"What we all hope for our children's education is undiminished curiosity and creativeness, and solid practical preparation for adult work. Today, there's no doubt that easy access to computers is vital for students. Bob Johnstone has brilliantly and passionately told the story of the worldwide struggle to make today's equivalent of the pencil accessible to all students."
--Victor K. McElheny, author of "Watson and DNA"

If every kid had a laptop computer, what would difference would it make to their learning? And to their prospects? Today, these are questions that all parents, teachers, school administrators, and politicians must ask themselves.

Bob Johnstone provides a definitive answer to the conundrum of computers in the classroom. His conclusion: we owe it to our kids to educate them in the medium of their time.

In this book he tells the extraordinary story of the world's first laptop school. How daring educators at an independent girls' school in Melbourne, Australia, empowered their students by making laptops mandatory. And how they solved all the obstacles to laptop learning, including teacher training.

Their example spread to thousands of other schools worldwide. Especially in America, where it inspired the largest educational technology initiative in US history--the State of Maine issuing laptops to every seventh-grader in its public school system.

This lively, intriguing, anecdote-rich account is based on hundreds of interviews. In it, you'll meet the visionary leaders, inspirational principals, heroic teachers, and their endlessly-surprising students who showed what computers in the classroom are really for.

Online education plays an important role across numerous industries. These processes and strategies can be adopted into the library and information science programs for use in assisting with educational developments. Library and Information Science in the Age of MOOCs is a critical scholarly resource that explores the ideas on how library and information science professionals implement the use of massive open online courses in the library and information science domain. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics, such as distance learning, technology enhanced learning, and online learning, this book is geared towards academicians, librarians, and researchers seeking current research on solving problems related to massive open online courses.

This book brings together strategies and innovations that educators from diverse educational contexts have conceptualized and implemented to cater to differences in academic ability, as well as in other domains such as psychosocial contexts and developmental needs. The emergence of IT and new technologies have altered the educational landscape and opened a multitude of opportunities for diverse modes of instruction catering to diverse student populations. The book addresses the gap in the literature with evidence-based reports of innovative strategies and approaches that are grounded in educational research. It identifies student differences in terms of academic ability and also, with regard to their cultural and social background, their developmental and psycho-emotional needs. It examines how new technologies are used in instructional approaches and how these innovative strategies diversify learner experiences. The book is a valuable resource to practitioners, researchers and educational administrators.

As emerging technologies increase the potential for constructivist learning processes and responses, it is critical that educational researchers, instructional designers, cognitive scientists, and information scientists become more aware of advances in these correlating fields. ""Cases on Collaboration in Virtual Learning Environments: Processes and Interactions"" provides a systematic response to this highly innovative and rapidly evolving field for enhanced education and training. Containing unique research cases on experiences, implementations, and applications of virtual learning environments, this publication offers a critical collection of leading explorations useful to educational practitioners, researchers, and those involved in related fields of study.

Computers have transformed how we think, discuss and learn-as individuals, in groups, within cultures and globally. However, social media are problematic, fostering flaming, culture wars and fake news. This volume presents an alternative paradigm for computer support of group thinking, collaborative learning and joint knowledge construction. This requires expanding concepts of cognition to collectivities, like collaborative groups of networked students. Theoretical Investigations explores the conditions for group cognition, supplying a philosophical foundation for new models of pedagogy and methods to analyze group interaction. Twenty-five self-contained investigations document progress in research on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL)-both in Stahl's own research and during the first decade of the CSCL journal. The volume begins with two new reflections on the vision and theory that result from this research. Representing both ethnomethodological and social-constructivist research paradigms, the investigations within this volume comprise a selection of seminal and influential articles and critical commentaries that contribute to an understanding of concepts and themes central to the CSCL field. The book elaborates an innovative theory of group cognition and substantiates the pedagogical potential of CSCL. Theoretical Investigations: Philosophical Foundations of Group Cognition is essential as a graduate text for courses in educational theory, instructional design, learning and networked technologies. The investigations will also appeal to researchers and practitioners in those areas.

Advancements in technology in modern societies have resulted in an abundance of new educational tools and aids. Analyzing the effects of different mobile educational applications can provide insight into how technology can promote or discourage purposeful learning among students and educators alike. The Handbook of Research on Mobile Technology, Constructivism, and Meaningful Learning is a crucial scholarly resource that examines the use of newly-developed technology on classroom education. Featuring pertinent topics that include collaborative learning, social media integration, virtual reality, and critical thinking dispositions, this publication is ideal for educators, academicians, students, and researchers that are interested in expanding their knowledge on recent trends and technologies that are enhancing the educational field.

