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.

To survive in today's competitive business environment, marketing professionals must look to develop innovative methods of reaching their customers and stakeholders. Web 2.0 provides a useful tool in developing the relationships between business and consumer. The Handbook of Research on Integrating Social Media into Strategic Marketing explores the use of social networking and other online media in marketing communications, including both best practices and common pitfalls to provide comprehensive coverage of the topic. This book is intended for marketing professionals, business managers, and anyone interested in how social media fits into today's marketing environments.

Computer-mediated communication and cyberculture are dramatically changing the nature of social relationships. Whether cyberspace will simply retain vestiges of traditional communities with hierarchical social links and class-structured relationships or create new egalitarian social networks remains an open question. The chapters in this volume examine the issue of social justice on the Internet by using a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives.

Political scientists, sociologists, and communications and information systems scholars address issues of race, class, and gender on the Internet in chapters that do not assume any specialized training in computer technology.

As software and computer hardware grows in complexity, networks have grown to match. The increasing scale, complexity, heterogeneity, and dynamism of communication networks, resources, and applications has made distributed computing systems brittle, unmanageable, and insecure. Internet and Distributed Computing Advancements: Theoretical Frameworks and Practical Applications is a vital compendium of chapters on the latest research within the field of distributed computing, capturing trends in the design and development of Internet and distributed computing systems that leverage autonomic principles and techniques. The chapters provided within this collection offer a holistic approach for the development of systems that can adapt themselves to meet requirements of performance, fault tolerance, reliability, security, and Quality of Service (QoS) without manual intervention.

Advances in Electronic Business, Volume 1 advances the understanding of management methods, information technology, and their joint application in business processes. The applications of electronic commerce draw great attention of the practitioners in applying digital technologies to the buy-and-sell activities. This first volume addresses the importance of management and technology issues in electronic business, including collaborative design, collaborative engineering, collaborative decision making, electronic collaboration, communication and cooperation, workflow collaboration, knowledge networking, collaborative e-learning, costs and benefits analysis of collaboration, collaborative transportation, and ethics.

Each consumer now has the power to be a journalist, reviewer, and whistle blower. The prevalence of social media has made it possible to alter a brand's reputation with a single viral post, or spark a political movement with a hashtag. This new landscape requires a strategic plasticity and careful consideration of how the public will react to an organization's actions. Participation in social media is mandatory for a brand's success in this highly competitive online era. Managing Public Relations and Brand Image through Social Media provides the latest research and theoretical framework necessary to find ease in the shifting public relations and reputation management worlds. It provides an overview of the tools and skills necessary to deftly sidestep public affronts and to effectively use online outlets to enhance an organization's visibility and reputation. This publication targets policy makers, website developers, students and educators of public relations, PR and advertising professionals, and organizations who wish to better understand the effects of social media.

Cyber-physical systems play a crucial role in connecting aspects of online life to physical life. By studying emerging trends in these systems, programming techniques can be optimized and strengthened to create a higher level of effectiveness. Solutions for Cyber-Physical Systems Ubiquity is a critical reference source that discusses the issues and challenges facing the implementation, usage, and challenges of cyber-physical systems. Highlighting relevant topics such as the Internet of Things, smart-card security, multi-core environments, and wireless sensor nodes, this scholarly publication is ideal for engineers, academicians, computer science students, and researchers that would like to stay abreast of current methodologies and trends involving cyber-physical system progression. Topics Covered The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to: Automotive Domain Internet of Things Multi-Core Environments Safety Concerns Security strategies Smart Card Security System Verification Wireless Sensor Nodes

This book introduces social manufacturing, the next generation manufacturing paradigm that covers product life cycle activities that deal with Internet-based organizational and interactive mechanisms under the context of socio-technical systems in the fields of industrial and production engineering. Like its subject, the book's approach is multi-disciplinary, including manufacturing systems, operations management, computational social sciences and information systems applications. It reports on the latest research findings regarding the social manufacturing paradigm, the architecture, configuration and execution of social manufacturing systems and more. Further, it describes the individual technologies enabled by social manufacturing for each topic, supported by case studies. The technologies discussed include manufacturing resource minimalization and their socialized reorganizations, blockchain models in cybersecurity, computing and decision-making, social business relationships and organizational networks, open product design, social sensors and extended cyber-physical systems, and social factory and inter-connections. This book helps engineers and managers in industry to practice social manufacturing, as well as offering a systematic reference resource for researchers in manufacturing. Students also benefit from the detailed discussions of the latest research and technologies that will have been put into practice by the time they graduate.

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.

