With a belief in the need for a reform in education that prepares students for life, work, and citizenship in a globalized economy, leaders were determined to connect students across the district, state, country, and globe in global collaborative STEM projects. These projects were aligned to the standards but also afforded students the opportunity…

Ethical engineering practice is a global issue. However, cultural norms and social realities may result in differences in ethical behavior. A basic instructional challenge is developing the ability of students to understand ethical practice and to facilitate discussion of ethical issues across regional and cultural boundaries. The present project…

COVID-19 has presented many new challenges for educators, not only in teaching and connecting with students but in their own learning from one another. The necessity of physical distancing has required all who engage in networks to be nimble and adapt strategies to an online environment. Although frustrating, this need can be turned into…

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many school districts have moved from brick-and-mortar instruction to remote instruction with little planning time and limited resources. Rural localities, already facing barriers and hardships, attempted to provide special education and related services in accordance with rapidly changing state and federal…

The National College Learning Center Association defines a learning center at institutions of higher education as interactive academic spaces which exist to reinforce and extend student learning in physical and/or virtual environments. A variety of comprehensive support services and programs are offered in these environments to enhance student…

In 2010, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) reevaluated the status of Public Law 93-112, Sec 504, which protects against discrimination solely based on someone's disability. Recommendations and findings were reported to school districts around the country in a document called the Dear Colleague Letter of 2013. The GAO…

When school leaders engage with their communities, they develop trusting relationships that support student, staff, and family learning. Digital and social media tools open doors and create opportunities to connect with families and communities in ways that have never been seen before. This article provides three simple ideas that can easily be…

Broaching the subject of student-athletes on social media is liable to cause many institutional leaders, communications officers, and athletics directors to reach for the antacid. The speed and reach of social media, particularly Twitter, combined with the youth and bravado of student-athletes can damage reputations and tarnish university brands…

The importance of communication during a school crisis has not changed in the 21st century. What has changed--and quite dramatically since 1999--is the way people communicate. Social media tools are now used in some form by 100 percent of all four-year universities in the United States as a way to reach students, according to a 2011 University of…

The first five articles of this series on technologies that enable collaboration, highlighted ways to foster shared learning experiences among students. For this, the final installment, focus is shifted to teachers. States, districts, and groups of teachers are enhancing their collaboration opportunities through synchronous online meetings and…

Just as participation in social networking has grown, so has media coverage of inappropriate activity online. Teacher-student relationships and cyberbullying are just a few of the stories that seem to make the news on a regular basis. For educators, this is particularly troubling, considering how few students know what is appropriate when using…

In this article, the author talks about telepresence, a combination of real-time video, audio, and interactive technologies that gives people in distributed locations a collaborative experience that's as close to being in the same room as current technology allows. In a culture that's still adjusting to iPhone-size screen displays and choppy cell…

It is a simple fact that access to high-speed broadband is now as vital a component of K-12 school infrastructure as electricity, air conditioning, and heating. The same tools and resources that have transformed educators' personal, civic, and professional lives must be part of learning experiences intended to prepare today's students for college…

This paper reports the progress of a pilot project exploring the integration of a collaborative virtual learning environment (Second Life) with the instruction of English courses at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. An educational partnership was developed with two TESOL teacher-training courses at Texas A&M University in the US. The project…

Service-learning is one way of reconstructing educators' thinking about adolescents who demonstrate at-risk behaviors. It allows educators and others to involve youth considered to be "at risk" in talking about their concerns and interests, solving problems, and making decisions as they construct their own identities with the help and…