Increasingly, educators from all disciplines are using blogs, social networking sites, VLEs and wikis to encourage academic discourse between students. However, a common problem experienced by educators is how these important learning experiences can be assessed and because of this difficulty many are not assessed. For some time now, I have been…

As the old model of study abroad welcomes a new generation of student, administrators are forced to grapple with how and whether to adapt the old model to new communication technologies. Assumed in the traditional model of study abroad, and in the cultural and language learning theories around which those programs were constructed, is that…

In the United States, international students, especially from Asia, have reportedly experienced difficulty adjusting to their new life and culture. Little research has been done to understand the role of social network service (SNS)s, including instant messaging, blogs, chatting websites, and email on these students. Korean students are the…

We present an analysis of a longitudinal case study whose aim was to understand the processes of integration of a face-to-face and networked collaborative learning technology and pedagogy into a secondary school history-geography classroom. Students carried out a sequence of argumentative tasks relating to sustainable development, including…

As beginning teacher educators we aimed to examine our pedagogical approaches for engaging teacher candidates in thinking about physical literacy and scientific literacy, respectively. We employed self-study research methodologies to explore our literacy practices and developing pedagogies of teacher education, the similarities and differences in…

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) is an administrative fact for many counsellors. This psychiatric approach to formulating client concerns runs counter to those used by counsellors of many approaches (e.g., systemic, feminist). Using an online survey of counsellors (N = 116), invited contributions to a website…

The authors have investigated teachers' reactions towards an imposed reform initiated by the Israeli Ministry of Education in collaboration with one of two teachers' unions based on the messages and letters sent by high school teachers to an internet forum during a teachers' strike which took place between October and December of 2007. This study…

Non-participation and poor quality participation in online environments is often discussed in the literature. Interaction and engagement in online discussions are critical for understanding and constructing new knowledge. In this case study, we examined messages posted by graduate students in four online debates for quantity and quality. The…

This study brings the concept of inquiry as stance to bear on current understandings of how inquiry occurs within online networks for teacher induction. The author presents a case study of an online network that allowed 36 new teachers to participate in informal, spontaneous conversations. Genre research is used to examine the on-network,…

Today's adolescents write to communicate--via text messaging, instant messaging, and social networking posts. They are skilled at manipulating their out-of-school digital language to communicate with an intended audience and to capture individual voice. Because the writing is informal, teens have the ability to break rules, and they can do so…

In these days of ubiquitous tweeting, language teachers must consider whether microblogging is an activity that will bring benefits to the learning experience. Recent research (Junco et al., 2010; Messner, 2009, among others) indicates that Twitter is becoming increasingly popular in classrooms, but few studies (see for example, Borau et al.,…

This study investigates the effects of an optional and required (jigsaw) task on learners' quantity and quality of use of language under synchronous and asynchronous conditions. The question raised is: Does performing either of these task types under synchronous conditions cause a compounding effect that either positively or negatively impacts…

Anecdotal reports indicate that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are often preoccupied with television, computers, and video games (screen-based media). However, few studies have examined this issue. The current study examined screen-based media use among a large, nationally representative sample of youths participating in the…

This exploratory study investigates the linguistic and social interaction of four intermediate EFL learners during game play in a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). Twelve illustrative episodes drawn from the participants' text chat, collected in four 70-minute sessions held over a one-month period, are analyzed from a…

EdCamp is a grassroots movement of do-it-yourself professional development "un-conferences" that originated in Philadelphia in November 2010. In just a little over a year and a half the phenomenon has gained serious momentum across the country and now around the globe. This teacher-driven, bottom-up approach to professional development…