Extension professionals play an increasingly central role in supporting community garden and other community-based agriculture projects. With growing interest in community gardens as tools to improve community health and vitality, the best strategies for supporting these projects should be explored. Due to the importance of inter-personal networks…

California's current school finance system is a tangled web of funding programs, restrictions, inequities and confusion. Building a stronger finance system to benefit from resources is an important step in strengthening California's K-12 education system and better meeting the needs of its students. Gov. Brown has recently proposed the Local…

Writing programs in institutions of higher education work to prepare students for real-world writing within any field of study. The composition of "Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing" offers an open-source text for students, teachers, and policy-makers at all levels. Exposure to an open space for learning encourages access to information,…

The digital gap is a threat to the participation of senior citizens in society, as a large proportion of seniors are not involved in Internet based activities (IBAs). To be able to overcome this disadvantage for seniors, there is a need to both learn more about the conditions that make seniors start performing IBAs and to be able to provide them…

Building open access in Africa is imperative not only for African scholars and researchers doing scientific research but also for the expansion of the global science and technology knowledgebase. This paper examines the structure of homegrown initiatives, and observes very low level of awareness prevailing in the higher educational institutions…

This article focuses on the question of access and design in literacy education. Drawing on an ethnographical study, two children's experiences of texts1 and socialisation in relation to literacy are mirrored through the Four Resources Model (Luke & Freebody, 1999). What does access and design mean in relation to this model and how is it…

The purpose of this study was to determine the availability of Internet access for students attending East Tennessee State University during the fall semester 2013. It has been unknown to what degree broadband access is available in the East Tennessee State University service area that includes counties in East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and…

School districts have implemented filtering and safety policies in response to legislative and social mandates to protect students from the proliferation of objectionable online content. Subject related literature suggests these policies are more restrictive than legal mandates require and are adversely affecting information access and…

Given that research has shown that audiobooks impact literacy for youth in a number of ways, and since school librarians typically serve as gatekeepers of audiobook collections in school libraries, this study examined the attitudes of school librarians in Texas toward audiobooks. Using a multiliteracies framework to guide this research, this study…

The author argues that access to books and time to read play a vital role in literacy development and explains why standardized tests are detrimental to students' literacy development.

This study aims to discover expectations/predictions of academic members about the education of 21st century, and to raise awareness of academicians for education in the future. The survey is designed in a descriptive model as a survey as it aims to uncover the objective reality of the teaching staff's 21st century education in a holistic way.…

Blind students are bound to make up a very small part of the population most university lecturers will encounter during their careers. Research to date shows that good communication between staff and student improves the chances of a successful outcome for both parties. The research does show, however, that the exercise seems to be one of…

The emergence of "big data," "digital scholarship" and "eResearch" raises the question of how these digital developments in research methods and practices affect research students. This paper presents findings from a phenomenographic study that investigated postgraduate students' conceptions of the role of information…

Ubiquitous and instant access to information on the Web is challenging what constitutes 21st century literacies. This article explores the notion of Web-mediated knowledge synthesis, an approach to integrating Web-based learning that may result in generative synthesis of ideas. This article describes the skills and strategies that may support…

This article explores the pivotal role of rumour in shaping primary school choice decisions for parents of children diagnosed with autism. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 22 mothers conducted in Sydney, Australia, this study points to the varied functions of grapevine knowledge about schools gleaned in diverse contexts, including early…