Facebook and other social media have been hailed as delivering the promise of new, socially engaged educational experiences for students in undergraduate, self-directed, and other educational sectors. A theoretical and historical analysis of these media in the light of earlier media transformations, however, helps to situate and qualify this…

At a time when implementation of electronic portfolios (EPs) is expanding, the issues of clarifying their purposes continue to plague teacher education programs. Are student-centered uses of EPs compatible with program assessment and accreditation efforts? Is this an either/or situation, or can a productive middle ground be forged? This article…

Purpose: By surveying current literature, the purposes of this paper are twofold: to identify current situation of mobile learning (m-learning) adoption and specify the challenges and to identify the factors driving m-learning adoption. Design/methodology/approach: The paper reviews literature related to: m-learning applications and challenging…

In 2001 Marc Prensky coined the phrase "digital natives" to refer to the new generation of students who have grown up surrounded by technology. His companion papers spurred large amounts of research, debating changes that are required to curricula and pedagogical models to cater for the changes in the student population. This article…

This paper discusses some recent developments in digital media, research technologies and scholarly practices that are known under the umbrella term of "eResearch". Drawing on conceptual ideas of digital materialism, epistemic artefacts and epistemic tools, this paper discusses how the digital inscription of knowledge and knowing could…

(Purpose) This article describes two current trends in Educational Technology: distributed learning and electronic databases. (Findings) Topics addressed in this paper include: (1) distributed learning as a means of professional development; (2) distributed learning for content visualization; (3) usage of distributed learning for educational…

The article examines changes in the sphere of Russian education as a result of the reform of education and the consequences of the use of audiovisual means of mass communication (especially television and the Internet) that foster the formation of consumerist media thinking in school and college students. That kind of thinking carries the threat…

Higher education's interest in digital content, especially e-books, has gone off the charts. With the rapid acceptance of e-books for pleasure reading, attention has now shifted to e-textbooks and their promise of significant cost savings and cutting-edge features. But getting a good grasp on the fast-moving realm of digital content for higher…

Teaching a speech communication course in typical HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) comes with many issues, because the application of technology in some minority institutions differs. The levels of acceptability as well as affordability are also core issues that affect application. Using technology in the classroom means many…

Purpose: This paper sets out to argue that the strategic implementation of technology is implicated in a range of crises or socio-economic disruptions, like peak oil, climate change and the rising environmental costs of energy consumption. It aims to argue that institutional technological implementation is contested, complex and should not be…

Mobile technologies are interfacing with all aspects of our lives including Web 2.0 tools and applications, immersive virtual world environments, and online environments to present educational opportunities for 24/7 learning at the learner's discretion. Mobile devices are allowing educators to build new community learning ecosystems for and by…

Technology and change are so closely related that the use of the word innovation seems synonymous with technology in many contexts, including that of higher education. This paper contends that university culture and existing capability constrain such innovation and to a large extent determine the nature and extent of organisational change. In the…

This essay brings together two lines of inquiry. Firstly, I revisit research on futures in education conducted during the 1980s and re-examine some of the propositions and principles that this research generated about "the future" as an object of inquiry in education. Secondly, I argue that the language of complexity invites us to…

This article draws upon the cinematic, fictional portrayal of Avatars as a metaphor to show how young children are positioned in similar ways in relation to technology and nature. The authors discuss children as digital natives growing up in brave new virtual worlds, but also as vulnerable innocents who are specially attuned to--and in need…

This article reports on a digital ethnography that examines writing, authorship, and self-publication in an online niche market. Drawing on interview and web data collected over 3 years, it focuses on the writing practices that have supported the production, distribution, and sanction of 13 ebooks self-published by online poker players. The…