Virtual Humans provides a much-needed definition of what constitutes a 'virtual human' and places virtual humans within the wider context of Artificial Intelligence development. It explores the technical approaches to creating a virtual human, as well as emergent issues such as embodiment, identity, agency and digital immortality, and the resulting ethical challenges. The book presents an overview of current research and practice in this area, and outlines the major challenges faced by today's developers and researchers. The book examines the possibility for using virtual humans in a variety of roles, from personal assistants to teaching, coaching and knowledge management, and the book situates these discussions around familiar applications (e.g. Siri, Cortana, Alexa) and the portrayal of virtual humans within Science Fiction. Features Presents a comprehensive overview of this rapidly developing field Provides an array of relevant, real-life examples from expert practitioners and researchers from around the globe in how to create the avatar body, mind, senses and ability to communicate Intends to be broad in scope yet practical in approach, so that it can serve the needs of several different audiences, including researchers, teachers, developers and anyone with an interest in where these technologies might take us Covers a wide variety of issues which have been neglected in other research texts; for example, definitions and taxonomies, the ethical challenges of virtual humans and issues around digital immortality Includes numerous examples and extensive references

E-learning has brought an enormous change to instruction, in terms of both rules and tools. Contemporary education requires diverse and creative uses of media technology to keep students engaged and to keep up with rapid developments in the ways they learn and teachers teach. Media Rich Instruction addresses these requirements with up-to-date learning theory and practices that incorporate innovative platforms for information delivery into traditional areas such as learning skills and learner characteristics. Experts in media rich classroom experiences and online instruction delve into the latest findings on student cognitive processes and motivation to learn while offering multimedia classroom strategies geared to specific curriculum areas. Advances such as personal learning environments, gamification, and the Massive Open Online Course are analyzed in the context of their potential for collaborative and transformative learning. And each chapter features key questions and application activities to make coverage especially practical across grade levels and learner populations. Among the topics included: Building successful learning experiences online. Language and literacy, reading and writing. Mathematics teaching and learning with and through education technology. Learning science through experiment and practice. Social studies teaching for learner engagement. The arts and Technology. Connecting school to community. At a time when many are pondering the future of academic standards and student capacity to learn, Media Rich Instruction is a unique source of concrete knowledge and useful ideas for current and future researchers and practitioners in media rich instructional strategies and practices.

Coding as a Playground, Second Edition focuses on how young children (aged 7 and under) can engage in computational thinking and be taught to become computer programmers, a process that can increase both their cognitive and social-emotional skills. Learn how coding can engage children as producers-and not merely consumers-of technology in a playful way. You will come away from this groundbreaking work with an understanding of how coding promotes developmentally appropriate experiences such as problem-solving, imagination, cognitive challenges, social interactions, motor skills development, emotional exploration, and making different choices. Featuring all-new case studies, vignettes, and projects, as well as an expanded focus on teaching coding as a new literacy, this second edition helps you learn how to integrate coding into different curricular areas to promote literacy, math, science, engineering, and the arts through a project-based approach and a positive attitude to learning.

This book discusses the development of the next generation learning spaces with emerging technologies. These spaces result from the combined needs of classroom stakeholders, such as instructors and learners, with classroom elements, such as tools and technologies, pedagogy and content. The book presents discussions and studies on issues, possibilities and implications of these changes for next generation education. Novel ideas, and studies on these all-encompassing, blended roles of technologies in next generation learning spaces are clearly presented. Suggestions on how the benefits they offer can be maximized are also discussed. Engaging learning technologies have remained central in education for assisting instructors to teach and learners to learn, more effectively. However, recent technological growth is creating a system in which previous divides between key classroom concepts and stakeholders are getting progressively blurred. This is giving rise to next generation learning spaces where elements and stakeholders are blended into one. The book addresses the future of learning environments based on these perspectives.

