Everyone's doing it: Tweeting, "friending," blogging, linking, texting, and otherwise zipping around all over the social media landscape. Social media has become more than just a pastime. It is officially now another important communication medium early childhood educators use to establish and enhance meaningful relationships with parents,…

Adolescents' friendships with other-sex peers serve important developmental functions, but they may also facilitate engagement in problem behavior. This study examines the unique contributions of other-sex friendships and friends' behavior to alcohol use, smoking, and initiation of sexual intercourse among late adolescent girls and boys. A total…

Drawing on the UK research project, "Farmers' understandings of GM crops within local communities", this paper considers the application of the concepts of communities of practice and networks of practice in the agricultural context. A brief review of theories about communities of practice and networks of practice is given and some of…

This article examines the role that social network theory and social network analysis has played in assessing and developing effective primary prevention networks across a southeastern state. In 2004 the state began an effort to develop a strategic plan for the primary prevention of violence working with local communities across the state. The…

Teacher professionalization has been focused too strongly on external experts and a one-size-fits-all set of solutions that often fail to distinguish between the needs of different teachers. This article describes a research into teacher networks that might be more successful vehicles for professional development of teachers. The results show that…

Over a decade ago, Lenning and Ebbers (1999) envisioned that information and computer technology (ICT) could be used to create virtual learning communities (VLCs) as a "future" form of learning communities. Indeed, almost all academic departments--including psychology--depend heavily on the use of ICT to create and sustain connections among…

The paper describes the theory and definition of the practice of librarianship, specifically addressing how Web 2.0 technologies (tools) such as synchronous messaging, collaborative reference service and streaming media, blogs, wikis, social networks, social bookmarking tools, tagging, RSS feeds, and mashups might intimate changes and how…

Despite the widespread popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) amongst children and young people in compulsory education, relatively little scholarly work has explored the fundamental issues at stake. This paper makes an original contribution to the field by locating the study of this online activity within the broader terrain of social…

This article explores the networking roles and practices of special educators with the methods of social network analysis. This multiple case study included three special educators in a Finnish part-time special education context. The results revealed that although the special educators had central positions in the formal teacher communities as…

An online search for school board cyberbullying/bullying policies in Alberta was conducted. The results showed that while only five school boards had a bullying policy, many schools had technology or Internet use guidelines. The online search included an assessment of one extensive school board cyberbullying policy as well as Internet use…

The emergence of wireless devices and the ease in setting up wireless devices has created opportunities for various entities, and in particular to universities, by partnering with their local communities in the form of a university anchored community wireless network. This provides opportunities for students to be part of the community-based…

This dissertation is an exploratory study of the literacy practices of three fifth-grade girls as they used a social network site (SNS) for school related purposes. SNSs are widely used by adolescents, and because communication in these sites is accomplished mainly through writing, it is important to improve our understanding of what this kind of…

Today large research projects require substantial involvement of researchers from different organizations, disciplines, or cultures working in groups or teams to accomplish a common goal of producing, sharing, and disseminating scientific knowledge. This study focuses on the international research team that was launched in response to pressing…

The objectives of this research are to demonstrate how text was used in (1) developing a theory to examine collaborative interaction in virtual worlds, (2) creating a framework for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of dealing with large text datasets for social network analysis, and (3) approaching an understanding of the role of meaning…

Community coalitions are a recognized strategy for addressing pressing public health problems. Despite the promise of coalitions as an effective prevention strategy, results linking coalition efforts to positive community outcomes are mixed. To date, research has primarily focused on determining organizational attributes related to successful…