The wireless bandwagon is rolling across Mississippi, picking up a fresh load of converts and turning calamity into opportunity. Traditional wired school networks, many of which unraveled during Hurricane Katrina, are giving way to advanced wireless mesh networks that frequently include voice-over-IP (VoIP) capabilities. Vendor funding is helping…

To what extent does the wording and syntactic form of people's writing reflect their personalities? Using a bottom-up stratified corpus comparison, rather than the top-down content analysis techniques that have been used before, we examine a corpus of e-mail messages elicited from individuals of known personality, as measured by the Eysenck…

School and school district websites began to mushroom in the mid-1990s in what looked like a rush to stake a cyber-claim in a new frontier. As a byproduct, these early experiments also seemed like a good place to let parents know what is going on in the local school district. Today, it is all too easy to find district websites that are little more…

The use of online discussion boards has grown extensively in the past 5 years, yet some researchers argue that our understanding of how to use this tool in an effective and meaningful way is minimal at best. Part of the problem in acquiring more cohesive and useful information rests in the absence of a comprehensive, theory-driven metric to assess…

Cyber-or computer-mediated communication is transforming school counselor education in curriculum delivery, supervision, and professional development, as well as changing the nature of interactions among counselors, school personnel, parents, counselor educators, students, and field supervisors. This article describes how new technologies are…

In this paper, I report on the findings of a study that investigated non-native speaker interaction in a three dimensional (3D) virtual world that incorporates avatars and text chat known as "Active Worlds." Analysis of the chat transcripts indicated that the 24 intermediate level EFL participants were able to undertake a variety of tasks through…

Peer contagion of adolescent males' aggressive/health risk behaviors was examined using a computerized "chat room" experimental paradigm. Forty-three 11th-grade White adolescents (16-17 years old) were led to believe that they were interacting with other students (i.e., "e-confederates"), who endorsed aggressive/health risk behaviors and whose…

The aim of this study was to explore the claim that the hybrid nature of synchronic computer-mediated chat (SCMC) promotes the noticing of target language forms, which may, in turn, stimulate the process of second language actuation. When viewed in the context of interaction theory, the hybrid nature of SCMC makes online negotiation a potentially…

Web 2.0, the term coined for the next generation Web, moves the Internet from being simply web sites and search engines to a shared network space that offers students a place to publish and broadcast their own writing, collaborate on projects, and engage in conversations. Students with their mobile and non-mobile devices are always online and…

The number of children and adolescents accessing the Internet as well as the amount of time online are steadily increasing. The most common online activities include playing video games, accessing web sites, and communicating via chat rooms, email, and instant messaging. A theoretical framework for understanding the effects of Internet use on…

There have been many attempts to design online communities of practices (CoPs) as social contexts in which teachers can work together for their professional development. In practice, however, the realization of such a community is far from what is promised in theory. One of the most significant reasons for online community failures is our general…

The aim of this research is to reveal the dynamics of focus on form in task completion via videoconferencing. This examination draws on current second language learning theories regarding effective language acquisition, research in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) and empirical data from an evaluation of desktop videoconferencing-supported…

The aim of this research was to improve understanding of the attitudes, experiences and dynamics of interaction of students working in online groups. This was achieved through a case study of postgraduate Information Studies students using the WebCT discussion board at City University in the academic year 2004-2005. Qualitative and quantitative…

Despite the success that instructors and learners often enjoy with online university courses, learners have also reported that they miss face-to-face contact when learning online. The purpose of this inquiry was to identify learners' perceptions of what is missing from online learning and provide recommendations for how we can continue to innovate…

Considerable buzz has appeared on the Internet over a group of new tools labeled social software. These tools can expand discussion beyond the classroom and provide new ways for students to collaborate and communicate within their class or around the world. Dickinson College has implemented two of the best-known tools, the wiki and the blog, in…