Knowledge management innovations provide essential pathways through which teachers, researchers, students, and knowledge management professionals who are interested in understanding and applying knowledge management theory and practice can transfer their insights and experiences into both organizational and educational settings. Knowledge Management Innovations for Interdisciplinary Education: Organizational Applications is a detailed resource on knowledge management and innovations that has been written and edited to provide flexibility and in-depth knowledge management innovations, strategies, and practices. The combination of a primary emphasis on theory and practice with applications to interdisciplinary education, as well as organizational environments, makes this book unique among the burgeoning literature on knowledge management.

This edited book explores the use of technology to enable us to visualise the life sciences in a more meaningful and engaging way. It will enable those interested in visualisation techniques to gain a better understanding of the applications that can be used in visualisation, imaging and analysis, education, engagement and training. The reader will also be able to learn about the use of visualisation techniques and technologies for the historical and forensic settings. The reader will be able to explore the utilisation of technologies from a number of fields to enable an engaging and meaningful visual representation of the biomedical sciences. The chapters presented in this volume cover such a diverse range of topics, with something for everyone. We present here chapters on technology enhanced learning in neuroanatomy; 3D printing and surgical planning; changes in higher education utilising technology, decolonising the curriculum and visual representations of the human body in education. We also showcase how not to use protective personal equipment inspired by the pandemic; anatomical and historical visualisation of obstetrics and gynaecology; 3D modelling of carpal bones and augmented reality for arachnid phobias for public engagement. In addition, we also present face modelling for surgical education in a multidisciplinary setting, military medical museum 3D digitising of historical pathology specimens and finally computational fluid dynamics.

Advances in technology are increasingly impacting the way in which curriculum is delivered and assessed. The emergence of the Internet has offered learners a new instructional delivery system that connects them with educational resources. ""Advances in Web-Based Education: Personalized Learning Environments"" covers a wide range of factors that influence the design, use and adoption of personalized learning environments, and it shows how user and pedagogical considerations can be integrated into the design, development and implementation of adaptive hypermedia systems to create effective personalized learning environments.

This book explores emerging practices in distance education that have been facilitated by the development of educational technology. The volume examines core themes in distance education including online education at scale, embodiment in online environments, connectivity in online education and the personalisation of learning experiences within online education. The first section of the book examines online teaching tools, and explores how they are being used to enhance and promote student learning. The second looks at some of the broader challenges encountered by online teachers and those responsible for designing online learning material. While this volume will be of significant interest to distance learning universities and colleges, it will also be a valuable resource to traditional Higher Education Institutions, who are increasingly searching for innovative ways to reach and teach their students. This edited collection will be of value to scholars of online education as well as practitioners and policy makers looking to enrich their notions of online pedagogy.

This title focuses on electronic learning communities created through the development and use of the Internet for instruction and training. Chapters focus on philosophies, background, reviews, technologies, systems, tools, services, strategies, development, implementation and research.

Technology and the Internet especially have brought on major changes to politics and have become an increasingly important role in political campaigns, communications, and messaging. Political Campaigning in the Information Age increases our understanding of aspects and methods for political campaigning, messaging, and communications in the information age. Each chapter analyses political activism in the information age, its methods, the effectiveness of these methods, and tools for analysing these methods. This book will aid political operatives in increasing the effectiveness of political campaigns and communications and will be of use to researchers, political campaign staff, politicians and their staff, political and public policy analysts, political scientists, engineers, computer scientists, journalists, academicians, students, and professionals.

As computers and Internet connections become widely available in schools and classrooms, it is critical to examine cross-cultural issues in the utilization of information and communication technologies. Effects of Information Capitalism and Globalization on Teaching and Learning examines issues concerning emerging multimedia technologies and their challenges and solutions in teaching and learning. This premier reference work explores the global society's effect on learning, a crucial topic for educators, technologists, students, and researchers looking to find, create, or adapt technology for use in other cultures.

This book examines the efforts of the European Union, both past and ongoing, to harness the socio-economic potential of the internet in public policy-making. In order to achieve this, the author delves into the interactions between actors in the process of EU decision-making, using an outlook which focuses on how both multi-level and experimentalist governance can provide solutions for digital policy governance. The book also addresses the involvement of local and regional authorities in digital policy-making, both in how they endorse decisions made at the EU level, and in how they contribute directly to digital policy-making in their own localities.

