This executive summary describes highlights from the report, "Building Management Information Systems to Coordinate Citywide Afterschool Programs: A Toolkit for Cities." City-led efforts to build coordinated systems of afterschool programming are an important strategy for improving the health, safety and academic preparedness of children…

The National League of Cities (NLC), through its Institute for Youth, Education and Families, produced this report to help city leaders, senior municipal staff and their local partners answer those questions as they work to strengthen and coordinate services for youth and families, particularly for those cities building comprehensive afterschool…

Principals in school buildings are under immense pressure to improve outcomes for all students. Recent literature suggests this accountability may be at least partly warranted, as there is overwhelming evidence that building principals can positively impact student achievement through their behavior as effective instructional leaders. Much of the…

This case describes a database redesign project for the United States Department of Agriculture's National Animal Germplasm Program (NAGP). The case provides a valuable context for teaching and practicing database analysis, design, and implementation skills, and can be used as the basis for a semester-long team project. The case demonstrates the…

This article documents regional demand for human-environment educational resources via assessment of public knowledge of the environmental crisis known as the Dust Bowl. The steadily eroding knowledge-base on the topic is discussed along with the desire for enhanced Dust Bowl educational resources. Regionally focused educational activities…

"A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas" emphasizes that the practice of science is inherently a model-building activity focused on constructing explanations using evidence and reasoning (NRC 2012). Because building and refining is an iterative process, middle school students may view this practice…

President Obama is the most prominent of a growing number of American policymakers to embrace the idea that some form of postsecondary education is crucial to students' success after high school. This year's edition of "Diplomas Count", a report by "Education Week" and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center,…

This article attempts to investigate the learning processes in blended language learning through assessing sources of information: logs, chat and forum scripts, and semi-structured interviews. Creating a MOODLE-based parallel component to face-to-face instruction for a group of EFL learners, we probed into 2,984 logged actions providing raw…

The authors describe an observational and analytic methodology for recording and interpreting dynamic microprocesses that occur during social interaction, making use of space--time data collection techniques, spatial-statistical analysis, and visualization. The scheme has three investigative foci: Structure, Activity Composition, and Clustering.…

This study used both focus groups (qualitative) and survey data (quantitative) to develop and expand an instruction program for GIS services. It examined the needs and preferences faculty and graduate students have for learning about GIS applications for teaching and research. While faculty preferred in person workshops and graduate students…

Technology has been at the center of heated debates in educational settings driving schools to compete for the best technological equipments. However, in Lebanon there is a lag in technology integration matching twenty first century advances. Several barriers related to teacher attitudes, lack of technical skills and organizational constraints to…

Today's fast-paced world is becoming increasingly characterized by technology driven communication, which has transformed the world into a large global connected community with ever-increasing outreach of information and communication technology (ICT). Technology plays an increasingly important role in people's lives, and it is envisaged that…

Purpose: This paper aims to define Information Technology (IT) desirability and determine IT relationship with organizational commitment. The existence of such a relationship between IT & organizational commitment can guide the organizational leaders to promote and to develop the IT potentials in order to improve the performance of employees,…

As organizations have become more dependent on networked information systems (IS) to conduct their business operations, their susceptibility to various threats to information security has also increased. Research has consistently identified the inappropriate security behavior of the users as the most significant of these threats. Various factors…

This publication follows the tradition of publishing selected papers from Pacific Islands Association of Libraries, Archives and Museums (PIALA) annual conferences. This 19th annual conference was held in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia, November 16-21, 2009. The volume begins with a listing of the members of the PIALA 2009 Planning…