In this article, we describe the rationale, design and evaluation of a widget-based dashboard to support scholars' awareness of their Research Networks. We introduce the concept of a Research Network and discuss Personal Research Environments that are built of as a development parallel to Personal Learning Environments. Based on the results…

Diversity-based designing, or the goal of ensuring that web-based information is accessible to as many diverse users as possible, has received growing international acceptance in recent years, with many countries introducing legislation to enforce it. This paper analyses web content accessibility levels in Spanish education portals according to…

Conole and Alevizou's social media typology (Conole and Alevizou, 2010) includes amongst its ten categories: media sharing; conversational arenas and chat; social networking and blogging. These are all media with which language learners are increasingly engaging (Lamy and Zourou, 2013). Social networking tools, in particular, which encourage…

In this article, we examine the characteristics of vernacular literacies on Web 2.0, focusing on the writing activities performed on the photo-sharing site Flickr.com. This site provides people with many possibilities for writing, ranging from individual tags to extensive profiles. The study investigates these forms of writing to address questions…

Purpose: The emergence of Web 2.0 opened a new route for education to use the values derived from this development. The future of e-learning is social learning, where individuals can learn online due to the facility of social media. Social media such as online communities are places for social interactions between users. These social interactions…

In today's digital age, Web 2.0 tools such as VoiceThread allow users to integrate images, voices, and responses within one digital platform, providing students with the opportunity to add another layer of meaning to their texts. We conducted this research to expand our understanding of the processes necessary for integrating digital tools into…

Frequently interacting with other people or working in an information-rich environment can foster the "accidental discovery of information" (ADI) (Erdelez, 2000; McCay-Peet & Toms, 2010). With the increasing adoption of social web technologies, online user-participation communities and user-generated content have provided users the…

The study of naturopathy in Australia has undergone a number of significant changes that have impacted dramatically on scholarly and academic practice. Naturopathic education has shifted from apprenticeship style with a charismatic teacher, to several private colleges offering advanced diplomas/degrees with Government accreditation, and into the…

EdCamp is a grassroots movement of do-it-yourself professional development "un-conferences" that originated in Philadelphia in November 2010. In just a little over a year and a half the phenomenon has gained serious momentum across the country and now around the globe. This teacher-driven, bottom-up approach to professional development…

Accounts of how research capacity in education can be developed often make reference to electronic networks and online resources. This paper presents a theoretically driven analysis of the role of one such resource, an online archive of educational research studies that includes not only digitised collections of original documents but also videos…

This work investigates the promise of Facebook and blogs for enhancing students' levels of engagement in learning. This issue warrants investigation because there is little published empirical work on the subject. The researchers applied a learning ecology perspective to study the potential of Facebook and blogs in enhancing student levels of…

Over the past few years, content developers searching for new markets have found a potentially lucrative consumer base in local and location-based services as new media platforms have begun to "expand" their focus to hyper-local place-based communities. This shift to "local 2.0" has given birth to "local listing sites," an emerging social medium…

This study explores a strategy for Web-based collaborative inquiry learning (WCIL) for the purpose of developing students' digital literacy (DL). In view of the problems and difficulties identified in a previously published case study of WCIL practice in a class of secondary 3 students (aged 14 to 15), another round of WCIL activity was carried…

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to recognise that as educators moving into, or already in, a Web 2.0 world, we are likely to experience anxiety, and to explore the implications for educational design in a Web 2.0 world. Design/methodology/approach: The objectives are achieved as the result of recent successes with the commissioners for two…

Contemporary young people are engaged in a variety of information behaviors, such as information seeking, using, sharing, and creating. The ways youth interact with information have transformed in the shifting digital information environment; however, relatively little empirical research exists and no theoretical framework adequately explains…