The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a technology-based self-monitoring application, I-Connect, to enhance the on-task behavior of five secondary students (ages 15-16) with autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, and specific learning disability during Biology instruction in a rural special education classroom. We…

Educational technologies can enhance both learning and teaching. Potential benefits of such technologies are documented in the literature. The use of educational technologies in teacher education classroom is highly recommended by educational researchers and national education associations. Teacher education programs can play a critical role in…

Science excellence is associated not only with a student's inherent aptitude but also a range of contextual factors. The objective of this paper was to identify the most important contextual characteristics of top performers in scientific literacy, by simultaneously considering factors at the PISA questionnaire-based student, family, and school…

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often demonstrate behaviors that impair their school experiences. Therefore, the implementation of research-based strategies that will foster success for students with ASD is critical. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a web-based self-monitoring application, I-Connect,…

A traditional mode of Earth Science instruction in public day high schools for students with severe emotional behavioral disorders (EBD) is teacher-delivered lectures supported with paper-based laboratory exercises. These laboratory experiences are often presented through worksheet problems that students are asked to solve and return to the…

Researchers have found that English teachers in the United States of America (USA) perceive providing writing instruction to students with emotional behavioral disorders (EBD) as a difficult task. This could be associated with the fact that students with EBD often work below skill level in the content area of writing compared to same age peers.…

This paper reports the results of a three-stage usability test of a modeling tool designed to support learners' deep understanding of the impacts of climate change on ecosystems. The design process involved repurposing an existing modeling technology used by professional scientists into a learning tool specifically designed for middle school…

In this article, we present analyses from a researcher-practitioner partnership in the District of Columbia Public Schools, where we are exploring the impact of educational software on students' academic achievement. We analyze a unique data set that combines student-level information from the district with data of student usage of a mathematics…

Technological innovations offer promise for improving intervention implementation in secondary, inclusive classrooms. A withdrawal design was employed with two high-school students in order to assess the effectiveness of a technologically delivered, self-monitoring intervention in improving on-task behavior in a science classroom. Two students…

Teachers are increasingly integrating mobile digital technology into the classroom. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of incorporating iPads in a secondary-level geometry course on academic achievement, student engagement, self-efficacy, and meta-cognitive self-regulation. Students in the iPad-using classroom experienced lower…

The purpose of this report is to support educational administrators and policymakers in becoming informed consumers of information about online learning and its potential impact on educational productivity. The report provides foundational knowledge needed to examine and understand the potential contributions of online learning to educational…

This article justifies classifying the TI-Nspire CAS Touchpad as a mobile device for grades 8-16 mathematics classrooms equipped with a Navigator system. The 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 indicates virtually every secondary school aged child has some sort of mobile device. Yet, many school policies ban the use of mobile devices, preventing students…

This paper studies the social talk of high school students in online discussion forums. On-task talk has generally been assessed as valuable discussion because it contributes directly to productive learning. Off-task conversation, on the other hand, is often regarded as useless and a waste of time. Should this social talk indeed be regarded as an…

The main aim of this study is to integrate cooperative learning strategies, mastery learning and interactive multimedia to improve students' performance in Mathematics, specifically in the topic of matrices. It involved a quasi-experimental design with gain scores and time-on-task as dependent variables. The independent variables were three…

Carol Twigg, president of the National Center for Academics Transformation and a secondary school teacher, debates on whether technology in the classroom improves student learning. She claims that the key to increasing student learning is to get students more engaged in what they are studying.