A volume in International Social Studies Forum: The Series Series Editors Richard Diem, University of Texas at San Antonio and Jeff Passe, University of North Carolina, Charlotte The purpose of this volume is to provide a review and analysis of the theory, research, and practice related to geospatial technologies in social studies education. In the first section, the history of geospatial technologies in education, the influence of the standards movement, and the growth of an international geospatial education community are explored. The second section consists of examples and discussion of the use of geospatial technologies for teaching and learning history, geography, civics, economics, and environmental science. In the third section, theoretical perspectives are proposed that could guide research and practice in this field. This section also includes reviews and critiques of recent research relevant to geospatial technologies in education. The final section examines the theory, research, and practice associated with teacher preparation for using geospatial technologies in education.

As emerging technologies drive innovation, educators and administrators have an array of resources at their disposal. Thank to outstanding developments in technology which have greatly improved the delivery of distance education course delivery, the number of students and educators taking part in online education has grown exponentially. Cases on Distance Delivery and Learning Outcomes: Emerging Trends and Programs provides a firm foundation of best practices for distance course delivery and learning outcomes in order to discuss the rapid developments in online education technologies. The cases presented in this reference publication detail best and emerging practices of distance education, issues that develop as distance education grows, and an international perspective on distance education. Discussing such topics as cost and design strategies of distance course design, communication and dealing with student conduct in distance courses, developing distance programs to meet student needs and how to manage the growth of these programs, as well as the use of new technology tools in distance courses, this essential reference publication provides professional developments through a case book for distance education practitioners, administrators, librarians, and students.

Due to advancing technologies and an evolving professional world, various strategies for preparing and engaging students are necessary for sufficient professional development. Methods that integrate technologies and skillsets related to technologies are becoming more prevalent and essential for success beyond the classroom. The Handbook of Research on Diverse Teaching Strategies for the Technology-Rich Classroom is an essential research publication that explores diverse teaching strategies and their applications to enhance and improve the design of curricula, the development of materials, and the assessment of students' knowledge and skills. Featuring a wide range of topics such as distance learning, social media, and management education, this book is ideal for educators, principals, academicians, curriculum designers, administrators, and researchers.

"Respecting Childhood" critically examines modern day views and practices related to children and childhood.
It begins with a discussion of how Western society conceptualizes and often idealizes children as being fragile, innocent and 'incompetent' (or 'immature'). Childhood is often reduced by adults to being seen as preparation for the future, instead of being viewed as a stage of life worthy of respect in its own right. This is evidenced in parenting styles, practices and structures in schools, and media representations. As a result of these views of childhood, many extreme ways of living and working with children have been proposed, from over-permissiveness on the one hand, to a call for a 'back to basics' strict style of discipline and education on the other.
Childhood is now seen as being so complex that parents and teachers frequently feel the need to seek out and follow often conflicting 'expert advice' on how to raise and teach children, rather than following their natural instincts and common sense.
"Respecting Children" advocates a more balanced approach, calling for views of children that allow them to be children, and to live their childhood in the present, rather than constantly having to follow the dubious proposition of 'maximizing' their learning and development in order to become more competitive, successful adults in the future.

Each chapter explores a different aspect of children's lives, such as their relationships with others, their capabilities, their behaviour, and looks to how these compare in the different contexts of society, home and school life. 'Windows on research', case studies and discussion questions engage the reader, making this book accessible for undergraduate students of courses such as Childhood Studies, Early Childhood Education and Education Studies, and to those of MA Education and MA Childhood and Society programmes.

This work discusses issues relating to distance education and distributed learning. There are essays covering: rethinking assessment for the online environment; the role of collaborative learning in social and intellectual development; and the embodiment of knowledge in virtual environments.

Digital integration is the driving force of teaching and learning at all levels of education. As more non-traditional students seek credentialing, certification, and degrees, institutions continue to push the boundaries of innovative practices to meet the needs of diverse students. Programs and faculty have moved from merely using technology and learning management systems to unique and innovative ways to engage learners. The Handbook of Research on Innovative Digital Practices to Engage Learners is an essential scholarly publication that offers theoretical frameworks, delivery models, current guidelines, and digital design techniques for integrating technological advancements in education contexts to enforce student engagement and positive student outcomes. Featuring a wide range of topics such as gamification, wearable technologies, and distance education, this book is ideal for teachers, curriculum developers, instructional designers, principals, deans, administrators, researchers, academicians, education professionals, and students.

