The 2016 National Educational Technology Plan mentions fostering creativity, collaboration, leadership, and critical thinking while engaging learners in complex, real-world challenges through a project-based learning approach (see http://tech.ed.gov/netp/learn ing/). The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21; see…

Educators are obliged to balance new resources with a healthy skepticism of change. This review of technological advances in creativity research highlights methods that scaffold both research and the students who stand to benefit from resultant findings. Educational technology need not lower its role to that of enabler. With proper guidance,…

The 21st century classroom is large, diverse, underfunded, and populated by students weaned on digital devices espousing a consumer mentality looking for a good return on investment (ROI) on their education. These students, the so-called "millennials," and the coming Generation Z, who have grown up in the digital age, are more pragmatic…

Various types of structured data collected by learning management systems such as Moodle have been used to improve student learning outcomes. Learning analytics refers to an assortment of data analysis methods used for this task. These methods typically do not consider unstructured data such as blogs, discussions, e-mail, and course messages.…

This article reports on a project that used a game-creation tool to introduce middle-school students ages 10 to 13 to problem-solving strategies similar to those in computer science through the lens of studio-based design arts. Drawing on historic paradigms in design pedagogy and contemporary educational approaches in the digital arts to teach…

Ayamel is a system developed by Brigham Young University (BYU) and the American Councils for International Education. "Ayamel" is a stylized name developed to stand for International Media Library, a new designation for the federally funded project that started out as the "Flagship Media Library." The project was funded by The…

This design case (Boling, 2010) includes the challenges, considerations, and decisions associated with the design and development of a learning space/place (Dourish, 2006; Harrison & Dourish, 1996) focused on innovative, creative, and imaginative ways to transform teaching and learning with technology. The T.E.C.H. Playground in the College of…

The possibility of being always connected to the Internet and/or the mobile network (hence the term "always-on") is increasingly blurring the borderline between physical and digital spaces, introducing a new concept of space, known as "hybrid." Innovative forms of teaching have been developing in hybrid spaces for some time…

Our use of the electronic media to conduct serious discourse raises the question of whether "we are amusing ourselves to death," as Neil Postman argued. The approach known as "media ecology," the study of media as environments, which emphasizes the need to understand context and find balance, provides a basis for the analysis…

The many changes in educational technologies have been well documented in both the professional and popular literature. What is less well documented is the changing nature of programs that prepare individuals for careers in the broad multi-disciplinary field of educational technology. This article is a first attempt to look at how educational…

While successful instructional innovation is the result of efforts of individual faculty and instructional support staff, it is also influenced by institutional and contextual factors that include personal characteristics, pedagogies, curricula, and other tangible and intangible dynamics. These same forces can also work in concert to assure…

This article describes the crossroads between learning analytics and learner engagement. The authors do this by describing specific challenges of using analytics to support student engagement from three distinct perspectives: pedagogical considerations, technological issues, and interface design concerns. While engaging online learners presents a…

Despite the rhetoric around technology as a transformative force in education, transformation is in the hands of teachers not technology. Yet, teachers cannot capitalize on technology's transformative potentials when teacher education is focused on the technology itself or even on the goal of technology integration. Teachers today are challenged…

This article explores the design processes in creating a pro-social mobile game, "Litter Leader." Following the Egyptian Revolution, "Litter Leader," a game designed for Android devices, was created to foster community change among Egyptian youth. By tracing the meaning-making that occurred with 20 Egyptian youth who playtested…

Learning technologies are now commonplace in education, and generate large volumes of educational data. Scholars have argued that analytics can and should be employed to optimize learning and learning environments. This article explores what is really meant by "analytics", describes the current best-known examples of institutional…