The capacity of online education to produce learning environments that are supportive of hybrid identities, complex discourses, and multiple relations among learners raises questions about the ethical response of online educators. To investigate the ethics of online education, we discuss two questions: How are identity and communication…

Like many educators, the author and her colleagues (five faculty members and two IT techs) in the department of Media Communications and Technology at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania were interested to find out the status of tablet PCs in education. Microsoft listed 10 manufacturers of tablet PCs following two forms: the slate and the…

Dr. Carol A. Twigg is Executive Director of the Center for Academic Transformation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The mission of the center is to serve as a source of expertise and support for those in higher education who want to take advantage of the capabilities of information technology to transform their academic practices. The center…

The history of ICT education in Hungarian public education dates back to the 1970s. In Hungary, as well as in most countries that introduced computing as a compulsory school discipline, a shift is observable from a technology-centred towards a teaching-learning centred approach. In the late 1970s, teacher training programmes and in-service…

The current paper discusses the introduction of computers into education as an educational innovation and as a policy issue. First, it distinguishes computer use in two fundamental categories (IT and ITE), linking their characteristics with two main issues that, according to educational innovation studies, influence the process of innovation: the…

This article describes how researchers work with military to create the next generation of training technology. This article also describes the features of Flatworld, a virtual military training technology. Flatworld is one of many projects under development at the Institute for Creative Technologies, a research group that is supported primarily…

Teaching first-year engineering students in a laptop environment requires carefully choosing and then adapting teaching methods. This chapter describes how laptops were used, how the students responded, and what the group of participating faculty learned in the process. (Contains 6 figures.)

The National Educational Technology Standards for Students promote constructivist technology use for K-12 students in U.S. schools. In this study, researchers reported on 716 cases in which teachers described technology-based activities they conducted with their students. Narrative analysis was used to examine case transcripts relative to the…

As new information and communication technologies permeate classrooms and libraries, educators have the responsibility to assist students in comprehending and understanding the information that is now available online. How can we instruct students to become skilled, strategic readers when they encounter online texts and hypertextual formats? By…

In this study, we explore an alternate mode for teaching and learning the dynamic, three-dimensional (3D) relationships that are central to understanding astronomical concepts. To this end, we implemented an innovative undergraduate course in which we used inexpensive computer modeling tools. As the second of a two-paper series, this report…

This document focuses on the writing skills of college students. The days of students sifting through piles of file cards, producing detailed outlines, and handwriting drafts have slipped into the distant past. Students write quickly and casually with the assistance of technology, and common sense dictates that technology needs to be used to teach…

In this article, I examine distributed scaffolding, an emerging approach in the design of supports for rich learning environments intended to help students develop disciplinary ways of knowing, doing, and communicating. Distributed scaffolding incorporates multiple forms of support that are provided through different means to address the complex…

The author addresses the debate over the growing use of technology in early education. Citing a recently released report from the Alliance of Childhood, he argues that technology robs young children of the imaginative play that helps them develop the qualities they will need for future success.

Object-oriented instructional design (OOID) offers the promise of universal access to online instructional materials, increased productivity among trainers and educators, and solutions for individualizing learning. However, it is unclear whether it can fulfill these promises to the degree many envision. As with every new instructional technology,…

Electronic collaborative learning environments for learning and working are in vogue. Designers design them according to their own constructivist interpretations of what collaborative learning is and what it should achieve. Educators employ them with different educational approaches and in diverse situations to achieve different ends. Students use…