In this paper we illustrate the relationships between Teach For America (TFA) and federal charter school reform to interrogate how policy decisions are shaped by networks of individuals, organizations, and private corporations. We use policy network analysis to create a visual representation of TFA's key role in developing and connecting…

Social and interpersonal support has mostly been carried out face-to-face. However, the internet was able, in the last couple of decades, to facilitate social interactions through a range of computer-mediated communication (CMC) interfaces--from email applications, chat-rooms, forums, instant messages (IM), short text messages (SMS), social…

There is a distinct lack of research that has considered university staff use of and attitudes towards Facebook. The aim of this study was to gain an understanding of how teaching staff at one UK university use Facebook, and their attitudes towards Facebook and online professionalism, in terms of the student-staff relationship. An online survey…

Data show that educated workers earn higher wages and are unemployed less often. Some researchers believe that education improves a worker's productivity (or "human capital"), making them more desirable on the job market, while others believe that it improves a worker's network (or "social capital"), giving them more…

A multitude of studies has assessed the success of different technology initiatives but rarely has the focus been on special groups. This paper examines whether university students with children and those without have different perceptions of a technology initiative where students were able to acquire university sponsored laptops and were provided…

The growth of Twitter and similar sites has influenced many institutions. Many employers, for example, currently value digital literacy and look to hire employees who are skilled in social media. Since corporations increasingly value this type of literacy, researchers such as Greenhow and Gleason (2012) argue that educators need to respond by…

Waves of revolutionary actions beginning in late 2010 led to the downfall of dictatorial leaders who had been entrenched in the Arab world for decades. Everyday citizens used social media services to coordinate, communicate, expose, and respond to the oppressive forces that would crush pockets of resistance. The period known as the Arab Spring…

The benchmarking framework developed in this study is specifically designed for higher education institutions to consider when developing environments to encourage entrepreneurship among their students, graduates and staff. The objective of the study was to identify key success factors of Graduate Entrepreneurship Incubator Environments (GEIEs)…

This paper draws on social capital theory to discuss the way social class plays out in the friendships of teenage students. Based on data from individual interviews and focus groups with 75 students in four London secondary schools, it is suggested that students tend to form friendships with people who belong to the same social-class background as…

This paper explores the use of the video sharing site, YouTube, as a platform for enhancing moral and psychosocial development through increased awareness of moral values and models of moral behavior. The research involved a qualitative design whereby video snippets illustrating moral issues were identified from YouTube. These video snippets were…

Research in learning technologies has often focused on the affordances of single technologies such as pcs, smartphones or interactive whiteboards. However, in most learning environments technologies do not stand alone but are embedded in activity structures and webs of materials that make up the learning activity. This is specifically relevant…

The purpose of this study is to use the Analytic Hierarchy Process in order to identify how frequency of media use in daily life affects decision-making in media choice. 276 university students took part in this research, They were asked to prioritize their ways of obtaining information about current affairs using sets of media such as TV, books,…

A multiple-case qualitative study of five school districts that had implemented various large-scale technology initiatives was conducted to describe what superintendents do to gain acceptance of those initiatives. The large-scale technology initiatives in the five participating districts included 1:1 District-Provided Device laptop and tablet…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to identify principal actions and strategies that support teachers in the development of social capital as perceived by teachers in high performing Dallas County elementary schools. This study addressed the following research questions: 1. What principal actions or strategies help teachers develop…

Purpose: To present YouFlow Microblog and how its functionalities for discourse structuring and message classification allows improving learning. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: The authors developed a survey on microblogs and its functionalities for supporting education, and then the authors developed a new…