Technology offers many opportunities for educators to support teaching, learning and assessment. This paper introduces a project to design and implement a virtual environment (SAVE Science) intended to assess (not teach) middle school students' knowledge and use of scientific inquiry through two modules developed around curriculum taught in middle…

Schools have gone through educational reforms having various focuses on curriculum changes, consolidation, open classrooms, mastery learning, decentralization, shared decisionmaking, legislative mandates and controls, high expectations, integrated thematic instruction, professional development, technology integration, and standards with…

Students, sometimes at very young ages, and increasing numbers of teachers are taking part in some form of social networking or collective collaboration by using mass communication technology. Club Penguin, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter are just a few examples that span a wide range of ages. This is no surprise, given that the current crop of…