This book explores in detail the role of laboratory work in physics teaching and learning. Compelling recent research work is presented on the value of experimentation in the learning process, with description of important research-based proposals on how to achieve improvements in both teaching and learning. The book comprises a rigorously chosen selection of papers from a conference organized by the International Research Group on Physics Teaching (GIREP), an organization that promotes enhancement of the quality of physics teaching and learning at all educational levels and in all contexts. The topics covered are wide ranging. Examples include the roles of open inquiry experiments and advanced lab experiments, the value of computer modeling in physics teaching, the use of web-based interactive video activities and smartphones in the lab, the effectiveness of low-cost experiments, and assessment for learning through experimentation. The presented research-based proposals will be of interest to all who seek to improve physics teaching and learning.

Technology Literacy Applications in Learning Environments presents readers with a view of technology literacy in a learning environment. While word processing skills are important, the development of technology skills covers the areas of presentation software, storage, human interaction, and virtual reality. Instructional technology is dedicated to discovering and developing the pedagogical skills of teaching and learning in a technology-enhanced learning environment. Technology Literacy Applications in Learning Environments discusses many important topics, such as: the defining aspects of instructional technology skills, the use of technology literacy in higher education, and the growing digital divide. This book provides readers a series of examples and guides that support instructional technology literacy, making it a necessary collection addition for academics, researchers, educators, and IT professionals everywhere.

This volume includes a variety of first-hand case studies, critical analyses, action research and reflective practice in the digital humanities which ranges from digital literature, library science, online games, museum studies, information literacy to corpus linguistics in the 21st century. It informs readers of the latest developments in the digital humanities and their influence on learning and teaching. With the growing advancement of digital technology, humanistic inquiries have expanded and transformed in unfathomable complexity as new content is being rapidly created. The emergence of electronic archiving, digital scholarship, digitized pedagogy, textual digitization and software creation has brought about huge impacts on both humanities subjects and the university curricula in terms of nature, scope and design. This volume provides insights into what these technological changes mean for all the stakeholders involved and for the ways in which humanities subjects are understood. Part 1 of this volume begins with a broad perspective on digital humanities and discusses the current status of the field in Asia, Canada and Europe. Then, with a special focus on new literacies, educational implications, and innovative research in the digital humanities, Parts 2-4 explore how digital technology revolutionizes art forms, curricula, and pedagogy, revealing the current practices and latest trends in the digital humanities. Written by experts and researchers across Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe, this volume brings global insights into the digital humanities, particularly in the education aspect. It is of interest to researchers and students of cultural studies, literature, education, and technology studies. The strongest point of this collection of work is that, it brings important concepts to the study of digital literacies, for example, looking at it from the perspective of new literacies, languages and education. Daniel Churchill, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong With a rapidly growing advancement in digital tools, this book has made a relevant contribution by informing readers what the latest development of these tools are, and discusses how they can aid research, libraries, education and even poets across different continents. Samuel Kai-wah Chu, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong

In an environment where some countries are coming out of the recession at different speeds and others remain in a gloomy economic environment, education plays a vital role in reducing the negative impact of the global economic problems. In this sense, new technologies help to generate human resources with a better quality of education. Augmented Reality for Enhanced Learning Environments provides emerging research on using new technologies to encourage education and improve learning quality through augmented reality. While highlighting issues such as global economic problems impacting schools and insufficient aid, this publication explores new technologies in emerging economies and effective means of knowledge and learning transfer. This book is a vital resource for teachers, students, and aid workers seeking current research on creating a new horizon in science and technology to strengthen the current system of learning.

