Middle grades teachers should create meaningful learning activities involving stimulating literature and interesting composition prompts. This article describes a unit in which eighth graders read short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Using multiple learning and teaching approaches, they expanded their vocabularies, responded artistically to "The…

This article explores the power of English language learners' digital stories as student-centered projects and offers practical suggestions for language teachers interested in trying digital storytelling. The article explains pedagogical practices and digital storytelling in the context of contemporary scholarship on inclusive pedagogy,…

In this paper, we describe the outcomes of the first year of an intensive, urban ecology focused, summer program for urban high school youth. Students in our program conduct scientific investigations of their urban ecosystems while exploring potential career options in science and technology fields. In conducting their investigations, the students…

What specific learning behaviors are important to students and faculty members? Does the campus provide spaces that foster these behaviors? Where are those spaces? Asking these three questions at six colleges and universities reveals notable differences in the ways students and faculty members answer them. Student and faculty member answers also…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate preservice Information Technology (IT) teachers' professional competency in the teaching process. The study was designed on the basis of evaluative case study. The participants of the study consisted of seven preservice IT teachers attending the department of Computer Education and Instructional…

Although mathematicians frequently use specialist software in direct teaching of mathematics, as a means of delivery e-learning technologies have so far been less widely used. We (mathematicians) insist that teaching methods should be subject-specific and content-driven, not delivery-driven. We oppose generic approaches to teaching, including…

Recent social policy reforms have sought to overcome the limitations of "First Way" strategies emphasizing the welfare state and "Second Way" approaches advocating markets. Scholars and policymakers instead have begun to explore optimal synthesis of the public and private sector in a new "Third Way" of leadership and change. According to one line…

In a longitudinal intervention study, the effects of three intervention strategies on the reading skills of children with reading disabilities in Grade 2 were analyzed. The interventions consisted of computerized training programs: One bottom-up intervention aimed at improving word decoding skills and phonological abilities, the second…

This report describes a communications system engineering planning process that demonstrates an ability to design and deploy cost-effective broadband networks in low density rural areas. The emphasis in on innovative solutions and systems optimization because of the marginal nature of rural telecommunications infrastructure investments. Otherwise,…

Although technology affects everyone's lives in a many ways, effective utilization of it has been slow to enter America's classrooms. The expectations of Millennial students (those born between 1980-2000) are different from those from previous generations. They expect immediate feedback, are skilled multitaskers and use various technological…

This is a partial account of the journey undertaken by a group of academic nomads in search of collaborative writing space. Never intending to permanently settle anywhere, we chose to explore writing technologies that supported collaborative forms of engagement with our task and with each other. Along the way we took up with, and discarded, a…

Podcasting is a term derived by combining iPod with broadcasting. During 2006, when the idea of podcasting was still in its infancy, this author [an information systems librarian at the Universal College of Learning (UCOL) in New Zealand] began to consider how this new technology could be used by librarians to provide instructional sessions. She…

The efficacy of individual components of an online course on positive course outcome was examined via stepwise multiple regression analysis. Outcome was measured as the student's total score on all exams given during the course. The predictors were page hits, discussion posts, and discussion reads. The vast majority of the variance of outcome was…

Museum resources for teachers that are available online today go way beyond the occasional lesson plan or thumbnail reproduction available via the Internet 10 years ago. New technologies have made it possible for art museums to imagine, create, and deliver a broad array of teaching resources, from online interactive multimedia to tools teachers…

Computer games such as Unreal Tournament (UT2004 and UT3) contain a "physics engine" responsible for producing believable dynamic interactions between players and objects in the three-dimensional (3D) virtual world of a game. Through a series of probing experiments we have evaluated the fidelity and internal consistency of the UT2004 physics…