This paper reports on a case study investigating students' participation and learning presence in an educational blog implemented as a cross-thematic inquiry activity exploring and debating on the acid rain problem. Twenty-one secondary education students (14-15 years aged), coming from two separate classes, were involved. The content and…

This study aimed to investigate the relationships between college students' behavioral and cognitive engagements while performing an online collective information searching (CIS) activity. The activity aimed to assist the students in utilizing a social bookmarking application to exploit the Internet in a collective manner. A group of 101 college…

It was the aim of this study to investigate physical education undergraduate students' views on the use of social networking, one of the most typical representations of Web 2.0 technologies. In order to do so, the researcher, who was the instructor of the class, entitled "Fair Play Education in Sport", introduced Ning and its educational…

Facebook and other social media have been hailed as delivering the promise of new, socially engaged educational experiences for students in undergraduate, self-directed, and other educational sectors. A theoretical and historical analysis of these media in the light of earlier media transformations, however, helps to situate and qualify this…

It is intuitively felt that visual cues should enhance online communication, and this experimental study aims to test this prediction by exploring the value provided by a webcam in an online L2 pedagogical teacher-to-learner interaction. A total of 40 French undergraduate students with a B2 level in English were asked to describe in English four…

This article describes a study that attempted to evaluate the integration of wikis as an educational tool in successfully achieving the learning objectives of a fifth-grade linguistics and literature course. A mixed-method approach was employed--data were collected via questionnaires, reflective journals, observations, and interviews. The results…

As technology is being integrated into educational processes, teachers are searching for new ways to enhance student motivation and learning. Through shared experiences and the results of empirical research, educators can ease social networking sites into instructional usage. "The Social Classroom: Integrating Social Network Use in…

For the first time in the history of collective action, the offline world has experienced a virtually organized and enacted union strike. While this was the first publicly noticed political action in a virtual world, others have been going on for several years now. As virtual worlds continue to grow in popularity, this type of protest of action…

Scope and method of study. The purpose of this study was for the researcher to obtain a better understanding of the online learning environment, to explore the various ways online class instructors have incorporated digital communication applications to try and provide learner-centered online learning environments, and to examine students'…

Since the nonprofit CK-12 Foundation in 2007 pioneered the idea of a flexbook as "a free and open-source textbook platform where one can build and edit collaborative textbooks," the availability and use of flexbooks has become more mainstream. There is no doubt that as an educational resource, flexbooks are highly versatile and flexible,…

In this article, we describe a project on reasoning about socio-scientific issues (SSIs), involving French and Australian pre-service science teachers engaged in on-line discussion and development of a wiki. In the research, we developed frameworks for looking at the quality of reasoning about "socially acute" sustainability questions.…

This study examined the effects of Sharing the Environment (STE), a situated professional development pilot program that uses an inquiry-based approach to teaching Environmental Education (EE) to elementary students in the US and Trinidad. Inquiry is difficult to incorporate in both cultures because proficient performance on national tests is a…

Throughout America today, public schools are struggling with issues surrounding standards and educational relevance and effectiveness. At the same time, a technological and social evolution is taking place outside of the school building. Students are developing new methods of inquiry and information gathering. If the educational system is to…

With the advent of Web 2.0 tools, educators are looking to these new technological tools to examine its potential in enhancing teaching and learning. While its runaway success as a social networking tool is now renowned, the use of Facebook for educational purposes may be considered still at its infancy stage. This paper describes the use of…

Faculty are big users of and believers in social media. Virtually all higher education teaching faculty are aware of the major social media sites; more than three-quarters visited a social media site within the past month for their personal use; and nearly one-half posted content. Even more impressive is their rate of adoption of social media in…