The Web is notoriously unreliable, yet it is the first place many students look for information. How can students, teachers, parents, and librarians be certain that the information a Web site provides is accurate and age appropriate? In this unique book, experienced science educator Judith A. Bazler reviews hundreds of the most reliable earth science-related Web sites. Each review discusses the most appropriate grade level of the site, analyzes its accuracy and usefulness, and provides helpful hints for getting the most out of the resource. Sites are organized by topic, from "Air Movements" to "Wetlands," making it easy to locate the most useful sites. A handy summary presents the best places on the Web to find information on science museums, science centers, careers in the earth sciences, and supplies.

Online Harassment is one of the most serious problems in social media. To address it requires understanding the forms harassment takes, how it impacts the targets, who harasses, and how technology that stands between users and social media can stop harassers and protect users. The field of Human-Computer Interaction provides a unique set of tools to address this challenge. This book brings together experts in theory, socio-technical systems, network analysis, text analysis, and machine learning to present a broad set of analyses and applications that improve our understanding of the harassment problem and how to address it. This book tackles the problem of harassment by addressing it in three major domains. First, chapters explore how harassment manifests, including extensive analysis of the Gamer Gate incident, stylistic features of different types of harassment, how gender differences affect misogynistic harassment. Then, we look at the results of harassment, including how it drives people offline and the impacts it has on targets. Finally, we address techniques for mitigating harassment, both through automated detection and filtering and interface options that users control. Together, many branches of HCI come together to provide a comprehensive look at the phenomenon of online harassment and to advance the field toward effective human-oriented solutions.

As blogs have evolved over the last few years, they have begun to take on distinct characteristics depending on audience and purpose. Though political blogs remain the most high profile (and most read), other types of blogs are gaining in strength and visibility. This book-a follow-up volume to Barlow's Rise of the Blogosphere, which examined the historical context for the modern blog-provides an examination of the many current aspects of the blogosphere, from the political to the professional to the personal, with many stops in between. Given that millions of blogs have been created over the past five years and yet more come online at an undiminished rate, and given that enthusiasm for both reading them and writing them has yet to wane, it is likely that the blog explosion will continue indefinitely. As blogs have evolved over the last few years, they have begun to take on distinct characteristics depending on audience and purpose. Though political blogs remain the most high profile (and most read), other types of blogs are gaining in strength and visibility. This book-a follow-up volume to Barlow's Rise of the Blogosphere, which examined the historical context for the modern blog-provides an examination of the many current aspects of the blogosphere, from the political to the professional to the personal, with many stops in between. Areas covered include the personal blog; the political blog; the use of blogs by various religious communities both for discussion within communities and for outreach; the growth of blogs dedicated to specific geographic communities, and their relations with older local media; blogs dedicated to technical subjects, particularly relating to computers; blogs and business; blogs sparked by video games, movies, music, and other forms of entertainment; and more. Given that millions of blogs have been created over the past five years and yet more come online at an undiminished rate, and given that enthusiasm for both reading them and writing for them has yet to wane, it is likely that the blog explosion will continue indefinitely.

The Internet has transformed the way people research, shop, conduct business, and communicate. But the Internet and technologies that enable online interaction and access to a variety of content can be a perilous place for minors 8 to 18. The dangers are real, and parents and teachers today are confronted with many threats they simply do not understand. This book shares the risks of the Internet by detailing recent, real-world tragedies and revealing some of the secrets of online activities. It provides a pragmatic approach to help parents and teachers protect children against the threats of going online. Parents and teachers are often ill-equipped to deal with the variety of devices and applications such as email, instant messaging, browsing, blogs, cell phones, and personal digital assistant devices (PDAs) that can facilitate the dangers lurking online. How to Protect Your Children on the Internet offers a comprehensive overview of the ways in which youth use such technologies and exposes the risks they represent. At the same time, it provides a roadmap that will enable parents and teachers to become more engaged in children's online activities, arming them with techniques and tips to help protect their children. Smith underscores his arguments through chilling, real-life stories, revealing approaches people are using to deceive and to conceal their activities online. Filled with practical advice and recommendations, his book is indispensable to anyone who uses the Internet and related technologies, and especially to those charged with keeping children safe.

The Semantic Web has been around for some years with recent advances in mature technologies and applications. Lately, its development has been demonstrated in its contribution to businesses through the enhancement of e-commerce. Semantic Web for Business: Cases and Applications delivers real-life cases that illustrate the benefits of Semantic Web technologies as applied to e-business and e-commerce scenarios. Covering topics such as business integration, organizational knowledge management, and Semantic Web services, this book provides academic research libraries with a comprehensive reference to the commercial capabilities of Semantic Web technologies, as well as practical applications for the benefit of IT professionals, business executives, consultants, and students.

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.