Learn how to keep the rigor and motivation alive in a remote learning or hybrid K-12 classroom. In this essential book, bestselling author Barbara R. Blackburn shares frameworks and tools to help you move online without compromising the rigor of your instruction. You'll learn... how to create a remote culture of high expectations; how to scaffold so students reach higher levels of learning; how to have students collaborate in different settings; and how to provide virtual feedback and deliver effective assessments. You'll also discover how common activities, such as virtual field trips, can lack rigor without critical thinking prompts. The book provides practical strategies you can implement immediately to help all students reach higher levels of success.

This book illustrates approaches for implementing ICT in primary education. Through different initiatives and case studies, the book shows different approaches for successful implementation of ICT. While it gives details of theoretical concepts related to ICT, it also provides live examples from different initiatives as to how literacy can be achieved through customized implementation strategy. The book illustrates different ICT policies that have been implemented with varying degree of success. It also demonstrates different approaches that would be of interest to practitioners.

This book consists of a collection of selected papers presented at the TARC International Conference 2016 held from 17 to 18 October, 2016. It offers a tool for empowering schools and teachers as a way forward for transforming education.

This book explores the implications of technology-mediated project-based language learning for CALL teacher development, focusing on the role of video-based instruction in elucidating challenges and opportunities to promote learner creativity in the language classroom. The volume builds on existing literature on project-based language learning by extending the focus on the affordances of machinima, digital video created by teachers and learners to capture experience in 3D immersive games or virtual worlds. Drawing on data from a large-scale research project featuring case studies that examine different facets of CALL teacher education, the book calls attention to language learning and teaching strategies that encourage both learners and teachers to develop innovative approaches in the language classroom and how such approaches promote the integration of lifelong learning skills alongside traditional linguistic competencies. Offering a dynamic contribution to the growing literature on the interface of language learning and teaching and technology, this book will appeal to students and researchers in applied linguistics and language and education, as well as those interested in the latest developments in CALL.

Co-Published with Apple Press

"A blueprint for those communities who are attempting change within existing educational structures. . . . Parents, teachers and school administrators, business and community leaders, and policy makers will find this book instructive. . .well worth reading."
--American Secondary Education

"Every education, business, and community leader who wants to cut through the hype about technology to see where the investment really makes a difference should start with this book."
--Alan November, CEO, Educational Renaissance Planners

To commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) project, this book brings together a diverse group of educators to reflect on what we know about computer-aided instruction. From the latest research findings to practical classroom experience, it provides an overview of the promise and prospects for technology in education.

By showcasing international, European, and community-based projects, this volume explores how online technologies and collaborative and blended learning can be used to bolster social cohesion and increase students' understanding of what it means to be a global citizen. With the pace of technology rapidly increasing, Blended and Online Learning for Global Citizenship draws timely attention to the global lessons being learned from the impact of these technologies on peace building, community development, and acceptance of difference. In-depth case studies showcasing successful projects in Europe, Northern Ireland, and Israel explore blended learning and illustrate how schools and educators have embraced online technologies to foster national and international links both within and beyond communities. This has, in turn, equipped students with experiences that have informed their attitudes to cultural and political conflicts, as well as racial, ethnic, and social diversity. Building on the authors' previous work Online Learning and Community Cohesion (2013), this thought-provoking text will be of interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of international and comparative education. Educators and school leaders concerned with how multiculturalism and technology play out in the classroom environment will also benefit from reading this text.

This volume fills a gap in the literature between the domains of Communication Studies and Educational Sciences across physical-virtual spaces as they intersect in the 21st century. The chapters focus on "languaging" - communicative practices in the making - and its intersection with analogue and virtual learning spaces, bringing together studies that highlight the constant movement between analogue-virtual dimensions that continuously re-shape participants' identity positionings. Languaging is understood as the deployment of one or more than one language variety, modality, embodiment, etc in human meaning-making across spaces. Languaging activities are explored through a multitude of literary artefacts, genres, media, and modes produced in and across sites. The authors go beyond "best practice" approaches and instead present "how-to-explore" communicative practices for researchers, learners and teachers. This book will be of interest to readers situated in the areas of literacy, literature, bi/multilingualism, multimodality, linguistic anthropology, applied linguistics, and related fields. Chapters 2, 5, 8 and 12 are open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

'n Versameling van 47 literere tekste, spesifiek uitgesoek deur onderwysers wat Frans as vreemde taal aanbied. Die tekste in hierdie bundel – verteenwoordigend van die Franse en Frankofoniese letterkunde vanaf die 16de eeu tot vandag – behoort die leerder ’n goeie oorsig te gee oor die diversiteit van die Franse taal en sy uiteenlopende sprekers en gebruikers.

