Improvement in instructional practices through dynamic means of delivery remains a central consideration to technology educators. To help accomplish this, one must constantly utilize contemporary and cutting-edge technological applications in attempts to provide a more beneficial learning experience for students. These technologies must…

Information spreads online at a much faster rate than ever before, often without being confirmed by trustworthy sources. Students must be able to evaluate the online source and the online source's information for accuracy and credibility. In public speaking, argumentation, and persuasion classes (among others), students are taught to use confirmed…

Exploring the Solar System in the elementary school curriculum has traditionally involved activities, such as building scale models, to help students visualize the vastness of space and the relative size of the planets and their orbits. Today, numerous websites provide a wealth of information about the sun and the planets, combining text, photos,…

In this paper, we use the concept of chronotope to analyse the co-construction of spatial and temporal frameworks during collaborative interaction. A chronotope is a genre of movement or pacing in the space that participants adopt over the temporal duration of an activity. We look in particular at the conjunction point of time and space as…

Online education has gained significant popularity in recent years, and this trend is set to continue. One of the reasons for the explosion of online education is the fact that Colleges and Universities need to seek out new delivery methods and to reach out to people who cannot attend College or University. Funding and diversity of courses is also…

The increasing presence of multiple Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the classroom does not guarantee an improvement of the learning experiences of students, unless it is also accompanied by pedagogically effective orchestration of those technologies. In order to help teachers in this endeavour, it can be useful to understand…

During the past two decades, digital games have become an increasingly popular source of study for academics, educational researchers and instructional designers. Much has been written about the potential of games for teaching and learning, both in the design of educational/serious games and the implementation of off-the-shelf games for learning.…

Effective virtual simulations can embed participants in imaginary worlds. Researchers working in virtual worlds and gaming often refer to "immersion," a state in which a participant or player loses track of time and becomes one with the simulation. Immersive settings have been shown to deepen learning. Ken Hudson's work with students…

Active learning has been championed in academic circles as the pedagogical fix to boring lectures typically found in introduction to information systems courses. However, the literature on active learning is mixed. In this paper, we critically examine active learning research and discover a misplaced emphasis leading to paradoxical findings in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the use of specifically-developed, inquiry-based learning materials for Computing and Forensic Computing students. Small applications have been developed which require investigation in order to de-bug code, analyse data issues and discover "illegal" behaviour. The applications…

Substantial evidence now supports pedagogical applications of virtual worlds; however, most research supporting virtual worlds for education has been conducted using researcher-developed Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVE). Second Life (SL) is a MUVE that has been adopted by a large number of academic institutions; however, little research has…

Purpose: An e-portfolio is a useful tool to increase reflection and awareness in teachers and students. However, benefits of e-portfolio use are weakened by difficulties due to the lack of motivation, the heavy weight of creation and revision of the e-portfolios, the rigid tool structure. The paper aims to answer these emerging issues, showing how…

This article describes a project integrating mobile learning games into the author's course at Appalachian State University, in collaboration with a community partner and for the community as a whole. The process of constructing educational mobile games can be as beneficial as the act of playing. Therefore, the author's beliefs about integrating…

PictoPal is the name of a technology-supported intervention designed to foster the development of emergent reading and writing skills in four and five year old children. Following the theoretical underpinnings and a brief description of PictoPal, this article describes how children worked with the technology; how the intervention elicited their…

Students now have at their disposal a range of Web 2.0 authoring forms such as audio and video podcasting, blogging, social bookmarking, social networking, virtual world activities and wiki writing. Many university educators are interested in enabling students to demonstrate their learning by creating content in these forms. However, the design…