"Leadership in Freshman Physics" is an NSF-funded professional development program designed to support 9th grade teacher leaders in the successful implementation of a "Physics First" or curriculum sequence that places physics prior to biology and chemistry. Leadership is viewed as an essential component in the initial success…

Social networking sites (SNSs) have increasingly become an important tool for young adults to interact and socialize with their peers. As most of these young adults are also learners, educators have been looking for ways to understand the phenomena in order to harness its potential for use in education. This is especially relevant in Malaysia…

The appearance of collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis, social media, and video games has altered the way individuals and organizations relate to one another. There is no longer any need to wait on professionals to share material and report on new developments. Today, people communicate directly in an unmediated and unfiltered manner. These…

Even as higher education institutions offer more distance education courses, the attrition rate in these courses remains higher than face-to-face courses. One of the most cited reason by students who drop out of distance education classes is the lack of social interaction. Educational technology researchers have studied this problem from a sense…

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have empowered non-state social actors, notably, social movements. They were quick to seize ICTs in the past (printing presses, television, fax machines), which was a major factor in their successes. Mass email campaigns, blogs, their audio- and video- variants (the podcasts and the videocasts),…

Data generated by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) from the 2010 census indicates that out of four million children born in the United States "approximately 36,500 children will eventually be diagnosed with an [Autism Spectrum Disorder] ASD" ("http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html"). The process of caring for an…

Research suggests that the pedagogical thoughts of postsecondary teachers exist on a continuum from student-centered to teaching-centered orientations, the latter of which are more pedagogically effective than the former. However, this body of literature has been critiqued for insufficient conceptualization of psychological constructs and the lack…

Web 2.0 technologies provide school administrators the opportunity to offer teachers meaningful professional development. The purpose of the qualitative case study was to investigate ways in which U.S. K-12 public school teachers who participated in weekly Twitter Edchat discussions perceived the use of a social network site for professional…

This study gathered information on student engagement with Facebook, and described non-native English speakers' (NNS) expectations and experience. This also assessed the relationship this technology has with writing efficacy and compared NNS and native English speakers (NS) groups. Demographic data were collected and means were compared to…

Motivation and creativity are valuable attributes in the 21st century. In response, more instructional time must be focused on motivating high school students to expand their creative abilities. Self-determination theory (SDT) and communities of practice (CoP) are theoretical foundations helpful for understanding how intrinsic motivation promotes…

Learners often report difficulty maintaining social connectivity in online courses. Technology is quickly changing how people communicate, collaborate and learn using online social networking sites (SNSs). These sites have transformed education in a way that provides new learning opportunities when integrated with web 2.0 tools. Little research is…

Teaching is considered one of the most trusted professions, yet literature evaluating teachers' understanding of professional behaviour is scarce. Recently, technological advancements such as Social Networking Sites (SNS; e.g. Facebook) have created fresh debate about appropriate behaviour for teachers: in school and online. The "Professional…

The aim of this study is to examine the role of Dutch second grade (age 13-14) high school peer networks in mediating socioeconomic background and school type effects on smoking behavior. This study is based on a longitudinal design with two measurement waves at five different high schools, of the complete networks of second grader friendships, as…

Participatory culture, in which citizens feel and exercise the agency of being cocreators of their culture and not just passive consumers of culture created by others, depends on widespread literacies of participation. One can't participate without knowing how. And cultural participation depends on a social component that is not easily learned…

This work describes efforts to incorporate and evaluate the use of a YouTube writing assignment in large lecture classes to personalize learning and improve conceptual understanding of chemistry through peer- and self-explanation strategies. Although writing assignments can be a method to incorporate peer- and self-explanation strategies, this…