Making the move from a regular classroom to a virtual setting is about more than the technology. Individualizing instruction, creating an engaging and supportive online classroom, and learning how to communicate with students who aren't physically present are among the challenges. Communicating with students and building relationships with them…

The purpose of this paper is to show how a large group of students can work collaboratively in a synchronous way within the classroom using the cheapest possible technological support. Making use of the features of Single Display Groupware and of Multiple Mice we propose a computer-supported collaborative learning approach for big groups within…

This summer's "make a statement" statement was simple to understand: "I have moved." Facebook friends and colleagues marked their mass exodus from the social networking giant with these words as they left to start a new colony of peers on the newly announced Google+ (Google Plus). G+, as it is abbreviated, offered an appealing alternative from the…

This exploratory study investigated student reaction to the use of cartoons as advance organizers for online discussions in an online course. A convenience sample of 15 students participated in the study by contributing cartoons, participating in online discussions, and completing a survey. Overall, survey results indicated student reaction to the…

This discourse analysis study examines the use of online texts in the live conversations of adolescents at and around computers in the Young Adult section of a Midwestern public library serving a diverse SES population. On the cusp of cyberspace, where online texts influence conversation and the conversation influences the creation of online…

Students participated in online discussions about sustainable development using a lesson from the Center for Global Geography Education. Students showed statistically significant changes in attitudes about solutions for global problems. Results suggest Chilean students' attitudes toward grades in geography classes, and attitudes toward awareness…

In many contemporary collaborative inquiry learning environments, chat is being used as a means for communication. Still, it remains an open issue whether chat communication is an appropriate means to support the deep reasoning process students need to perform in such environments. Purpose of the present study was to compare the impact of chat…

In this regular feature of "Educational Technology," Michael F. Shaughnessy and Susan M. Fulgham present their interview with Ryan Watkins, Associate Professor of Educational Technology at the George Washington University and the author of 10 books and more than 95 articles. In this interview, Watkins discusses the following topics:…

Backchannel technology can be used to allow students in large lecture courses to communicate with each other and the instructor during the delivery of lecture content and class discussions. It can also be utilized by instructors to capture, summarize, and integrate student questions, ideas, and needs into course content both immediately and…

It is argued that social media has the potential to bridge formal and informal learning through participatory digital cultures. Exemplars of sophisticated use by young people support this claim, although the majority of young people adopt the role of consumers rather than full participants. Scholars have suggested the potential of social media for…

The objective of this study was to examine quality of life of children with profound disabilities from the perspective of special education staff. Due to the nature of profound level cognitive disabilities, children with these issues are unable to respond to traditional paper and pencil quality of life assessments. Therefore, the perspectives of…

The purpose of this qualitative study was three-fold. First, the purpose was to identify instructional strategies implemented by a virtual public high school to serve students with disabilities. Second, the purpose of this study was to show how the curriculum for students with disabilities developed in a virtual public school in a southeastern…

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in Spain has increased the number of degrees taught through English, although secondary schools do not ensure an appropriate set of linguistic skills for bilingual degrees. A holistic, accountable model for Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-supported learning can give students the adequate…

To get a better understanding of how networked technologies are impacting teachers and their teaching practices, in 2015 MediaSmarts partnered with the Canadian Teachers' Federation to survey 4,043 K-12 teachers and school administrators who were teaching in classroom settings across the country. The survey explored the extent to which networked…

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the 2014 International Conference of Pragmatics and Language Learning at Indiana University. It includes fourteen papers on a variety of topics, with a diversity of first and second languages, and a wide range of methods used to collect pragmatic data in L2 and FL settings. This volume is…