The availability of multiple forms of technology is changing the way in which young children learn and discover their world. Rather than focusing on how technology fits into existing curricula, this interactive presentation will focus on the new ways technology allows children to create meaning and make sense of their world that extends beyond traditional reading and writing activities using slides and videos.

Forging a connection between instructors and students presents continued challenges in all course modalities. When Wooten-Blanks (2012) used PowerPoint to share her story including her struggles as a student, grades in her courses went up by about 20%. She said “I realized that my story had impacted the students” (par.2). Sull (2012) stated “Today’s technology allows us to get closer to our students—and lets our personalities really shine through” (par. 9).

The mission-driven League for Innovation in the Community College brings new and innovative tools and multimedia resources to community colleges.

I will discuss apps for iPad that can be incorporated in foreign language education. Currently, more than 700,000 apps for iPad and iPhone/iPodTouch are available through the iTunes Store. Some apps are developed specifically for iPad, and others can be shared among these devices. One of the advantages of using iPad over iPhone/iPodTouch is its screen size. This can be a crucial factor when we think of creative usages of iPad for foreign language education.

Two Universities in two different states, jointly offer online courses within one program area. Difficult but not impossible. How about ten universities in 7seven states offering courses within a program? Now you’re thinking about a deep and wide gorge. Do not fret. Others have successfully crossed the gorge and want to tell you about the bridge. Currently, 13 institutions across the nation share over 150 doctoral nursing courses a year with each other.

As teachers, we have to consider how voice and authority change in the technological realm of writing. Because students are becoming authors and generators of ideas, their voices and authority move from passive, student voices, to more active voices of experts. This change will influence the dynamic of power in the writing classroom.

Online learning offers students with hearing or visual impairments new ways to pursue higher or graduate education. How can we contribute toward their success? Certainly some considerations and design steps need to be made at the learning management system or instructional technology level. But as instructors, how can we be more inclusive and welcoming to all students in our classes?

Abraham Maslow proposed his hierarchy of needs in 1943 to explain human motivation. A corresponding hierarchy of needs could be applied to teaching, especially online and blended instruction. Most instructors design their courses based on the lower level basic needs of a class. Instructors will spend a great deal of time and energy selecting the textbook and carefully focusing on the content. Content for most instructors is equal to food and water in the physiological need category. The next thing most instructors focus on is the design of the course with careful consideration for the buttons, detailed course assignments, and the gradebook.

The guidelines recommended in this presentation derive from review of the published literature on best practices in online course evaluation; existing quality rubrics for online education, and data captured from students, as to what constitutes quality online curricula.

This workshop will demonstrate Xtranormal for Education (www.xtranormal.com/edu), an application for creating custom animations, where teachers can set up online assignments for students, who will create animated clips that can be shared with the rest of the class.

The move to Open Educational Resources (OER) can be daunting for course developers in the lower divisions, but also offers huge advantages for advancing curriculum and lightening our students’ financial burdens.

The question of how to provide K12 teachers with “just-in-time” professional development opportunities during a time when the need for fiscal restraint has cut the time available for professional development is a vexing one for educators. A key to preparing K12 students for success in the 21st century is to provide them with the skills and aptitudes that will enable them to be digital producers and collaborators in higher education and in the workplace.

Mobile learning is a huge trend in delivering educational content. K-12 institutions are seeing the affordances that mobile learning provides, such as increased engagement and enhanced communication. This is especially important for delivery of education to students with special needs, who directly benefit from the enhanced communication.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists will hold an educational conference in September of 2013. This action research project used synchronous on-line focus groups, as a tool for needs assessment in preparation for the conference. Participant’s comfort with accessing and using the technology was evaluated and the effectiveness of the focus group process was assessed.

As the rapid rate of Technology and Distance Programs (TDP) at College of Education at University of Hawaii at Manoa (COE UHM) is expanding, TDP is striving to help faculty and staff at COE UHM build up their professional development (PD). This paper discusses a needs assessment conducted at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) to understand faculty and staff’s actual needs and preferences. Conducting useful and effective workshops and better serving the faculty and staff at COE UHM has become a very important issue for TDP, however scheduling conflicts and topic selection have caused inefficiencies in the workshop program.

