Teaching by night and reflecting on a subject by day is the way that Salman Khan sees education evolving in the age of online lectures. Khan believes he is onto something in what he styles the "flipped classroom." In Khan's view, there is no need for students to be divided into grades by age. Instead, they should learn at their own pace, moving on…

The expression of the self through multimodal texts is a central theme in education. While it has been suggested that new technologies act as important mediators in the relationship between texts and subjectivity, the mechanisms underlying such mediation has been a neglected topic of research. This paper considers the theoretical assumptions upon…

Tony Bates is a world-known expert on distance education. He has published extensively on both traditional and contemporary distance learning practices. Besides teaching courses and delivering seminars in the area of distance education, he has also provided consultancy with a number of institutions around the world. These include both formal and…

This article describes how the author's skepticism about online education turns into belief when he teaches his own online course. Throughout the process of designing and facilitating his online course, he found himself slowly evolving from critic to champion of online education. Here, he shares the benefits of online learning.

In their paper, Munoz and El-Hani propose to bring video games into science classrooms to promote culturally sensitive ethics and citizenship education. Instead of bringing "educational" games, Munoz and El-Hani take a more creative route and include games such as Fallout 3[R] precisely because they are popular and they reproduce ideological and…

As a final part of this special issue, six Contributing Editors of the magazine were asked to review the six articles and to briefly reflect on themes across fields, on ideas or areas that might have the most potential, and/or to offer other new ideas for our field that the articles and issue overall triggered. These senior scholars in our field…

It could be said that in the fast-changing field of education technology the initial excitement for a tool or application usually fades away as the next technology emerges on the horizon--leaving little or no room for critical evaluation of how it may best be used in educational settings. Some critics have identified this endless "pursuit of the…

In this webinar, Dr. Charles Basch, Richard March Hoe Professor of Health and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, presented the causal connections between health factors and the motivation and ability to learn. This Q&A addressed the questions participants had for Dr. Basch following the webinar. The webinar recording and…

This article presents an interview with Sir John Daniel outgoing President and CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning. Sir John Daniel's term as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) ended on May 31, 2012. Readers of "Distance Education" will know of Sir John's work at the Tele-universite (Directeur des…

Recently, Paul Sznewajs and Nick Rabkin made an introductory case for restoring the arts into Chicago Public Schools. They noted that past research has shown the positive benefits of arts instruction, especially for low-income students. Over the last several decades, research has validated the role of the arts, while in the same time span people…

The authors argue that journalism's uncertain identity in academia has made it vulnerable to unreflective instrumentalism in the digital era. They show how instrumentalism intertwined with the digital sublime constitutes a rhetorically resonate rationale for closing a journalism school. Evidence comes from documents and testimony associated with…

Over the past fourteen years, the pages of "Language Learning & Technology" have been filled with examples of research that take up the challenge of investigating second language learning through technology. It has been a period of expansion and growth in many ways. The expansion of technologies as well as their acceptance and use in language…

In this age of information and technology, educational institutions not just impart knowledge to individuals, but strive to change them into lifelong learners. ICT challenges the traditional method of teaching and learning through its potential as a source of knowledge. Like other developing countries of the world, a computer revolution has taken…

This article is the second of a two-part series on how schools in different types of communities meet the challenge of implementing technology. The emergence of technology as a critical component of education has presented rural districts with an invaluable tool for overcoming the problems created by sparse and remote populations. But rural…

I start by introducing some ideas from the field of science and technology studies that concern the difficulty of differentiating experts and laypeople. Based on this description I react to Albaek's comment and further explain the approach taken in my study. The results of the study indicate that the function of different types of sources can vary…