Collaboration scripts facilitate social and cognitive processes of collaborative learning by shaping the way learners interact with each other. Computer-supported collaboration scripts generally suffer from the problem of being restrained to a specific learning platform. A standardization of collaboration scripts first requires a specification of…

Many studies (e.g., [Beauvois, M.H., 1998. "E-talk: Computer-assisted classroom discussion--attitudes and motivation." In: Swaffar, J., Romano, S., Markley, P., Arens, K. (Eds.), "Language learning online: Theory and practice in the ESL and L2 computer classroom." Labyrinth Publications, Austin, TX, pp. 99-120; Bump, J., 1990. "Radical changes in…

Although an increasing number of K-12 educators have taken up blogging in the past few years, blogging professors are still a rarity. Time pressures, entrenched beliefs about peer-reviewed publication, and a lack of familiarity all contribute to the paucity of faculty who regularly blog for public audiences. In this article, several prominent…

This article reports on how the current must-have tools of adolescent social networks--cell phone text messaging, Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and e-mail--are being used by teachers and other school employees who prey on students to foster inappropriate relationships and perpetrate abuse. When the sexual abuse of students by educators…

This study examined the impacts of online graduate students categorizing their online discussion contributions according to an instructor's criteria. Student messages before and after this categorizing activity were unitized by terminal punctuation; classified for function, skill, and level; and analyzed based on Henri and Rigault's (1996) content…

In this study, the process and outcome of a web-based planning application, called Ports of Call, are discussed. The application allows college management to create, edit, and report out activities relating to college plans, all through a web browser. Its design was based on best practices in modern web technology and the application can be easily…

Abstract Objective: The authors evaluated the efficacy of the 2002 college-based National Alcohol Screening Day (NASD) by determining: (1) the demographic and clinical characteristics of the participants that were screened and (2) the degree to which those scoring at hazardous drinking levels received clinical intervention or were referred for…

This study examines four months of online discourse of 22 Grade 4 students engaged in efforts to advance their understanding of optics. Their work is part of a school-wide knowledge building initiative, the essence of which is giving students collective responsibility for idea improvement. This goal is supported by software--Knowledge…

"Our culture underestimates teachers--not only the complexity of their work, but also their potential to contribute substantively to the dialogue about school reform," write the authors of this article. Online teacher networks have the potential to transform traditional concepts of teacher leadership, enabling teachers to bond together into…

This study examines the use of chat in an academic library's user population and where virtual reference services might fit within the spectrum of public services offered by academic libraries. Using questionnaires, this research demonstrates that many within the academic community are open to the idea of chat-based reference or using chat for…

During the 2006-2007 school year, students from Battle Creek, Michigan, high school joined numerous others from across the state in reading holocaust survivor Gerda Klein's memoir, "All But My Life." Published in 57 editions and still in print after 50 years, the book is the inspiring account of a remarkable individual who endured unspeakable…

This column of Childhood Education focuses on middle school girls. Cyberbullying has emerged as a new, insidious, and harmful way of getting back at an individual girl who may be "different" or disliked for a physical or social trait. Cyberbullying has been described as "willful and repeated harm inflicted through the medium of electronic text"…

This article argues that judicious use of mobile phone text messaging by university staff has the potential to enhance the support provided to students by an academic department during the transition to university. It reports on an evaluation of a desktop computer application, "Student Messenger," which enables staff to send text…

The poster child for the Web 2.0 movement, the wiki, demonstrates the spirit of open content more clearly than any other application. Wikipedia, the most famous wiki and the world's largest encyclopedia, defines a wiki as a Web site that "allows visitors to add, remove, edit, and change content." Even though it is a controversial information…

The experiences of students taking the same course by distance learning were compared when tutorial support was provided conventionally (using limited face-to-face sessions with some contact by telephone and email) or online (using a combination of computer-mediated conferencing and email). Study 1 was a quantitative survey using an adapted…