This volume brings together conceptualizations and empirical studies that explore the socio-cultural dimension of new media and its implications on learning in the 21st century classroom. The authors articulate their vision of new-media-enhanced learning at a global level. The high-level concept is then re-examined for different degrees of contextualization and localization, for example how a specific form of new media (e-reader) changes specific activities in different cultures. In addition, studies based in Singapore classrooms provide insights as to how these concepts are being transformed and implemented by a co-constructive effort on the part of researchers, teachers and students. Singapore classrooms offer a unique environment to study the theory-practice nexus in that they are high achieving, implicitly grounded in the eastern cultural values and well-equipped with ICT infrastructure. While these studies are arguably the state-of-the-art exemplars that synergize socio-cultural and technological affordances of the current learning environments, they also serve as improvable ideas for further innovations. The interplay between theory and practice lends support to the reciprocal improvements for both. This book contributes to the continuing debate in the field, and will lead to better learning environments in the 21st century.

This book presents a novel framework design for the next generation Marine Wireless Communication Networks (MWCNs). The authors first provide an overview of MWCNs, followed by a discussion of challenges in the design and development of MWCNs in support of a diversity of marine services such as real-time marine monitoring, offshore oil exploration, drilling, marine tourism and fishing. The authors then propose cross layer networking solutions to achieve a high performance modern MWCN that enables efficient and reliable data transmissions under hostile marine environment, which include the network deployment, the physical layer channel coding, intelligent network access and resource management, and learning-based opportunistic routing. Finally, the authors summarize the book and present some open issues that will lead to new research directions in the next generation MWCNs.

This volume brings together conceptualizations and empirical studies that explore the socio-cultural dimension of new media and its implications on learning in the 21st century classroom. The authors articulate their vision of new-media-enhanced learning at a global level. The high-level concept is then re-examined for different degrees of contextualization and localization, for example how a specific form of new media (e-reader) changes specific activities in different cultures. In addition, studies based in Singapore classrooms provide insights as to how these concepts are being transformed and implemented by a co-constructive effort on the part of researchers, teachers and students. Singapore classrooms offer a unique environment to study the theory-practice nexus in that they are high achieving, implicitly grounded in the eastern cultural values and well-equipped with ICT infrastructure. While these studies are arguably the state-of-the-art exemplars that synergize socio-cultural and technological affordances of the current learning environments, they also serve as improvable ideas for further innovations. The interplay between theory and practice lends support to the reciprocal improvements for both. This book contributes to the continuing debate in the field, and will lead to better learning environments in the 21st century.

This book presents a novel framework design for  the next generation Marine Wireless Communication Networks (MWCNs). The authors first provide an overview of MWCNs, followed by a discussion of challenges in the design and development of MWCNs in support of a diversity of marine services such as real-time marine monitoring, offshore oil exploration, drilling, marine tourism and fishing. The authors then propose cross layer networking solutions to achieve a high performance modern MWCN that enables efficient and reliable data transmissions under hostile marine environment, which include the network deployment, the physical layer channel coding, intelligent network access and resource management, and learning-based opportunistic routing. Finally, the authors summarize the book and present some open issues that will lead to new research directions in the next generation MWCNs.