When "software takes command", people take fright -- a reaction which frequently accompanies change or novelty. Their fears are understandable, but they also cloud people's view of the potentials that digital tools and digital media hold for society and especially educational contexts. Their fears also define societal debates and…

Mr. Brendon Thomas, Director of Technologies at Brisbane Girls Grammar School, looks at the importance of the study of design and digital technologies in schools to develop and nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs.

There is a growing interest in the application of digital games to enhance learning across many educational levels. This paper investigates pre-service teachers' ability to operationalize the learning principles that are considered part of a good digital game (Gee, 2007) by designing digital games in Scratch. Forty pre-service teachers, enrolled…

In the literature, the potential efficacy of the gamification of education has been demonstrated. The aim of this study was to explore the influence of applying gamification techniques to increase student engagement in learning. The quasi-experimental nonequivalent-control group design was used with 577 undergraduate students from six classes. The…

In a Distance Education (DE) system, students must be equipped with seven skills of computer (ICDL) usage. This paper aims at investigating the effect of a DE system on the computer literacy of Master of Arts students at Tehran University. The design of this study is quasi-experimental. Pre-test and post-test were used in both control and…

This paper contextualises the Teaching Teachers of the Future (TTF) Project and acts as a preamble for the TTF stream of papers at ACEC2012. It discusses the aims and objectives of the project, its genesis in a changing educational and political landscape, the use of TPACK as a theoretical scaffold, and briefly report on the operations of the…

Great emphasis and recognition has been given to the potential of lifelong learning in the new millennium and the vast body of research on eLearning in Higher Education. However, to-date little research has been undertaken to review eLearning in the workplace. The present study aims to fill this gap to some degree by conducting a comparative…

Most children talk to their parents about what they learned at school. Parents hear about books read, pictures drawn, stories written and games played. But how often do parents hear of children using ICT to make multimedia stories with a mathematical focus? In this paper the term "multimodality" will be used to describe such activities.…

With the world moving rapidly into digital media and information, the ways in which learning activities in mathematics can be created and delivered are changing. However, to get the best results from the integration of ICTs in education, any application's design and development needs to be based on pedagogically appropriate principles, in terms of…

Mobile devices, such as tablets and smart phones, are increasingly being utilised as tools for education, with tablets such as the Apple iPad being introduced into many classrooms. These devices are seen as enablers of learning through a fun, interactive interface; however the process of producing a pedagogically valid, yet entertaining…

Virtual worlds are highly immersive, engaging and popular computer mediated environments being explored by children and adults. Why then aren't more teachers using virtual worlds in the classroom with primary and secondary school students? Reasons often cited are the learning required to master the technology, low-end graphics cards, poor…

The ACCE position statement for creating media enriched learning communities targets all stakeholders in educational policy and practice who influence the future of learning, schools, and systems. Stakeholders include policy-makers in government, national and international organisations, professional networks and institutions, school leaders,…

This research explores how community cohesion can sustain teacher participation in a small scale, mixed mode (face to face and online) PD course. Secondary school teachers in Queensland undertook a mixed mode PD course utilising Education Queensland's Learning Place. The results indicate significantly longer participation than required and when…

Professional development for teachers is often described as a journey. This paper, using the findings from a small-scale study interrogating professional development in ICT, offers the alternate metaphor of an interwoven Celtic knot to explain this phenomenon. It will show how the four key elements identified as being critical to creating the most…

The introduction of an open-ended MicroWorlds based assignment in a pre-service teaching degree produced interesting results. Students engaged with the task at very high levels and produced work of high quality; so much so that marking trends were reversed. This paper explores the design and implementation of the task and how for many students it…