Investment in educational technology is rising at breakneck speed. Last year, global investments in the sector jumped over 70%. Across the world, in school classrooms and university lecture halls, many have reported on the benefits it can bring to enhance, simplify, support and scale teaching and learning. But just making technology available is…

"Rethinking Schools and Renewing Energy for Learning" presents a comprehensive view on the major challenges educators face in the 21st century, and the ways in which schools can make a difference. It describes key principles that can serve as guidelines for tackling those challenges in an effective and manageable way, looking both at…

Profitable creative ideas can emerge from within virtually any phase of the instructional design and development process. However, the design of user interactions is perhaps where learners can most directly experience the benefits of such ideas. In this article, the authors discuss principles of learner interaction as found in the instructional…

In this article, a design-oriented, multimodal understanding of learning will be outlined. There seems to be a need for a new conceptualisation of learning in an era characterised by an increasing virtual space, blended media and new communicative patterns. This means a broader understanding of learning, and a theoretical understanding of…

The Common Core State Standards call for an expanded view of literacy instruction, one where children learn to critically consume and produce text using technology and media. This article describes how a Digital Writers' Workshop can be a vehicle for integrating multimodal composition into the classroom. It offers general workshop principles and…

A WebQuest is an inquiry-based online learning technique. This technique has been widely adopted in K-16 education. Therefore, it is important that conditions of effective WebQuest design are defined. Through this article the author presents techniques for improving WebQuest design based on current research. More specifically, the author analyzes…

While the importance of viewing learning as knowledge creation is gradually recognized (Paavola et al. Computer-supported collaborative learning: foundations for a CSCL community 2002; Rev Educ Res 74:557-576 2004), an important question remains to be answered--what represents an effective instructional design to support collaborative creative…

In an increasingly global world, where events in one corner of the world simultaneously affect other remote areas of the planet, global competition is becoming a continuously evolving phenomenon. Competition is also increasingly becoming an individual endeavor. Individual's own knowledge and skills will be the differentiators in a global economy.…

This paper is concerned with the human dimension of technology-enhanced learning; many suppositions are made about this but the amount of attention it has been given relative to that paid to technology is quite limited. It is argued that an aspect of the question that deserves more attention than it has received in the work on the application of…

It is ironic that the management of education has become more closed while learning has become more open, particularly over the past 10-20 years. The curriculum has become more instrumental, predictive, standardized, and micro-managed in the belief that this supports employability as well as the management of educational processes, resources, and…

During student-centered learning, the individual assumes responsibility for determining learning goals, monitoring progress toward meeting goals, adjusting or adapting approaches as warranted, and determining when individual goals have been adequately addressed. This can be particularly challenging while learning from the World-Wide Web, where…

For hundreds of years verbal messages such as lectures and printed lessons have been the primary means of explaining ideas to learners. Although verbal learning offers a powerful tool, this book explores ways of going beyond the purely verbal. Recent advances in graphics technology and information technology have prompted new efforts to understand…

Teachers must clearly distinguish for students the educational technologies (the tools or means) used to investigate a subject from the subject (the task) itself. Without this distinction, students develop critical and fundamental misconceptions about their subjects of study, usually confusing the tool for the task. Digital educational…

Although mathematicians frequently use specialist software in direct teaching of mathematics, as a means of delivery e-learning technologies have so far been less widely used. We (mathematicians) insist that teaching methods should be subject-specific and content-driven, not delivery-driven. We oppose generic approaches to teaching, including…

The article seeks to clarify the meaning of mobile learning by applying its key concepts to learning experiences in post-school education. In other words, it seeks not to discuss one fixed meaning of mobile learning but to disassemble the basic components and provide an interpretation of the model in the context of higher education. The article…