Let an award-winning school library media specialist who has implemented a local area network (LAN) in her media center help you plan this important addition to your media center while avoiding the pitfalls. This hands-on practical guide contains all the information the network novice needs to plan, fund, create, and maintain a LAN in the media center. Based on the experience of the school library media specialist who received the 1994 Follett/AASL "Microcomputer in the Media Center Award" for creating a local area network in the high school media center, this guide describes the procedures for planning, designing, funding, installing, organizing, training, evaluating, and maintaining a LAN in a library media center setting. Step-by-step nontechnical instructions and advice for creating an information network are presented in an understandable format. How to expand into a school-district wide area network (WAN) and gain access to the Internet are also discussed. This comprehensive work takes the network novice from dream to implementation, maintenance, and evaluation of a local area network. It covers funding sources, tips for writing technology grants, requests for proposals from vendors, staff inservice and student training, evaluation and assessment, student internships, technology teams, troubleshooting equipment, and network administration. Useful forms, simple network schematic diagrams, a model school-board approved electronic resources policy, a glossary of technical terms, and sample assessment tools are included. No other book walks the library media specialist through every step in creating a LAN. Media professionals who want to provide networked electronic information to thestaff and students but are not sure of how to proceed will benefit from this clear, nontechnical guide to the process.

Distance education technology combines communication with educational and intelligent methods to develop software and hardware systems that support learning activities with spatiotemporal flexibilities. ""Future Directions in Distance Learning and Communication Technologies"" presents theoretical studies and practical solutions for engineers, educational professionals, and graduate students in the research areas of e-learning, distance education, and instructional design. This book provides readers with cutting-edge solutions and research directions pertinent to these evolving fields.

The face of education is constantly being transformed due to rapid changes in technology. It is imperative that leadership trends and techniques be evaluated in the educational field, particularly in reference to alternative learning programs. The Handbook of Research on Administrative Leadership in Open and Distance Learning Programs is a pivotal scholarly resource that discusses emerging issues surrounding the administration of non-traditional education practices. Highlighting relevant topics that include policy development, quality assurance, accreditation, and assessment systems, this publication is an ideal reference source for educators, academicians, graduate students, and researchers that are interested in the progression of open and distance education.

The effective communication of science through language, including reading, writing, listening, speaking, and visual representation, is an essential part of scientific learning, understanding, and practice. Language is the medium by which scientific reasoning occurs, whether be it formal language or symbolic representations of scientific phenomena. Sustainable Language Support Practices in Science Education: Technologies and Solutions presents cases on the results of a study done in Australia on first-year university students and the impact of new techniques of language acquisition on science education. The project covered biology, chemistry, and physics. Nearly 3,400 students were involved in the project, drawn from the University of Canberra, the University of Technology-Sydney, the University of Sydney, the University of Tasmania, and the University of Newcastle in Australia. This book serves as the latest research available on meta-cognitive assessment and language needs for a diverse student body; it is a vital resource for academics and practitioners designing and implementing science education around the world today.

The book introduces techniques to improve the effectiveness of serious games in relation to cognition and motivation. These techniques include ways to improve motivation, collaboration, reflection, and the integration of gameplay into various contexts. The contributing authors expand upon this broad range of techniques, show recent empirical research on each of these techniques that discuss their promise and effectiveness, then present general implications or guidelines that the techniques bring forth. They then suggest how serious games can be improved by implementing the respective technique into a particular game.

This book features a selection of articles from the second edition of the conference Europe Middle East & North Africa Information Systems and Technologies to Support Learning 2018 (EMENA-ISTL'18), held in Fez, Morocco between 25th and 27th October 2018. EMENA-ISTL'18 was a global forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss recent findings and innovations, current trends, professional experiences and challenges in information systems & technologies to support learning. The main topics covered are: A) information systems technologies to support education; B) education in science, technology, engineering and Mathematics; C) emerging technologies in education learning innovation in the digital age; D) software systems, architectures, applications and tools; E) multimedia systems and applications; F) computer communications and networks; G) IOT, smart cities and people, wireless, sensor and ad-hoc networks; H) organizational models and information systems and technologies; I) human-computer Interaction; J) computers & security, ethics and data-forensic; K) health informatics, and medical informatics security; l) information and knowledge management; m) big data analytics and applications, intelligent data systems, and machine learning; n) artificial intelligence, high performance computing; o) mobile, embedded and ubiquitous systems; p) language and image processing, computer graphics and vision; and q) the interdisciplinary field of fuzzy logic and data mining.

