"Achieve3000®" is a supplemental online literacy program that provides nonfiction reading content to students in grades preK-12 and focuses on building phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and writing skills. "Achieve3000®" is designed to help students advance their nonfiction reading skills…

Research in learning technologies has often focused on the affordances of single technologies such as pcs, smartphones or interactive whiteboards. However, in most learning environments technologies do not stand alone but are embedded in activity structures and webs of materials that make up the learning activity. This is specifically relevant…

More than 1 million people have watched the online video in which Salman Khan--a charming MIT math whiz, Harvard Business School graduate, and former Boston hedge-fund analyst--explains how he began tutoring his cousins in math by posting short lessons for them on YouTube. Other people began watching the lessons and sending Khan adulatory notes.…

"We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto"--a statement Dorothy made to her dog, Toto, in "The Wizard of Oz"--sums up reasonably well the point the author wants to make in this article. That is, as literacy educators no longer constrained (or protected) by older, more familiar 20th-century print-centric modes of communicating, educators may at times feel…

The goal of the initial "Snapshot State of the Nation: K-12 Online Learning in Canada" report was to provide an overview of the state of K-12 online learning in Canada. This was accomplished through the use of short commentaries about the state of K-12 distance education for each province and territory, along with more developed case…

This study investigated how the format of verbal instructions in computer simulations and prior knowledge (PK) affected 8th graders' cognitive load (CL) level and achievement in a multimedia learning environment. Although PK was not found to significantly affect student performance and CL level, instruction format was found to impact both.…

This research project examined how to develop and sustain online, asynchronous learning communities in continuous intake, distance education environments for learners in grades 7 through 10. The study is an action research project that is based upon in-depth, qualitative data. Interviews were conducted with distance education teachers,…

This article presents the results of a three-year study of "Gamestar Mechanic" (www.gamestarmechanic.com), a flash-based multiplayer online role-playing game developed for the MacArthur Foundation's digital media learning initiative by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Gamelab in New York. The game's objective is to help children…

Background: Most policy doctrines promote the use of scientific inquiry in the K-12 classroom, but good inquiry is hard to implement, particularly for schools with fiscal and safety constraints and for teachers struggling with understanding how to do so. Purpose: In this paper, we present the design of a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE)…