This article investigates the tendency of those who explore the topic of "electronic literacies" to downplay the fundamental nature and importance of the perceptual habits associated with print literacy, and highlights the opposite tendency of reading and writing specialists to decontextualize the acquisition of these fundamental skills from the…

This article examines the role of copyrights in contemporary media literacies. It argues that, provided they are ethical, young people's engagement with text should occur in environments that are as free from restriction as possible. Discussion of open culture ecologies and the emergent education commons is followed by a theorisation of both…

The last decade has seen a great variety in the ways in which instructors have incorporated the World Wide Web into their traditional classroom courses; however, this combination has not always translated into changes or improvements in teaching and learning. The real challenge has proved to be not the addition of web resources to the traditional…

The ongoing development of mobile devices like cell phones, iPods, PDAs, and so on is seen by an increasing number of educationalists as a chance to focus on a new kind of learning. This mobile learning, as it is called, should enable students to learn while on the move. Rather than giving a genealogy of the use of mobile equipment in education,…

It is possible that the pedagogical benefits of a discussion board or any asynchronous communicative tool may not be realised as inscribed in terms like "collaborative learning environment" or "discussion board" due to two things: first, as instructors, we focus on what the technology can do and should do and ignore "what is done" when the…

New educational technologies prove to be capable of solving many problems in medical training. Students do not see e-learning as replacing traditional instructor-led training but as a complement to it, forming part of a blended-learning strategy. Innovations in e-learning technologies point toward a revolution in education, allowing learning to be…

This article explores different forms of openness and closure in two knowledge communities: the fictional world of Castalia in Hermann Hesse's great work "The Glass Bead Game", and the twenty-first-century cyberspatial universe of Wikipedia. These two worlds differ in some important respects, but they also share a number of educationally…

This article discusses some of the approaches implemented as socio-educational public policies--which have failed--aimed at strengthening social inclusion to encourage a substantive conviviality, an alternative to the existing one, which is included under the new comprehensive framework of Social Studies of Science and Technology in their…

Despite its proliferation in higher learning institutions, e-learning has been criticised as being nothing more than trivial online conversations, or a mere means of delivering class materials electronically. If e-learning is to address such criticisms and become an effective pedagogical platform, educators need to identify elements critical to…

With the advent of online learning, questions have arisen as to which format for leadership may be most appropriate given the technological and social evolution within online discussion. Emerging perspectives on the nature of interaction between those who lead and those who learn in this new environment pose difficult questions for both providers…

This article elaborates on the Inquiry Cycle as an appropriate model of learning for the digitally enhanced classroom. Its goal is to provide a useful link between theory and pedagogic practice. This involves taking a new look at the concept of digital literacy. The authors propose a conceptual framework connecting classroom practices and elements…

The objective of the research reported in this article is to understand the extent of e-learning implementation practices currently in use in Jordanian government universities. In order to achieve this objective, a survey of e-learning implementation practice in Jordanian universities was conducted. A detailed description of the survey procedures…

This is an article of activism, application and intervention. It offers new models and modes of teaching and learning by aligning information literacy, media literacy and multiliteracy. The priority is on learning outcomes rather than technological choices, and social justice rather than transferable skills. These are not--obviously--"either/or"…

The design of experiences and, in particular, educational experiences is a complex matter and involves not only using effective technologies and applying cognitive triggers, but there is a need to "think outside the box" in order to also design for the affective dimension of human experiences; the impressions, feelings and interactions that a…

This article presents a qualitative case study that uses discourse and social semiotic analysis methods in order to examine the rhetorical construction of fictional personas within an online role play used for learning in the college classroom. Of special focus are the differing patterns of semiotic resource use (for example, language and…