This Facilitator's Guide is based on What Education Leaders Should Know about Virtual Education, an online course designed by the Center on Instruction and the New England Comprehensive Center. The Facilitator's Guide demonstrates step-by-step how to build the course on a learning management system (LMS) and provides instructions on all phases of…

Purpose: The purpose of this self-reflective paper is to focus on practical efforts to combat inequality and foster intercultural dialogue in education. It introduces "knowledge alliances", a type of social practice open for education technologies. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is structured in a theoretical and an empirical…

This article reports on the outcomes from the "e-scape Primary Scientific and Technological Understanding Assessment Project" (2009-2010), which aimed to support primary teachers in developing valid portfolio-based tasks to assess pupils' scientific and technological enquiry skills at age 11. This was part of the wider…

This article aims to demonstrate how the use of an online journal, a bilingual blog, can contribute to filling in the language and cultural gaps of foreign language learners. This case study focuses on the participation, interaction, motivation, language acquisition, feedback and cultural input improved by students of Spanish as a Foreign Language…

Expressing concern about reports that children can easily access explicit content in online virtual worlds, in March 2009 Congress directed the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a study of such worlds, examining the types of content available and the methods virtual world operators use to restrict minors' access to explicit content. Accordingly,…

Cyberbullying is a global problem with a wide range of incidents reported in many countries. This form of bullying may be defined as harassment using technology such as social websites (MySpace/Facebook), email, chat rooms, mobile phone texting and cameras, picture messages (including sexting), IM (instant messages), or blogs. Cyberbullying…

PEPNet's "Perspectives" is the collaborative newsletter of the four PEPNet regional centers. This newsletter combines each centers' individual strengths into a single resource that can be used on a national level. PEPNet's mission is to improve transition services and educational access for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, including those…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role state departments of education, a professional organization and a leading internet organization play in providing recommendations and guidelines in the construction of new high school libraries. Four state agencies were identified and specific square footage formulas noted as well as information…

There are many kinds of classroom assessment--from informal observation of students to more formal exams and standardized tests. Two categories have been identified--formative assessments and summative assessments. Formative assessments are used by teachers to provide feedback to students and to guide improvement of instruction. For example, if a…

Perceptual motor programs continue to be used in Australian schools despite evidence showing they do not influence academic learning. Brain Gym[R] is one perceptual motor program that is used in schools in Australia and overseas. There is little evidence to support the claims made about the benefits of Brain Gym[R]; its theoretical underpinning…

This manuscript describes an exploratory study of a social bookmarking activity in an undergraduate course for pre-service teachers. During a 10-week activity, students were required to post links to Internet resources relating to course objectives and also to rate the content posted by other users. The analysis of data from this activity includes…

The use of blogging (online diaries), to support student learning and reflection has increasingly been adopted for assessment purposes in higher education. The relative ease of use and accessibility of the tools indicate that these social networking applications are, potentially, a convenient means of documenting and sharing individual student…

Positive impacts on learning through blogging, such as active knowledge construction and reflective writing, have been reported. However, not many students use weblogs in informal contexts, even when appropriate facilities are offered by their universities. While motivations for blogging have been subject to empirical studies, little research has…

Facebook is one of the fastest growing applications of the Internet. Social networking via Facebook provides a popular way for students and others to connect with a wide audience and expand their circle of friends. Facebook account holders have been denied admission to universities, not hired for jobs, lost scholarships, been disciplined by…

This article investigates the relationship of learning and its infrastructure using Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate the acquisition of skills needed to succeed in a global economy. We explore the learning phenomenon as a way to bring forward a process of continuous improvement supported by social software. We use a commonly accepted definition…