Searching on the Internet is a common daily task for most students. Students often spend time searching for personal information or to do research for class assignments with little guidance on how to effectively search on the Internet. Younger middle school students frequently search by means of trial and error. They seldom reflect on why certain search queries yield a positive result while others do not.

Homework submission has been linked to educational attainment and success. While Lumosity is not specifically designed for homework submission, different games can be played to address components that are related to homework submission, specifically concentration, problem solving and decision making.

Today’s college students rely on digital devices to socialize, organize, and search for information. Many are opting for digital learning resources in place of print textbooks; therefore, institutions of higher education need to address students’ changing needs. Recent studies have found that the mere transfer of print books to digital format without interactive components does not affect performance or engagement of students (Weisberg, 2011).

The production of a high school yearbook demands high-level skills, which require time to learn. However, this 10th grade yearbook design course, offered at a private high school on Oahu, has limited face-to-face instruction. Consequently, students need to complete many of the assignments independently. The instructor created a resource website to augment learning materials.

The student experience has been molded so that students now have the ability to apply digital literacy within the classroom. We have integrated cutting edge technology into our courses and have had an overwhelmingly positive response from students, faculty, and administrators. This interactive approach has engaged our students, promoting ample opportunity for collaboration and critical thinking.

Academic library websites have become major service points for both students and faculty, but the professional literature has tended to report primarily on website design and usability testing rather than daily maintenance. In order to contribute to a conversation on the maintenance activity associated with academic library websites and the establishment of best practice guidelines, this paper will first review selected literature addressing library website maintenance and then review daily activities associated with the maintenance of the Bryant & Stratton College Cleveland Downtown campus library portal.

This paper will examine the role of the Online Academic Director, a position created in the mid 1990’s at Park University to ensure a positive relationship between adjunct instructors, departments, and online students. Due to the challenging and dynamic nature of online teaching, issues abound between students and faculty, between students and students, between faculty and administration, and between traditional faculty and those who have embraced online teaching.

Developmental educators face the challenge of preparing adult learners for the rigor of college courses. At a major online college, instructors have ten short weeks to ensure learners reach post-secondary standards in reading, writing and mathematics. Fostering motivation in developmental adult learners can be difficult as prior educational experiences may not have been positive.

A Technology Competency Challenge was created for an online business course to create and grow an online community of inquiry where people question, reason, connect, deliberate, challenge, and develop problem-solving techniques to help the disadvantaged become more technologically literate and competent, and better-equipped for the 21st Century.

The presentation will address the process utilized to recruit, train, mentor, observe, and retain online instructors. Like the majority of colleges and universities in the United States, Park University offers online courses. In fact, More than 80 percent of Park’s enrollments are online courses. In order to maintain sufficient, qualified faculty to teach the large number of courses has required a nationwide recruiting effort.

Several researchers and research groups have conducted studies on the growth and quality of online education programs. Researchers have collected data from administrators, faculty, students, and hiring managers on their thoughts, experiences, and perceptions.

The virtual environment, Second Life©, is being used to train people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) in employment skill building. The EmployAble Project is a two year grant funded by the Kessler Foundation and located at the Center on Disability Studies (CDS) at the College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa. A full virtual environment training area has been constructed along with an accompanying web-based learning module.

In line with the TCC theme of emerging technologies for learning: best choices and current practices, we are developing a mixed reality laboratory to meet the unique needs of students at a large Pacific university. The speed at which computer technology advances presents tremendous opportunities and challenges for educational technologists to both enhance and transform instructional practices. Advancements in cloud technologies, gaming and virtual worlds systems, and network capacities provide the means for creating educational technologies with tremendous potential to promote positive impact; however, how to best leverage the affordances of these technologies is a question that remains open.

Spherical thinking comprises the notion that academic objectives, as well as human interests in general, lie on a curved plane as points equidistant from a center. Spherical thought crosses standard disciplinary boundaries as well as geographical or demographic ones, thereby comprising transdisciplinary dynamic, continuous interactivity. In the twenty-first century, such thought is commonly carried out, often enhanced, with the Internet.

