Citation searching and bibliometrics are terms foreign to many chemists and educators, yet well-known and used by librarians and information specialists. This article aims to help chemistry students, educators, and other readers of this "Journal" to better appreciate and use these powerful and profound methods. Although these subjects…

Open Educational Resources (OER) emerged within the context of open education which is typically characterized by the sharing of knowledge and resources and the exchange of ideas. Unisa as a mega open distance learning (ODL) university has publicly communicated its intention to take part in the use and creation of OER. As global and local…

The rapid development of the Internet along with increasing computer literacy has made it easy and tempting for digital natives to copy-paste someone's work. Plagiarism is now a burning issue in education, industry and even in the research community. In this study, the authors concentrate on plagiarism detection with particular focus on the…

Appropriation, transformation and remix are increasingly recognized as significant aspects of digital literacy. This article considers how one form of digital remix--the video remix--might be used in classrooms to introduce critical conversations about representation, appropriation, creativity and copyright. The first half of the article explores…

The term "open educational resources" (OERs) was first coined by UNESCO in 2005 and refers to "teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and/or distribution." OERs offer educators what might be termed "value neutral" online…

There are significant privacy, intellectual property, copyright and disclosure risks associated with the ill-considered use of social networking sites, however, the implementation of regulatory actions may also undermine the social and emerging educational utility of social networking sites for young people. Inevitably the burden of dealing with…

The availability and use of computers in teaching has seen an increase in the rate of plagiarism among students because of the wide availability of electronic texts online. While computer tools that have appeared in recent years are capable of detecting simple forms of plagiarism, such as copy-paste, a number of recent research studies devoted to…

2008 marked the 10-year Anniversary of the Open Source movement, which has had a substantial impact on not only software production and adoption, but also on the sharing and distribution of information. Technical communication as a discipline has taken some advantage of the movement or its derivative software, but this article argues not as much…

There is no doubt that Google is great for finding images. Simply head to its home page, click the "Images" link, enter criteria in the search box, and--voila! In this article, the authors share some of their other favorite search engines for finding images. To make sure the desired images are available for educational use, consider searching for…

Technological innovation is driving fundamental changes in all aspects of our lives. This is especially true of digital content, as our use of e-books, downloadable music, streaming television and movies, and online social networks has exploded. However, the explosive growth in our use of digital content seems so far to have eluded many of the 50…

The purpose of this study is to discuss the ethical issues in education in terms of teachers, students, schools, and software companies. Recent growth of the internet and World Wide Web allows new developments in the way instructors transfer knowledge to their students. Technology is a new tool in education that constantly changes and offers new…

The library, as we once knew it, may no longer be relevant. And, yet, this is undoubtedly the most exciting time in history to be a librarian. The future of the school library as a relevant and viable institution is largely dependent on librarians and how quickly they respond to change. They worry about their field and their practice. They worry…

Purpose: Applications of online Second Life (SL) prevail over the world. The purpose of this paper is to make a review and synthesis of recent research studies on SL. Design/methodology/approach: Documental analysis is employed. Totally, 135 research publications, published in 2006-2008, are reviewed and synthesized. Findings: Findings are as…

Current concerns about academic plagiarism in student writing assume qualitative and quantitative differences in the writing of students for whom English is a first language (EL1) and English is a second language (EL2), but lack precision in measuring those differences. I examined the citation practices of EL1 and EL2 students in a timed writing…

Educators have been wrestling with copyright issues for some time. In fact, in developing the S.O.S. for Information Literacy site, the project team had to face the issue with respect to how to handle all those lesson plans in the database and all the images, clipart, and materials that educators upload to the database as support materials for…