Personal learning networks (PLNs) are not new. People have long relied on their families, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to supplement their knowledge about the world. But the times are changing. Information and communication technologies (ICT), including an ever-growing repertoire of open source applications, have freed content from the…

America's subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 spiraled into a global financial crisis in 2008. For much of the year, attention was riveted on the presidential primaries. A worsening economy made the election somewhat anticlimactic, but everybody rejoiced with the choice of the first "international" President. With stocks tumbling and major firms…

There's no doubt that Web 2.0--the social and technological phenomenon that enables users to generate content, interact, and share information across borders--can be a force for good in the world of education. The author's enthusiasm for collaborative Web-based content is tempered, however, by concern about these three challenges: (1) Partners…

The paper explores the relationship between formative assessment and social software. Formative assessment practices though beneficial for student learning become marginalised and constrained in open and distance learning environments in higher education. Feedback is a key factor in formative assessment and learners can benefit from the deployment…

Blogging and computerized journaling are effective tools for writing skill development; however, research has not revealed which specific populations of students are aided by blogging or journaling, nor has research revealed the specific writing skills that are most likely to be improved by these practices. The purpose of the study was to discover…

Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) have increasingly committed to become more sustainable in recent years. Despite this commitment, academic publications in the sustainability field assert that progress has been slower at IHEs than expected and that most IHEs have found sustainability initiatives difficult to implement. Comprehensive…

In an action research project, young male students from Sydney, Australia and Richmond, USA contributed to a collaborative writing blog. Both groups of students shared the same text with their class teachers, while using the medium of collaborative blogging, a process which was facilitated and managed by the teacher-librarian. Data was gathered…

Internet technology has provided people with unprecedented abilities to filter the information they encounter, leading many scholars to fear that people will be exposed to less diversity of perspectives and fragment into homogeneous interest groups. Exposure to a wide range of topics and perspectives about political information in particular is…

"Dimension" is the annual volume containing the selected, refereed, edited Proceedings of each year's conference. The Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT), held its annual conference April 15-17, 2010, at the Winston-Salem Marriott in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in collaboration with the Foreign Language Association of…

Active, experiential learning is an important component in information systems education, ensuring that students gain an appreciation for both practical and theoretical information systems concepts. Typically, students in active, experiential classes engage in real world projects for commercial companies or not-for-profit organizations. In the…

Teachers at every level of the educational system have grown accustomed to the idea that people live in a time of rapid change, with new products, technologies, and services emerging constantly. While universities have a social role that requires them to create and disseminate new knowledge, schools and colleges often have rich opportunities to do…

Teaching in 21st-century schools cannot easily be separated from technology-based solutions. Instead, technology is increasingly becoming an essential tool for any teacher's toolbox, especially the new teacher who is often considered a digital native. In teacher education and professional development, technology-based learning, or…

This study looked at the types of blog consulted by 1,298 Primary 4 students in Hong Kong and whether such consultation influenced performance on standardised tests of Chinese and English reading comprehension. When students were asked if they consulted Chinese and English blogs, 42% said they looked at Chinese blogs and 19% said they looked at…

This paper considers the design and development of CALL materials with the aim of achieving an optimal mix between in-class and out-of-class learning in the context of teaching Italian at an Australian university. The authors discuss three projects in relation to the following themes: (a) conceptions of the in-class/out-of-class relationship, (b)…

This article presents a study of 57 Swedish pre-school student teachers' experiences and achievements in using blogs for reflective dialogue over the course of 2007-2008. In order to examine the extent to which students engaged in reflective dialogue, text analyses of their blogs were carried out. Furthermore, 13 narrative interviews were…