Digital media and open educational resources (OER) are said to redraw the boundaries between learners and teachers, by weakening the centralization of expertise and the distribution of subject-matter authority. This paper presents the findings of an ethnographic study of how the use of OER mediates the relations between self-directed learners and…

The focus of this paper is a project conducted in 2011, exploring the use of "YouTube" in the classroom. The project conducted a number of focus groups for which highlighted a number of issues surrounding independent informal learning environments. The questions posed by this research are concerned with what constitutes learning in these…

Digital literacies have fast become indispensable for productive engagement, competency, and citizenship in a rapidly changing world. After-school programs represent an important venue where many young people can develop a mastery of digital literacies, encompassing both the creative and responsible use of a broad range of new media. This paper…

Understanding the connections between scientific inquiry and digital literacy in informal learning environments is essential to furthering students' critical thinking and technology skills. The Habitat Tracker project combines a standards-based curriculum focused on the nature of science with an integrated system of online and mobile…

New technologies and developments in media are transforming the way that individuals, groups and societies communicate, learn, work and govern. This new socio-technical reality requires participants to possess not only skills and abilities related to the use of technological tools, but also knowledge regarding the norms and practices of…

The Net Generation (those born in or after 1980) rely heavily on ICTs for social and professional interactions, and it has been suggested that they have the expectation that technology will be an integral part of their education. At the same time, it is argued that "Facebook" has educational potential, and that today's learners…

A fifth of US children live in rural areas with limited access to the informal learning opportunities available to their metropolitan counterparts. High-speed broadband internet access can be an important vehicle for delivering opportunities at home and outside of the classroom. In an attempt to explore what current data say about children's…

The article discusses an action-research study focused on developing participatory attitudes and the self-expression skills of a group ("N"?=?15) of second-generation immigrant adolescents who live in an urban suburb in Italy. The research study was based on mobile storytelling, a practice of personal multimedia storytelling conducted…

In the last few years, digital games have become increasingly popular with both "hardcore" and "casual" audiences. At the same time, it has been argued that games can be powerful learning environments, since they are seen to encourage active and critical learning through participation in affinity groups and semiotic domains but there is a need for…

"Second Life" (SL) is a three-dimensional (3D) virtual world, and educational institutions are adopting SL to support their teaching and learning. Although the question of how 3D learning spaces should be designed to support student learning and engagement has been raised among SL educators and designers, there is hardly any guidance or research…

Virtual worlds have been linked with e-learning applications to create virtual learning environments (VLEs) for the past decade. However, while they can support many educational activities that extend both traditional on-campus teaching and distance learning, they are used primarily for learning content generated and managed by instructors. With…

It could be said that in the fast-changing field of education technology the initial excitement for a tool or application usually fades away as the next technology emerges on the horizon--leaving little or no room for critical evaluation of how it may best be used in educational settings. Some critics have identified this endless "pursuit of the…

The internet presents many potential opportunities for people to learn for both formal and informal purposes. However, not everyone is able to make the most of the internet for learning. This paper utilises quantitative nationally representative survey data of internet use in Britain in order to explore the digital divide in relation to learning…

Whilst recent studies suggest that over 95% of British undergraduate students are regularly using social networking sites, we still know very little about how this phenomenon impacts on the student experience and, in particular, how it influences students' social integration into university life. This paper explores how pre-registration engagement…

All students today are increasingly expected to develop technological fluency, digital citizenship, and other twenty-first century competencies despite wide variability in the quality of learning opportunities schools provide. Social network sites (SNSs) available via the internet may provide promising contexts for learning to supplement…