Samuel’s Words Never Fell to the Ground

“The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground.” I Samuel 3:19 I teach Sunday School at a Baptist church. Let me be a little more accurate: I alternate discussing Biblical principles with high school seniors and young adults ages 18-22 or so. These…
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Community Analysis

Defining Community As resident advisor (1992-1993), head resident (1994-1997) and director (1998-2000) of the Virginia Summer Residential Governor’s Schools for Humanities and Visual & Performing Arts, I worked with a team of student life staff to develop the community of learners among our faculty, staff, and 400 high school students. We did this in a number…
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Review of Google Docs as Instructional Tool

Video Review Scope Google Apps for Education is a suite of cloud-based applications provided free of charge to educational institutions for their students and faculty. Among the applications are Gmail (email), Docs (word processing), Drive (cloud-based storage), Site (web pages), Slides (presentations), Sheets (spreadsheets), and Calendar (Google, ca. 2014a). This review addresses the individual and…
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Early Results: UAE iPad Learning Initiative

Hargis, J., Cavanaugh, C., Kamali, T., & Soto, M. (2014). A Federal Higher Education iPad Mobile Learning Initiative: Triangulation of Data to Determine Early Effectiveness. Innovative Higher Education, 39(1), 45-57. doi:10.1007/s10755-013-9259-y Introduction This article reports early results of a higher education iPad® initiative implemented in a pre-Bachelor’s Foundation English Language Learning (ELL) program designed to…
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Technology as a Classroom Distraction for Students

Essay in Inside Higher Education by Mary Flanagan, distinguished professor of digital humanities at Dartmouth College and a fellow of The OpEd Project. Flanagan concludes with this plea: We need a culture change to manage our use of technology, to connect when we want to and not because we psychologically depend on it. Enough is…
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Posthumanist Approach to Technology Tools

Bray, N. (2013). Writing with Scrivener: A hopeful tale of disappearing tools, flatulence, and word processing redemption. Computers and Composition, 30(3), 197-210. doi:10.1016/j.compcom.2013.07.002 Introduction In this article, Nancy Bray (2013) shares her struggle to match her own composing practices with the right technology tool — and in the process recommends a posthumanist approach to writing…
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Kindle in the Writing Classroom

Acheson, P., Barratt, C. C., & Balthazor, R. (2013). Kindle in the writing classroom. Computers and Composition, 30(4), 283-296. doi:10.1016/j.compcom.2013.10.005 Summary This article studies the pedagogical effects of using Kindle™ readers for accessing texts in an English classroom in 2011. The results demonstrate minimal changes in learning as a result of using Kindle devices for reading…
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iPads in the Classroom

Rossing, J. P., Miller, W. M., Cecil, A. K., & Stamper, S. E. (2012). iLearning: The future of higher education? Student perceptions on learning with mobile tablets. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 12(2), 1-26. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/ Introduction Grounded in the assumption that “the future of the classroom, including learning activities, research,…
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Authentic Learning & Google Drive

Rowe, M., Bozalek, V., & Frantz, J. (2013). Using Google Drive to facilitate a blended approach to authentic learning: Authentic learning and Google Drive. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(4), 594-606. doi:10.1111/bjet.12063 Introduction This article “describes the use of Google Drive to create a blended learning environment” in which  “students completed authentic tasks that aimed…
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