Access to digital technology in the classroom enables the composition and organization of ideas on screen with a variety of semiotic systems of different modes and media. This study explores patterns of communication and preference of design in digital meaning-making of twelve 7-8 years old students. Meanings were shaped in complex uses and…

Introduction: The study was carried out with children of 2nd, 4th and 6th grades of elementary school in order to explore what and how will children learn from a completely new videogame. Method: We organized children from 2nd, 4th and 6th grades of elemental school, giving them chance to play a freshly released videogame by that time. We formed…

The pilot research presented here explores the classroom use of Emerging Literacy in Mathematics (ELM) software, a research-based bilingual interactive multimedia instructional tool, and its potential to develop emerging numeracy skills. At the time of the study, a central theme of early mathematics curricula, "Number Concept," was fully…

Many families today have access to computers that help them with their daily living activities, such as finding employment and helping children with schoolwork. With more families owning personal computers, questions arise as to the role they play in these households. An exploratory study was conducted looking at parents whose children were…

Inference generation makes a strong, unique contribution to reading comprehension. Young children engage in many of the same inference generation processes as sophisticated readers. This article discusses instructional practices that can be used in prekindergarten through grade two to help children think beyond the words of the text. Suggestions…

This paper presents preliminary results of longitudinal study on the development of children's geometric thinking in dynamic geometry environments. Here we investigate young children's (age 7-8, grade 2/3) interactions, in a whole classroom setting with an Interactive Whiteboard, with Sketchpad-based tasks involving the use of different types of…

As digital media practices become readily available in today's classrooms, literacy and literacy instruction are changing in profound ways (Alvermann, 2010). Professional organizations emphasize the importance of integrating new literacies (New London Group, 1996) practices into language-arts instruction (IRA, 2009; NCTE, 2005). As a result,…

Educational leaders struggle with how to develop and sustain an effective, current and affordable educational technology program that meets the needs of the 21st Century learner and increases teaching and learning effectiveness. Thus, this study aimed to extend the research and provide practical guidelines to assist leaders in sustaining an…

Language arts and mathematics are high priority content areas in early grades. Science is often a secondary concern, even though students appear to have minimal knowledge or interest in their local ecology. This article describes a year-long project integrating science and technology with language arts. Students researched and wrote about local…

Interest in 21st century skills has brought concomitant interest in ways to teach and measure them. Games hold promise in these areas, but much of their potential has yet to be proven, and there are few examples of how to use the rich data from games to make inferences about players' knowledge, skills, and attributes. This article builds an…

The focus of this paper is a case study of a Texas-based school that implemented global projects to connect their students with many states and countries as a platform for integrating collaboration and communication skills, technology tools, and cultural diversity into an existing curriculum. The school introduced videoconferencing at every grade…

Background and purpose: Research in formative assessment often pays close attention to the strategies which can be used by teachers. However, less emphasis in the literature seems to have been paid to study the application of formative assessment designs in practice. In this paper, we argue that a formative assessment design that we call…

With the advent of touch-screen interfaces on the tablet computer, multisensory elements in reading instruction have taken on a new dimension. This computer assisted language learning research aimed to determine whether specific technology features of a tablet computer can add to the functionality of multisensory instruction in early reading…

When studying informal science programs, researchers often overlook the opportunities enabled and constrained in each program and the practices reinforced for participants. In this case study, I examined the normative scientific practices reinforced in one-week-long "Herpetology" (the study of reptiles and amphibians) program for…

The following material, adapted from the new IRA book "Getting Beyond "I Like the Book"" (second edition), highlights how podcasting specifically and technology in general can be used as tools for thinking about the world and for learning and communicating.