November 16th marks the second International Working Ou […]

Are you interested in rare books or already have a large collection?  Do you like spending your time hunting for treasures at the local thrift store?  Perhaps you might like to sell your used textbooks online or start your own online bookstore.  AbeBooks.com can provide you with both choices.  You could sell your unwanted books [...]

During the flow of a task, at the edge of our zone of proximal development (ZPD), via our selective attention, rehearsal, and metacognition is where learning happens.  I acknowledge that this description short shrifts other important cognitive and behavioral learning processes; nevertheless, these are what I recognize as most important in creating an optimal learning experience. To be certain, […]

Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory (1990) is based on several interrelated psychological constructs: ability, attitude, cognition, emotion, motivation, and personality. When perfectly combined in a task, they catapult a person into a state of flow commonly known as being in the zone. Csikszentmilhalyi refers to this as an optimal experience. He found that people around the world […]

Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORGs) provide English language learners (ELLs) with various gameplay situations and narratives to learn language functions in interactive, fun, and effective ways. Commercial MMORGs like World of Warcraft (WOW) provide numerous opportunities to practice information literacy activities such as interpreting, seeking, synthesizing, and disseminating information (Martin & Steinkuehler, 2010).  According […]

An instructional strategy is something that an instructional designer (or educator) uses as a vehicle to deliver information.  Some instructional strategies require the Internet like WebQuests, HyperInquiry, and well-designed educational videogames, while others are used within the mind metacognitively like mnemonics for memory.  However, the vast majority are used to present instruction in multimodal formats.  Other […]

Join me in Lafayette, LA this November 4-6th for the Mid-South Educational Research Associations (MSERA) 2015 annual meeting.  Click this link to see the full conference schedule.  For more information on the MSERA, visit their Website.  The cool thing about this conference is that everybody brings their paper and not just the PowerPoint slides to […]

I took my first series of online courses for professional development in 2009.  The courses were highly interactively and well-designed because they were taught by experts in the field of computer-assisted language learning.  A shout-out to my professors in the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) certificate program, Principles and Practices of Online Teaching! […]

Time: November 14, 2015 to November 15, 2015 Location: EduNation in Second Life Organized By: Heike Philp aka Gwen Gwasi Event Description: 8th SLanguages Annual Symposium 14-15 November 2015 (Sat/Sun) Come and join us at SLanguages Annual Symposium, a two day online conference on language learning in virtual worlds held for the 8th time on EduNation […]

In preparation for the Cyber Monday sale, I wanted to share some of my holiday-related educational products available for sale on TeachersPayTeachers. This is an 18-page document with text from The Gingerbread Man story retold by Sandra Rogers in which students are provided space to illustrate the story to match the meaning described in the […]