Education in virtual worlds has the potential, it seems, for engaging students in innovative ways and for enabling new discourses on a host of issues. Virtual locations like "Second Life," "Kaneva," or "World of Warcraft," among other multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), also come with unique challenges for educators as they consider the…

A comprehensive presentation is here made on the modular architecture of an e-learning platform with a distinctive emphasis on content personalization, combining advantages from semantic web technology, collaborative filtering and recommendation systems. Modules of this architecture handle information about both the domain-specific didactic…

"I liked to grab things on the graphics and see it first hand, see what we were doing on the problem. It makes more sense." These words were from a student who completed a series of lessons on lines of best fit. She made this comment after comparing a hands-on approach using a strand of spaghetti with a high-tech approach using a calculator. To…

The Horizon Report series is the most visible outcome of the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project, an ongoing research effort that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education around the globe. The report examines emerging technologies for…

When the World Wide Web first went mainstream in the mid-1990s, people saw it primarily as a place to store and surf for information. The Web generated a lot of excitement among the education community in those early days. The past few years have witnessed the emergence of new ways to experience the World Wide Web. The term "Web 2.0" is frequently…

When Gloucestershire County Council's adult education service was inspected by Ofsted in October 2008, the processes that were being used for recognising and recording progress and achievement (known as RARPA) were found to be weak. Recognising the benefits of such processes to learners, the author successfully applied for funding from the…

Over the last decade blog (a contraction of "web log") has crept into the national lexicon and culture, transforming the way people communicate. Although exact numbers are difficult to gather, the Web site "Technorati" is tracking more than 112.8 million blogs. Rarely far removed from technology; cell phones, iPods, Facebook…

This article describes an art activity on self-portraiture inspired by artist Tim Hawkinson. Hawkinson created a sculpture titled "Emoter" in which his face, moved by motors, twisted and contorted based on random signals from a TV. This art activity incorporates technology into the art room, brings the work of practicing artists alive, and is a…

A computer algebra system is used to derive a theorem on the existence of roots of a quadratic equation on any bounded real interval. This is extended to a cubic polynomial. We discuss how students could be led to derive and prove these theorems. (Contains 1 figure.)

PhET Interactive Simulations (sims) are now being widely used in teaching physics and chemistry. Sims can be used in many different educational settings, including lecture, individual or small group inquiry activities, homework, and lab. Here we will highlight a few ways to use them in teaching, based on our research and experiences using them in…

Student-created media offer significant opportunities for engagement and learning. For the past five years, the authors have explored ways to incorporate Web-based authoring tools into the curriculum. In this article, they discuss PrimaryAccess, a suite of online tools that provides students with access to primary source documents on websites such…

Animals cannot teach as humans do. Therefore, we lack the experimental support of animal studies that are so important to understand the evolution of our basic learning skills but are useless to explore the development of the teaching skills, unique to humans. And most important: children teach! We have at least two new challenges in our Mind,…

For many years, educators have touted the benefits of learning with educational tools such as spreadsheets and databases that allow students to actively process and manipulate information (Jonassen, 1995). Hundreds if not thousands of Web 2.0 tools have been created in the last few years, taking the "technology as tool" metaphor to a new level. In…

Using an action research approach, e-PDP (electronically-supported Personal Development Planning) was embedded within an undergraduate psychology curriculum at an English university for more than two years. e-PDP was embedded in three ways: (a) information literacy micro-tasks, (b) blogs of learning activities, and (c) eportfolios submitted at the…

This paper examines the utilization of Computer Mediated Communication tools within collaborative learning activities. By examining the participants' attitudes and behavior, issues related to performance improvement are being discussed. Through a comparative study using a Blog, a Wiki and a Discussion Forum, students' perception of collaboration…