Each state and jurisdiction that participated in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2009 reading assessment receives a one-page snapshot report that presents key findings and trends in a condensed format. Overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, comparison of the average score in 2009 to other…

Each state and jurisdiction that participated in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2009 reading assessment receives a one-page snapshot report that presents key findings and trends in a condensed format. Overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, comparison of the average score in 2009 to other…

Teachers using interactive whiteboards (IWB) effectively can engage and motivate students with a range of digital resources to explore science's role in making sense of our world and to construct knowledge of key scientific concepts. The case study research described in this paper illustrates how interactive pedagogies in the IWB classroom were…

This paper focuses on the use of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) as a tool for encouraging and supporting classroom dialogue. The authors' concern here is with the promotion of "dialogic" communication between teachers and students, which is now widely recognised as educationally valuable. In this study they investigated how teachers…

This case study examines the use of two assistive technologies, the Franklin Language Master 6000b and Microsoft PowerPoint 2003, as visual support systems to aid in the vocabulary acquisition skills of a student with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The intervention used children's literature and best practices in teaching vocabulary skills in…

A class in a Scientific-Technological Lyceum (age 17) decided to produce a PowerPoint presentation to introduce nanochemistry and nanotechnology to the students in lower grades. Because the subject is very new, there was nothing in the School textbooks and, therefore, the students had to cooperate in order to find materials, to use ICT sources and…

This article examines the nature of early adolescents' environmental involvement based on a study with 10-13-year-olds. Drawing from literal and metaphorical interviews, a visual survey and visual maps, the study points to the dimensions of environmental involvement: connectedness, engagement with the environment, questioning, belief in capacity,…

For students of Indonesian, learning to identify base words is very important, but can often be quite tricky. This article describes how one of the authors used interactive digital content from The Le@rning Federation (TLF) together with an extensive range of offline activities within an intercultural language learning (ICLL) framework. It helps…

Visual representation and viewing are integral parts of language arts, communication, and physical education. Time constraints often limit a self-contained classroom teacher, or even the language arts teacher's ability to adequately address all areas of language arts. Therefore, it is important to include language arts in other content areas.…

Tablet PC technology can enliven the classroom environment because it is dynamic, interactive, and "organic," relative to the rigidity of chalkboards, whiteboards, overhead projectors, and PowerPoint presentations. Unlike traditional computers, tablet PCs employ "digital linking," allowing instructors and students to freehand annotate, clarify,…

This research reports on a study of curriculum materials development and use compared with the use of existing curriculum materials in an elementary classroom. The research explored the effect of explicit attention to epistemic practices in curriculum materials and the enactment of those materials. Epistemic practices include asking questions,…

The present study contrasts mathematical knowledge that two sixth-grade teachers apparently used when teaching fraction multiplication with the Connected Mathematics Project materials. The analysis concentrated on those tasks from the materials that use drawings to represent fractions as length or area quantities. Examining the two teachers'…

The purpose of this study was to examine how prior knowledge of cellular transport influenced how high school students in the USA viewed and interpreted graphic representations of this topic. The participants were Advanced Placement Biology students (n = 65); each participant had previously taken a biology course in high school. After assessing…

Cued American English (CAE) is a visual variety of English derived from a mode of communication called Cued Speech (CS). CS, or cueing, is a system of communication for use with the deaf, which consists of hand shapes, hand placements, and mouth shapes that signify the phonemic information conventionally conveyed through speech in spoken…

Over the last two or three decades a revolution has taken place in the area of communication which forces people to rethink the social and the semiotic landscape of Western developed societies. The effect of this revolution has been to dislodge written language from the centrality which it has held, or which has been ascribed to it, in public…