Managing Learning in Virtual Settings: The Role of Context discusses the basis for the development and management of learning contexts, with contributions from many diverse domains. It stresses the dimension of context in a world dominated by a focus on the dimension of content while explaining the development of balanced, organic and successful learning environments and strategies. ""Managing Learning in Virtual Settings: The Role of Context"" emphasizes the role of context in the development and management of virtual learning environments and opens up new threads in clarifying the influence of contextual issues on learning.

This book explores Ambient Intelligence as applied to the classroom, while especially focusing on the use of personalized education to optimize the learning process. In the years to come, the dynamics of learning spaces in higher education will need to evolve and adapt to a constantly changing digital society, as learners and educators alike attune their learning competences and teaching skills. Ambient Intelligence is another way that Artificial Intelligence is being utilized in a plethora of real-world situations, amongst which classrooms and other learning spaces offer fitting settings and ideal environments for employing this assistive technology. The book presents a complete and novel approach to deploying the Ambient Intelligent Classroom, based on three interrelated aspects - the Social, the Technological and the Educational, - in order to provide a rich three-dimensional learning environment. This book is intended for education technologists and AI researchers, as well as for those tech-savvy readers interested in applying technology to the future of learning spaces. Educators in particular will find valuable insights and guidelines on how to shape the evolution of their own classroom.

"Rethinking Children's Play" examines attitudes towards, and experiences of, children's play. Fraser Brown and Michael Patte draw on a wide range of thought, research and practice from different fields and countries to debate, challenge and re-appraise long held beliefs, attitudes and ways of working and living with children in the play environment.Children need to play and the benefits of play are many and varied, but they are too often underestimated by parents, educators, politicians and society in general. The authors apply a playwork perspective to a wide range of settings populated by children, both formal and informal, to explore the idea that children's learning and development derives substantially from their opportunities to engage with a rich play environment that is supportive of the play process.Thoughts are provoked through examples of research, reflections on research, activities, key points and guidance on further reading."Rethinking Children's Play" is essential for all those studying childhood at undergraduate and graduate level and of great interest to those working with children in any field.

Web sites are increasingly being used by educators in place of traditional content media and instructional approaches such as textbooks and lectures. This new teaching philosophy has led to myriad questions concerning instructional design principles, learners' cognitive strategies, human-Internet interaction factors and instructional characteristics of Web media that transverse political, geographical and national boundaries. Instructional and Cognitive Impacts of Web-Based Education is a compendium of materials by noted researchers and practitioners that addresses national and international issues and implications of Web-based instruction and learning, offering suggestions and guidelines for analyzing and evaluating Web sites from cognitive and instructional design perspectives.

In the last decade, due to factors of ICT infrastructural and broadband maturation, rising levels of educational attainment and computer literacy, and diversification strategies, e-learning has exploded in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. However, significant barriers remain in the region's e-learning development: lack of research on outcomes and effectiveness, paucity of Arabic language learning objects, monopolies and high cost of telecommunications, cultural taboos, accreditation, censorship, and teacher training. This unique volume is the first comprehensive effort to describe the history, development, and current state of e-learning in each of the 20 MENA countries from Algeria to Yemen. Each entry is expertly written by a specialist who is acutely familiar with the state of e-learning in their respective country, and concludes with a bibliography of key reports, peer-reviewed books and articles, and web resources. E-Learning in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) proves itself as a vital compendium for a wide readership that includes academics and students, transnational program directors, international education experts, MENA government departments, commercial vendors and investors, and ICT development and regulatory agencies involved in e-learning in the Middle East.

The implementation of virtual environments in education has been rapidly increasing in frequency after the COVID-19 pandemic. As these technologies rise in popularity, it is essential to understand the roles digital technologies play in fostering connections and learning, the affordances of digital texts and spaces for virtual classroom experiences, the difficulties educators have faced and how these practices have been crafted to meet these challenges, and more. Innovations in Digital Instruction Through Virtual Environments advances knowledge about the pedagogical decisions and lived experiences of researchers and educators both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. It features research from those who have worked to sustain and develop digital/media pedagogical practices. Covering topics such as active learning environments, emotional labor, and textual engagements, this premier reference source is an excellent resource for educators and administrators of both K-12 and higher education, pre-service teachers, teacher educators, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

This volume focuses on the implications of digital technologies for educators and educational decision makers that is not widely represented in the literature. While there are many volumes on how one might integrate a particular technology, there are no volumes on how digital technologies can or should be exploited to address the needs and propel the benefits of large-scale teaching, learning and assessment.