In this article the authors present Five-Picture Charades, an instructional activity designed to introduce preservice and in-service teachers to the technical and pedagogical uses of digital images in the classroom. Because digital images can be repurposed into several different types of digital media projects, Five-Picture Charades is described…

Research Findings: Although storybook reading has received considerable research attention, listening to children read has been the source of much less inquiry. In this study, 40 mother-child dyads were videotaped during adult-to-child and child-to-adult reading. Relations between book-related themes (e.g., types of talk), maternal evaluative…

The current study investigated the impact of a German television program on changes in 4th-semester German students' reflections on cultural perceptions over the course of 1 semester. Sixty-nine students at the University of Texas at Austin watched 4 episodes of the popular German television program "Lindenstrasse". After viewing,…

Through listening to the voices of students, educators and community members can begin to reconstruct the culture of urban schools that are often full of stories about student deficits, genetic explanations about achievement, and cultural mismatch theories that may be traced to historical and sociological ideologies. The purpose of this heuristic…

The ADEQUA research project has gained empirical evidence on how the situationally adequate use of learning strategies can be facilitated during cooperative reading tasks in the EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom. Two video studies were conducted with ninth-grade EFL learners in German schools: the first (laboratory) study investigated…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how Hispanic ESL/literacy learners used their socio-historical experiences and multimodal resources to mediate interpretation and representation of "Cinderella". Eighteen third-grade pupils "read" the video and re-created their understandings in pictures and sentences. The findings suggest that (a)…

The present study aims to challenge primary school science teachers' beliefs about education and teaching efficacy, as well as their teaching practices, through a video-case-based intervention programme in a Chinese educational setting. A total of 46 in-service teachers were involved in this study (experimental group = 23, control group = 23).…

Virtual school programs--especially online high school courses--are gaining traction in school districts around the country. While offering online courses was once the exclusive province of large state, nonprofit and for-profit organizations and companies, districts and even individual schools are now starting virtual schools of their own. Not…

Today's undergraduates are highly engaged in a variety of social media outlets. Given their comfort with technology, we wondered if we could use this phenomenon to teach science-related material. We asked students to use freeware to make a short video with text, images, and music as a way to explain scientific concepts that are traditionally…

The aim of this paper is to decipher the essence of the joy of learning and the ways to enhance it at school. In the field of educational psychology, research on feelings is lacking, and the little that does exist has focused more on negative rather than positive feelings. The present paper is based on ethnographic and observational research of a…

While honesty is noticeably emphasized in Chinese childrearing practices, deception for the sake of collective good and maintenance of interpersonal relationship is widely endorsed by Chinese culture. This study examines how Chinese mothers negotiate between teaching honesty and helping their young children develop situational-appropriate…

This edited volume brings together large-scale research as well as case studies from a range of geographical contexts and represents a variety of educational settings involving second language learners and users. Its aim is to explore the interrelated issues of psychology and technology use in second language learning settings as well as in more…

A key activity in any assurance of learning process is to identify learning deficiencies and then to develop and implement tools and strategies to correct the deficiencies. The activity is often referred to as "closing-the-loop." This paper describes a process whereby the College of Business's Board of Advisors is engaged in a series of…

Research on the use of learning tools has brought to light variables that influence the learner on using or not using the tools. A deeper analysis on the current findings is attempted in this study. It adds a psychomotor task; it assesses the actual functionality of the employed tools, and it further explores learner-related variables that…

This paper is an exploratory study about sexting, the sending of sexually explicit or illicit photos or video between cell phones, in Kansas public schools. An on-line survey asked superintendents to report if they have had an occurrence of sexting in their district. They were also asked if they felt sexting is currently a problem in their…