaching processes has always been the incorporation of more effective practices and strategies to redefine the task of learning. Some authors claim that the exercise is not working; other authors beseech us to rethink learning processes to the extent that we are dealing…

In almost all systems there have been unethical behaviors that take place in written and visual media. Of all these unethical behaviors, favoritism takes precedence. This study was conducted to investigate whether or not the administrators favor some people in the Turkish national education system and also to reveal the teachers' thoughts on…

This paper takes up the sea-faring metaphor at the centre of this special edition and asks what kinds of navigational tools (metalanguages) are necessary to steer English through the digital seas of contemporary communication. Much of this territory is yet to be mapped and the disciplinary "boat" is buffeted by contrary winds such as…

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent that diagrammatic literacy is necessary for success on standardized science tests at the late-elementary and middle grade levels. Towards this goal, we quantified the frequency, form and function of graphical representations on select state science tests. 985 tests items from 14 states were…

How a testing agency approaches score reporting can have a significant impact on the perception of that assessment and the usefulness of the information among intended users and stakeholders. Too often, important decisions about reporting test data are left to the end of the test development cycle, but by considering the audience(s) and the kinds…

Purpose: This research examined how the presence of color in relation to a target within an augmentative and alternative communication array influenced the speed with which typically developing preschoolers located a target line drawing. Method: Fifteen children over the age of 4 years (from 4;2 [years;months] to 5;4) and 15 children under the age…

In a study of notetaking in university courses, we found that the large majority of students prefer paper to computer-based media like Tablet PCs for taking notes and making annotations. Based on this finding, we developed CoScribe, a concept and system which supports students in making collaborative handwritten annotations on printed lecture…

With the use of X-ray images, performance in the simultaneous search for two target categories was compared with performance in two independent searches, one for each category. In all cases, displays contained one target at most. Dual-target search, for both categories simultaneously, produced a cost in accuracy, although the magnitude of this…

Ed Willis Barnett had quite a military training: he attended the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, (1917 to 1920) and served in both World Wars. He was also an accomplished fencer, and earned a position on the 1928 U.S. Olympic fencing team. That year the summer Olympics were held in Amsterdam, so he traveled to Europe for the…

A concept map (CM) is a hierarchically arranged, graphic representation of the relationships among concepts. Concept mapping (CMING) is the process of constructing a CM. This paper examines whether a CMING strategy can be useful in helping students to improve their learning performance in a business and economics statistics course. A single…

This paper first describes how activities using photographs of an early childhood education centre, and children's own photographs of that environment, were found to be effective ways of enabling young children (aged from two to four years old) to share their thoughts about their experiences. However, in reflecting on the data, it was recognised…