At the centre of the methodology used in this book is STEM learning variability space that includes STEM pedagogical variability, learners' social variability, technological variability, CS content variability and interaction variability. To design smart components, firstly, the STEM learning variability space is defined for each component separately, and then model-driven approaches are applied. The theoretical basis includes feature-based modelling and model transformations at the top specification level and heterogeneous meta-programming techniques at the implementation level. Practice includes multiple case studies oriented for solving the task prototypes, taken from the real world, by educational robots. These case studies illustrate the process of gaining interdisciplinary knowledge pieces identified as S-knowledge, T-knowledge, E-knowledge, M-knowledge or integrated STEM knowledge and evaluate smart components from the pedagogical and technological perspectives based on data gathered from one real teaching setting. Smart STEM-Driven Computer Science Education: Theory, Methodology and Robot-based Practices outlines the overall capabilities of the proposed approach and also points out the drawbacks from the viewpoint of different actors, i.e. researchers, designers, teachers and learners.

Information and communication technologies play a crucial role in a number of modern industries. Among these, education has perhaps seen the greatest increases in efficiency and availability through Internet-based technologies. E-Learning as a Socio-Cultural System: A Multidimensional Analysis provides readers with a critical examination of the theories, models, and best practices in online education from a social perspective, evaluating blended, distance, and mobile learning systems with a focus on the interactions of their practitioners. Within the pages of this volume, teachers, students, administrators, policy makers, and IT professionals will all find valuable advice and enriching personal experiences in the field of online education.

Teachers of political science, social studies, and economics, as well as school library media specialists, will find this resource invaluable for incorporating the Internet into their classroom lessons. Over 150 primary source Web sites are referenced and paired with questions and activities designed to encourage critical thinking skills. Completing the activities for the lessons in this book will allow students to evaluate the source of information, the content presented, and it usefulness in the context of their assignments.

Along with each Web site, a summary of the site's contents identifies important primary source documents such as constitutions, treaties, speeches, court cases, statistics, and other official documents. The questions and activites invite the students to log on to the Web site, read the information presented, interact with the data, and analyze it critically to answer such questions as: Who created this document? Is the source reliable? How is the information useful and how does it relate to present-day circumstances? If I were in this situation, would I have responded the same way as the person in charge? Strengthening these critical thinking skills will help prepare students for both college and career in the 21st century.

The capabilities and possibilities of emerging game-based learning technologies bring about a new perspective of learning and instruction. This, in turn, necessitates alternative ways to assess the kinds of learning that are taking place in the game-based environments. The field has been broadening the focus of assessment in game environments (i.e., what we measure), developing processes and methodologies that go beyond psychometrics practices (i.e., how we go about assessment in games), and implementing the game-based assessment (GBA) in real contexts. The current state of the field calls for a revisit of this topic to understand what we have learned from the research on this topic, and how the GBA work changed how the field thinks about assessment beyond game environments. Accordingly, this comprehensive volume covers the current state of research, methodology, and technology of game-based assessment. It features four major themes: what we are measuring in games, how GBA has influenced how people do assessment beyond games, new methods and practices, and implementations of GBA. The audience for this volume includes researchers, graduate students, teachers, and professional practitioners in the areas of education, instructional design, educational psychology, academic and organizational development, and instructional technology.

Do computers foster cultural diversity? Ecological sustainability? In our age of high-tech euphoria we seem content to leave tough questions like these to the experts. That dangerous inclination is at the heart of this important examination of the commercial and educational trends that have left us so uncritically optimistic about global computing. Contrary to the attitudes that have been marketed and taught to us, says C. A. Bowers, the fact is that computers operate on a set of Western cultural assumptions and a market economy that drives consumption. Our indoctrination includes the view of global computing innovations as inevitable and on a par with social progress--a perspective dismayingly suggestive of the mindset that engendered the vast cultural and ecological disruptions of the industrial revolution and world colonialism. In Let Them Eat Data Bowers discusses important issues that have fallen into the gap between our perceptions and the realities of global computing, including the misuse of the theory of evolution to justify and legitimate the global spread of computers, and the ecological and cultural implications of unmooring knowledge from its local contexts as it is digitized, commodified, and packaged for global consumption. He also suggests ways that educators can help us think more critically about technology. Let Them Eat Data is essential reading if we are to begin democratizing technological decisions, conserving true cultural diversity and intergenerational forms of knowledge, and living within the limits and possibilities of the earth's natural systems.