While technology has made communicating "easy," it has done so at the cost of communication that is "meaningful." And for information to be internalized to the point where it is remembered, used and valued, it must be meaningful. In other words, technology makes it easy to disseminate massive amounts of information to the masses, but teaching a…

Higher education is the linchpin of music education in North America. It is primarily in collegiate institutions that music teachers are educated throughout the life cycles of their careers. This begins with preservice programs, typically at the baccalaureate level, and continues with in-service professional development and graduate degree…

Web users in the 21st century are no longer only passive consumers. On a contrary, they are active contributors willing to obtain, share and evolve information. In this paper we report our experience regarding the implementation of Web 2.0 concept in several Computer Ethics related courses jointly conducted at two Universities. These courses have…

Preparing teachers to implement a new curriculum presents a significant but important challenge. While formal professional development programs can assist in this preparation, finding prescribed experiences that meet the needs of all teachers can be formidable and indeed may not always be the best option for promoting change in practice. Decisions…

Technological developments are impacting upon UK assessment practices in many ways. For qualification awarding bodies, a key example of such impact is the ongoing shift towards examiners marking digitally scanned copies of examination scripts on screen rather than the original paper documents. This digitisation process has obvious benefits,…

This critical essay discusses the challenges and prospects for the reform of school-based literacy programs. It begins with an overview of the effects of a decade of test-driven accountability policy on research and teachers' work, noting the continuing challenges of new demographics, cultures and technologies for literacy education. The case is…

The use of electronic reading devices has proliferated in the last few years. These reading devices appear to be particularly popular with young readers. A generation of students that has grown up with computers, cell phones, iPods, and other high-tech devices is more likely to embrace electronic book technology for both their educational and…

In President Barack Obama's most recent State of the Union address, technology figured significantly as part of his plan to increase the number of college graduates and reduce the cost of education. With concern that the United States is losing its competitive edge because it is not producing enough graduates and minority students are reportedly…

We develop a model of induced innovation that applies to medical research. Our model yields three empirical predictions. First, initial death rates and subsequent research effort should be positively correlated. Second, research effort should be associated with more rapid mortality declines. Third, as a byproduct of targeting the most common…

This paper captures and characterises the interplay between a group of student teachers' narratives of social network practice and their emergent professional practice with technologies. Teachers on an Initial Teacher Education programme in the UK spent a semester studying a module that synthesised university-based lectures with a professional…

Mobile phones have rapidly been absorbed into the fabric of our day-to-day lives. They are now a key consumer item, a symbol of social capital and they connect their users to a mobile web with multiple applications. As ownership and access to smartphones has spread into the teenage years, their place in institutions of formal education has been…

The number of schools that have access to computers and the Internet has increased rapidly since the beginning of the 1990s. However, evidence of their effectiveness as pedagogical tools to acquire reading and math skills is still the object of debate. We use repeated cross-section data from Brazil to evaluate the effect of the availability of a…

Within the iClass (Integrated Project 507922) and Enhanced Learning Experience and Knowledge Transfer (ELEKTRA; Specific Targeted Research or Innovation Project 027986) European projects, the author was requested to harness his pedagogical knowledge to the production of educational adaptive systems. The article identifies and documents the…

Technology has long been employed to improve teaching and learning, although not always so efficiently and cleverly as one might wish. Advances in the teaching paradigm have sometimes reinforced outmoded, obsolete, and simply incorrect practices and prevailing understanding of the organization of knowledge. Today, technology presents education in…

The introduction of dwarfing traits into crops was a major factor in increased grain yields during the "Green Revolution." In most cases those traits were the consequence of altered synthesis or response to the gibberellin (GA) plant hormones. Our current understanding of GA synthesis and physiology has been facilitated by the characterization of…