In common attempts to standardize what and how teaching is conducted, we often fail to recognize the tremendous amount of innovation that educators bring to solving an array of challenges in today’s classrooms. This volume highlights compelling firsthand counter-narratives from educators engaged in exactly this work, underscoring the fact that today’s teachers have to design the classroom experience in ever-changing contexts in order to be successful. Educators have to fluidly adapt to con...

A fully updated guide to quickly and easily programming ArduinoThoroughly revised for the new Arduino Uno R3, this bestselling guide explains how to write well-crafted sketches using Arduino’s modified C language. You will learn how to configure hardware and software, develop your own sketches, work with built-in and custom Arduino libraries, and explore the Internet of Things—all with no prior programming experience required!Electronics guru Simon Monk get...

Online and Social Networking Communities is a professional guide written for educational practitioners and trainers who wish to use online communication tools effectively in their teaching. Focusing on the student experience of learning in online communities, it addresses ‘web 2.0’ and other ‘social software’ tools and considers the role these technologies play in supporting student learning and building learning communities.The guide offers:real-world case s...

Conducting Research in Online and Blended Learning Environments examines various perspectives, issues, and methods for conducting research in online and blended learning environments. The book provides in-depth examinations of the perspectives and issues that anyone considering research in online or blended learning will find insightful as they plan their own inquiries. Grounded in educational research theory, this is invaluable to both the serious researcher as well as the occasi...

How can apps be used to foster learning with literacy across the curriculum? This book offers both a theoretical framework for considering app affordances and practical ways to use apps to build students’ disciplinary literacies and to foster a wide range of literacy practices.Using Apps for Learning Across the Curriculumpresents a wide range of different apps and also assesses their valuefeatures methods for and apps related to planning instruction...

How can you create an authentic learning environment—one where students ask questions, do research, and explore subjects that fascinate them—in today’s standards-driven atmosphere? Author Larissa Pahomov offers insightful answers based on her experience as a classroom teacher at the Science Leadership Academy—a public high school in Philadelphia that offers a rigorous college-prep curriculum and boasts a 99 percent graduation rate. Pahomov outlines a framework for learning structured aroun...

Leading scholars from a variety of disciplines explore the future of education, including social media usage, new norms of knowledge, privacy, copyright, and MOOCs.How are widely popular social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram transforming how teachers teach, how kids learn, and the very foundations of education? What controversies surround the integration of social media in students' lives? The past decade has brought increased access to new media, a...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Blended Learning, ICBL 2016, held in Beijing, China, in July 2016. The conference is formerly known as International Conference on Hybrid Learning (ICHL)The 34 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 61 submissions. The selected papers cover various aspects on collaborative and interactive learning, content development, open and flexible learning, assessment and evaluation, peda...

This work focuses on the characterization of adult lifelong learners’ Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) by implicit and explicit tools of personalization. It aims aims toward creating a system for the development of a learning path for the characterisation of PLE for adult life learners. The synergy of formal and informal learning in the dynamic construction of a lifelong learner’s PLE is fully explored, with the recognition that the majority of learning, especially for life long learn...

Transactional Distance and Adaptive Learning takes a fresh look at one of the pioneering educational theories that accommodates the impact of information and communications technologies in learning. The theory of transactional distance (TTD) provides a distinct analytical and planning foundation for educators to conduct an overarching inquiry into transitioning from mass instructional and management systems in higher education to dynamic and transformational futures that focus on ...

Collaborative learning has become an increasingly important part of education, but the research supporting it is distributed across a wide variety of fields including social, cognitive, developmental, and educational psychology, instructional design, the learning sciences, educational technology, socio-cultural studies, and computer-supported collaborative learning. The goal of this book is to integrate theory and research across these diverse fields of study and, thereby, to forward our u...

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of cutting edge research studies on contemporary instructional design practices. Written for instructional designers, instructional technologists and researchers in the field, it provides state of the art, practically focused information and guidelines for designing curriculum and professional ID practice. The author compares professional instructional design practices with the competencies established by the International Board for Training, Per...