Besides learning basic concepts, students in introductory College Physics courses must learn how to critically read problems so as to determine the proper approach to each problem and the proper equations to be used. A sample course is presented in which the instruction in Physics is accompanied by correlated analyses of problems.

Due to the ever-increasing interactions between humans and technology, educational settings are changing at all levels, from early childhood to higher education. Currently, K-12 schools are filled with digital natives, and society is demanding that schools increase one’s access to knowledge and classes through the Internet and Web-based tools. Consequently, educators are pressured more than ever to stay up-to-date with the ever changing and advancing Web 2.0 tools to meet the needs of these digital natives.

In an online course there will be three distinct types of interactions that take place; learner-content interaction, learner-instructor interaction and learner-learner interaction. Students may need a structured activity in order to discuss the course content and interact with each other focused on the ideas being presented in class, but what format will work best?

More people have died in Hawai‘i from tsunamis than from hurricanes, floods, and volcanoes combined, making it our State’s most deadly natural hazard. Tsunami education is a critical component to include when taking steps towards increasing the resilience of a coastal community. Without public understanding of the tsunami hazard and the procedures in place for a tsunami event, communications and effective and timely evacuation may breakdown, ultimately resulting in loss of life. For tsunami education to be effective, learners must be engaged and must engage multiple learner modalities.

With the rise of social media, pedagogical research on its use in education has also increased and many researchers discuss the benefits of integrating it into the English as a Second Language (ESL) curriculum. These benefits include increased immersion in the English language, better teacher-student rapport and interaction, and higher student self-confidence. However, are these studies representing an objective view of both social media’s purported benefits as well as challenges?

Games, simulations, and virtual worlds provide educators with an opportunity to engage learners in an immersive and interactive environment that requires knowledge, decision making, and information management skills. Learning by playing games is a growing trend.

The interactive forum will share guidance on research recently completed at Ashford University. The purpose of the research was to obtain a best practice view of strategies for establishing exceptional teacher presence in the online classroom, taking into consideration the cultural evolution of online instruction, recent technology developments, a focus on continuous quality improvement, and inspirational instructor creativity used to enhance critical thinking and exceed student learning objectives. Of key interest were inspired interventions on the part of the instructor with the goal of being ‘seen’, and enhancing student success through building more effective and accessible relationships with online students.

Clear communication is key in educational settings. The implementation of Skype in online classroom provides a venue for clear communication. Implementation begins with an initial post from the instructor during the classroom set up by posting their Skype name with instructions as to how to download the free software. Students are encouraged to do this at the start the course in order to be in communication with the instructor and fellow classmates.

Human touch is really all about creating and maintaining relationships. When students sense a trusting, caring relationship on the part of their instructor, students begin to perceive that their online experience is as much about them, or even more so, than the curriculum, projects, and test results. Students feel that their instructor is trying to establish a warm, supportive relationship, their sense of belonging and engagement increases. That’s just human nature.

Featuring a guild design and rich media, the GAMESMOOC series of three Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) employed an activity-based learning approach to provide learners with a multisensory experience. Participants played a variety of commercial games, including the World of Warcraft and Minecraft, and reflected on the use of games, game-based learning motifs, gamification and immersive 3D environments in which players and lurkers are welcome.

Presentation will include tips, ideas, suggestions and sample lesson plans that incorporate web-based sites and tools. Will cover the use of iBooks and iMovie, curation as an instructional and research tool, creating visual assignments using informatics. Examples that can be adapted for many content areas will be demonstrated along with links to sites and available tools. Content will be related to learning objectives and can be re-used as learning objects.

The purpose of this workshop is to provide an introduction to TIG and TIGed that will enable educators to effectively utilize the tools, resources and opportunities offered by these websites. Participants will learn about the tools and resources available for youth and for educators on TIG and TIGed through guided site tours and will learn how educators have used online tools for effective global learning initiatives, and global, collaborative project-based learning.

TakingITGlobal and the Centre for Global Education presents: Global Encounters! This program program brings together students from across the world through live video conferences that explore global issues and the potential youth have to shape a better common future. The purpose of this workshop is to introduce participants to the purpose and methodology that drive this program, as well as the outcomes experienced among students who have taken part in the program.

