This article merely scrapes the surface of the possibilities and problems of digital literacy knowledge (or lack thereof) in a teaching and learning context. Further, it suggests that more work can and should be done to support the development of a language, framework, or set of ideas that more consistently supports teachers' movement between…

Computer simulations can provide guided practice for a variety of situations that pre-service teachers would not frequently experience during their teacher education studies. Pre-service teachers can use simulations to turn the knowledge they have gained in their coursework into real experience. Teacher simulation training has come a long way over…

Opening with the history, recent advances, and emerging ways to use avatar-based virtual reality, an instructor who has used virtual environments since 2007 shares how these environments bring more options to community building, teaching, and education. With the open-source movement, where the source code for virtual environments was made…

Virtual worlds have become an invaluable space for online learning and the exploration of digital cultures. Communication departments can benefit from using these spaces to educate their students in the logistics of virtual worlds and as a way to better understand how the process of interpersonal and global communication functions in both online…

An analysis of data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement and multiyear analysis of pretest/posttest scores in introductory criminal justice courses revealed there was a systemic decline in student engagement and achievement. Because of this analysis, a commercial virtual learning tool (CJI) that purported great success in…

The current research article is based on a simple and practical way of employing the computational power of widely available, versatile software MS Excel 2007 to perform interactive computer simulations for undergraduate/graduate students in biology, biochemistry, biophysics, microbiology, medicine in college and university classroom setting. To…

Moving from a traditional desktop computing environment to a virtualized solution is a daunting task. In this article, the author presents case histories of three districts that have made the conversion to virtual computing to learn about their experiences: What prompted them to make the move, and what were their objectives? Which obstacles prove…

The present article is primarily targeted for the advanced college/university undergraduate students of chemistry/physics education, computational physics/chemistry, and computer science. The most recent software system such as MS Visual Studio .NET version 2010 is employed to perform computer simulations for modeling Bohr's quantum theory of…

Do online virtual worlds represent a viable learning environment for higher education? Many Second Life classes resemble their real life equivalents, but some faculty are exploring the potential of virtual worlds for less-traditional teaching. This article describes one such effort, the SUNY Oneonta Music Project, in which faculty and students…

Second Life (SL) is a user-created virtual environment with possible merit for teaching and learning in higher education. In this article, two teacher educators reflect on their initial development in SL, considering the ways they worked within SL to meet their differing instructional needs and the ways they prepared students for these learning…

"Teaching Lab Science Courses Online" is a practical resource for educators developing and teaching fully online lab science courses. First, it provides guidance for using learning management systems and other web 2.0 technologies such as video presentations, discussion boards, Google apps, Skype, video/web conferencing, and social media…

Higher education institutions are under significant pressure to provide affordable, sustainable approaches that will prepare their students with the skills they will need after graduation to achieve success in the 21st Century workplace. Digital Media Simulations are among the new technologies that have emerged with the promise to help…

Involving two or more academic subjects, interdisciplinary studies aim to blend together broad perspectives, knowledge, skills, and epistemology in an educational setting. By focusing on topics or questions too broad for a single discipline to cover, these studies strive to draw connections between seemingly different fields. Cases on…

Gaming and social networking define the millennial student. This research focuses on an evolving collaboration between 2 faculty members of different disciplines who merged Web 2.0 and game scenarios to infuse research techniques as integral components of math/computer science courses. Blogs and wikis facilitated student-faculty interaction beyond…

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…