The examination of alternative hypotheses can initiate students into scientific practices and equip them with scientific literacy skills that will help them participate in ongoing debates involving complex socio-scientific problems. Hypothesis testing, in which the examination of alternative hypotheses is situated, has received much attention in…

jGRASP has three integrated approaches for interacting with its dynamic viewers for data structures: debugger, workbench, and text-based interactions that allow individual Java statements and expressions to be executed/evaluated. These approaches can be used together to provide a complementary set of interactions with the dynamic viewers. Data…

This article introduces Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), a specification for data sharing among educational software applications that has grown to 10 disparate software applications. This new version (code name Columbus) is likely to give districts more vendors to choose from--maybe a lot more--because it will be arriving with a profound…

Writing assistance systems, from simple spelling checkers to more complex grammar and readability analyzers, can be helpful aids to nonnative writers of English. However, many writing assistance systems have two disadvantages. First, they are not designed to encourage skills learning and independence in their users; instead, users may begin to use…

This is a report of one case of a design and development research study that aimed to validate an overlay instructional design model incorporating the theory of multiple intelligences into instructional systems design. After design and expert review model validation, The Multiple Intelligence (MI) Design Model, used with an Instructional Systems…

Nation. New. Common. Generation. These are among the most frequently used words spoken by President Barack Obama in his January 2009 inauguration speech as seen in a fascinating visual display called a Wordle. Educators, too, can harness the power of Wordle to enhance learning. Imagine providing students with a whole new perspective on…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to make a scientific contribution to web information retrieval (IR). Design/methodology/approach: A multiagent system for web IR is proposed based on new technologies: Hierarchical Small-Worlds (HSW) and Possibilistic Networks (PN). This system is based on a possibilistic qualitative approach which extends the…

Using dynamic graphs, future secondary mathematics teachers were able to represent and communicate their understanding of a brief mathematical investigation in a way that a symbolic proof of the problem could not. Four different student work samples are discussed. (Contains 6 figures.)

From one-to-one learning initiatives to laptop carts, schools all over the country are using portable computing models to achieve flexible technology access. To maximize learning and engagement at a sustainable cost, selecting the appropriate computing device is of utmost importance to best meet the needs of teachers and students. After all, a…

The present study has explored how pairs of students deployed digital tools (spelling software) as resources in spontaneously occurring corrections of spelling errors. Drawing on the sociocultural theory of learning and ethnomethodological (Conversation Analytic) insights into social interaction, it has identified a range of consistent practices…

The use of PowerPoint slides has become an almost ubiquitous practice in university classrooms, however little research has examined whether the timing of lecture slide availability to students (either before or after lecture) affects classroom behaviour or exam performance. Using a 2 (slide availability condition) x 2 (course type)…

This article describes a new approach to teaching bioinformatics using "Arabidopsis" genetic sequences. Several open-ended and inquiry-based laboratory exercises have been designed to help students grasp key concepts and gain practical skills in bioinformatics, using "Arabidopsis" leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase (LRR…

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the organizational commitment of teachers in India and Iran. It is an attempt to understand how these perceptions vary by demographic variables such as age and subject taught by teachers. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 721 high school teachers in Bangalore (India) and Sanandaj (Iran).…

As music making and technology grow more entwined, it is important for teachers to become familiar with available hardware, software, Web apps, yMIDI, sequencing, sampling and other emerging products. If music students in today's digital world wish to make a career out of doing what they love--whether as performers or conductors, composers or…

Few laboratory procedures describe the use of circular dichroism (CD) at the undergraduate level. To increase the number of laboratory exercises using CD, a thermal denaturation study of myoglobin using CD is described to assess protein stability. Values obtained from a more classic linear data analysis approach are consistent with data analyzed…