The current socio-cultural and socio-economic challenges and deficiency necessitate a new education paradigm that often refers to education transformation. Future wellbeing is the ultimate goal of education transformation. Thus, educators need to come up with a model to make learners competent in dealing with new complex situations and real life problems. To this end, this paper tries to illustrate how emerging technologies and modern service logic can be adopted into education transformation.

Conducting research, even as a solo activity can be daunting task. Tracking references and resources can test even the most experienced researcher. Add a team of researchers to the project and the challenges can multiply exponentially. Why not use social reference management tools and technologies to share and collaborate with research colleagues, while storing your references in the Cloud?

Web 2.0 tools, multimedia resources, and mobile learning platforms facilitate and transform an onsite culture-based workshop into MELE: a dynamic online metaphoric distance learning program with mentoring strategies customized by, and for, Polynesian communities. MELE is an acronym for Metaphoric Educational Learning Experiences.

Are we going to engage or disengage our students? The choice is ours. It is certainly not the short attention span of our students or their lack of focus! We are expecting today’s students to learn based on yesterday’s educational strategies. Students want to learn using new strategies and technology! This is not going to be solved by bringing new ‘lesson plans’ into our curriculum, it is much more than that.

How many times have you heard students say, “I deserve an ‘A’”? As online professors, we want our students to learn and earn the grades they truly deserve!! How well is the assessment component of your course structured?

This session will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of mobile learning in overseas fieldwork using an iPod Touch. Mobile devices are powerful tools for experiential learning such as a fieldwork. Students may record their observations and reflect upon their experiences at any time and in any place. However, there have been a few reports that expressed concern for how there are used.

Positive experiences reported by teachers and students utilizing Edmodo, a social networking tool, suggests that similar results may be possible in organizing a high school service club. A web-based instructional module was created to show club advisers how to use basic Edmodo features to organize students and groups, foster and increase communication between students, and increase student participation in activities.

This paper documents the results of an action research study focused on evaluating the effectiveness of using (Webspiration), a visual learning Web 2.0 social mindtool to foster collaboration among ninth and tenth grade geometry students in a private high school in Hawaii. Field notes and observations, daily reflections, a whole group discussion, and a post attitudinal survey were used to collect data.

University of California at Irvine’s medical school is one of many programs that have transitioned to iPad based instruction. Release of iBooks Author, a development tool for electronic books, in January 2012 enabled the creation of “iBooks” that transitioned the iPad from an instructional content viewer to an advanced learning experience including interactivity and multimedia.

The Western forms of literacy and formal education have successfully influenced education throughout the Pacific. Many Pacific Islanders now reside in Guam and Hawaii in search of “better” healthcare and education. Our children attend American public schools. Traditionally, we learn through our native language from oral stories and hands-on learning.

Over 25% of the customers of a particular Hawaii-based clothing retail company are from Japan. Surprisingly, only a handful of staff can speak conversational Japanese. The participants of this study are retail store staff members that interact with Japanese customers on a daily basis. Meeting synchronously face-to-face for a language class is very difficult because these participants have sporadic business schedules.

In high school physical education classes, many students work hard increase run pace yet lack the guidance to improve substantially in the “off-semester” in an optimal fashion. In most cases, the student body has never trained for distance running in a 10 kilometer race. In order to assist students in developing running skills, a high school in Hawaii is piloting a hybrid curriculum for the second semester of a physical education class for junior and senior students.

A project to evaluate a method of flip teaching was set up within two separate College Algebra classes. From the curricula of each, the topic of radicals was chosen as the subject to have the flip teaching approach; this happened over two consecutive class sessions. The rest of the class content was taught in the traditional lecture style.

Financial aid is a key component for students who want to earn a college degree. Without it, many would not be able to consider post-secondary education as an option. Federal regulations require that students meet Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) in order to be eligible for Federal Financial Aid, yet few students neither know nor understand this requirement.

The World Wide Web is the largest information source for students seeking out information. A strong information literacy foundation is essential to students’ scholastic success as it allows students to find, evaluate, and use information effectively. However, many secondary students have indicated concerning levels of information literacy skill development.