First published in 1985. Information technology can offer huge benefits to the disabled. It can help many disabled people to overcome barriers of time and space and to a much greater extent it can help them to overcome barriers of communication. In that way new information technology offers opportunities to neutralise the worst effects of many kinds of disablement. This book reviews the possibilities of using information technology in the education of the disabled. Commencing with an assessment of the learning problems faced by disabled people, it goes on to look at the scope of information technology and how it has been used for the education of students of all ages, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. A penultimate section considers most of the contentious issues that faced users of technology, whilst the conclusion devotes itself to the immediate and longer-term future, suggesting possible future trends and the consequent problems that may arise.

This book compares research findings on particular topic of interactive learning to identify areas of research, and discusses possibilities of research co-operation. It presents an argument that in the UK the emphasis on small group work using a microcomputer is the result of pedagogical opinion.

Originally published in 1989, this book differed from others on the topic of microcomputers and education at the time, in that it focuses on the influence that microcomputer technology has on children in their early years, specially pre-school and elementary ages. Microcomputers have the capacity to do great harm as well as good and a full explanation of the technical and philosophical issues involved will be of interest to a number of disciplines. Other topics explored are - the potential uses of microcomputer-technology in early childhood education and current research and theory building on microcomputers and early education. This book should be read by teachers, sociologists, psychologists and researchers in education.

Learning Analytics become the key for Personalised Learning and Teaching thanks to the storage, categorisation and smart retrieval of Big Data. Thousands of user data can be tracked online via Learning Management Systems, instant messaging channels, social networks and other ways of communication. Always with the explicit authorisation from the end user, being a student, a teacher, a manager or a persona in a different role, an instructional designer can design a way to produce a practical dashboard that helps him improve that very user's performance, interaction, motivation or just grading. This book provides a thorough approach on how education, as such, from teaching to learning through management, is improved by a smart analysis of available data, making visible and useful behaviours, predictions and patterns that are hinder to the regular eye without the process of massive data.

Calls to improve undergraduate STEM education have resulted in initiatives that seek to bolster student learning outcomes by promoting changes in teaching practices. Written by participants in a series of ground-breaking social network analysis (SNA) workshops, Researching and Enacting Change in Postsecondary Education argues that the academic department is a highly productive focus for the spread of new, network-based teaching ideas. By clarifying methodological issues related to SNA data collection and articulating relevant theoretical approaches to the topic, this book leverages current knowledge about social network theory and SNA techniques for understanding instructional improvement in higher education.

The theme of this volume is emergency and crisis management and how games and simulations are effective tools in dealing with these issues. The work brings together topical contributions from international figures in the field of games and simulations.

SIIE is an international forum of Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking and English-speaking researchers devoted to investigate and implement the use of computers in education. In 1999 the Symposium was held in Aveiro, Portugal. In the year 2000 it was celebrated in Puertollano, Spain. Other meetings preceded this Symposium, namely, the "Simposio de Investigacao e Desenvolvimento de Software Educativo" held in Lisbon, Coimbra and Evora, two Congresses held in Spain and organised by ADIE: Encuentro de Informatica Educativa, in Madrid and the so successful ConieD'99 held in Puertollano in 1999. A collection of Conied'99 papers is also published in this collection with the title "Computers in Education in the 21st Century" (2000). ADIE (Association for the Development of Computers in Education) undertook the organisation of the congresses and symposiums on Computers in Education. It is an association which organises meetings for researchers in Spain, Portugal and Latin America. ADIE publishes "Revista de Ensenanza y Tecnologia" in Latin America quarterly."

As technology becomes increasingly integrated into our society, cultural expectations and needs are changing. Social understanding, family roles, organizational skills, and daily activities are all adapting to the demands of ever-present technology, causing changes in human brain, emotions, and behaviors. An understanding of the impact of technology upon our lives is essential if we are to adequately educate children for the future and plan for meaningful learning environments for them. Mind, Brain and Technology provides an overview of these changes from a wide variety of perspectives. Designed as a textbook for students in the fields and interdisciplinary areas of psychology, neuroscience, technology, computer science, and education, the book offers insights for researchers, professionals, educators, and anyone interested in learning more about the integration of mind, brain and technology in their lives. The book skilfully guides readers to explore alternatives, generate new ideas, and develop constructive plans both for their own lives and for future educational needs.

This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the 4th IFIP WG 9.7 Conference on the History of Nordic Computing, HiNC 4, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in August 2014. The 37 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this volume. The papers focus on innovative ICT milestones that transformed the nordic societies and on the new ideas, systems and solutions that helped creating the welfare societies of today, in particular solutions and systems for public services, e.g., tax, social benefits, health care and education; solutions and systems for the infrastructure of the society, e.g., banking, insurance, telephones, transport and energy supply; and technologies and IT policies behind the major IT milestones, e.g., user centric innovation, programming techniques and IT ethics. They are organized in topical sections on IT policy, infrastructure, public services, private services, telesystems, health care, IT in banking, transport and IT technology.

Topics covered in this volume include: research on web-based learning; ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning; gathering and organizing web-based information; the risks in cyberspace; engineering perspectives; and the pedagogical impact of course management systems.

Industrial Revolution 4.0 has dramatically changed the business and social landscape, including human behavior not only in advanced countries but also in emerging countries. Technology development affects many aspects in our society, including education. Distance learning, big data and analytics, artificial intelligent and many digital innovations have been released to improve better quality education in our society. These proceedings provide selected papers/research about innovative digital technology in education and pedagogy in Industrial revolution 4.0 covering issues like: pedagogy, education management, early childhood education, research in education, training and vocational education and social science education, earth science education and art/linguistic education related to digital innovation. This book provides details beyond what is possible to be included in an oral presentation and constitute a concise but timely medium for the dissemination of recent research results. It will be invaluable to professionals and academics in the field of education and pedagogy to get an understanding of recent research.

The main idea of this book is that to comprehend the instructional potential of simulation and to design effective simulation-based learning environments, one has to consider both what happens inside the computer and inside the students' minds. The framework adopted to do this is model-centered learning, in which simulation is seen as particularly effective when learning requires a restructuring of the individual mental models of the students, as in conceptual change. Mental models are by themselves simulations, and thus simulation models can extend our biological capacity to carry out simulative reasoning. For this reason, recent approaches in cognitive science like embodied cognition and the extended mind hypothesis are also considered in the book. A conceptual model called the "epistemic simulation cycle" is proposed as a blueprint for the comprehension of the cognitive activities involved in simulation-based learning and for instructional design.

This volume investigates a number of issues needed to develop a modular, effective, versatile, cost effective, pedagogically-embedded, user-friendly, and sustainable online laboratory system that can deliver its true potential in the national and global arenas. This allows individual researchers to develop their own modular systems with a level of creativity and innovation while at the same time ensuring continuing growth by separating the responsibility for creating online laboratories from the responsibility for overseeing the students who use them. The volume first introduces the reader to several system architectures that have proven successful in many online laboratory settings. The following chapters then describe real-life experiences in the area of online laboratories from both technological and educational points of view. The volume further collects experiences and evidence on the effective use of online labs in the context of a diversity of pedagogical issues. It also illustrates successful online laboratories to highlight best practices as case studies and describes the technological design strategies, implementation details, and classroom activities as well as learning from these developments. Finally the volume describes the creation and deployment of commercial products, tools and services for online laboratory development. It also provides an idea about the developments that are on the horizon to support this area.