"This book is a must-read for all educators and practitioners, of any subject and at any level, who wish to incorporate a dynamic online element to their classroom"--Provided by publisher.

"This book is a must-read for all educators and practitioners, of any subject and at any level, who wish to incorporate a dynamic online element to their classroom"--Provided by publisher.

Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments: Applying Dynamic Elements to the Modern Classroom highlights the work of educators daring enough to teach in these new frontiers of education. This timely publication is a must-read for all educators and practitioners, of any subject and at any level, who wish to incorporate a dynamic online element to their classroom. It is also meant for researchers of education, computer science, and instructional technologies. Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments: Applying Dynamic Elements to the Modern Classroom is a one-stop resource for practices, as well as research activities, within the domain on Multi-User Virtual Environments.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing, OCSC 2011, held in Orlando, FL, USA in July 2011 in the framework of the 14th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2011 with 10 other thematically similar conferences. The 77 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the thematic area of online communities and social computing, addressing the following major topics: on-line communities and intelligent agents in education and research; blogs, Wikis and Twitters; social computing in business and the enterprise; social computing in everyday life; information management in social computing.

Has the information behavior of children and youth changed significantly over the last two decades? The Information Behavior of a New Generation: Children and Teens in the 21st Century attempts to answer this question from a variety of viewpoints. Thirteen researchers from educational psychology, computer science, education, and information studies have contributed to eleven chapters on models of information behavior, the cognitive development of youth, information literacy, everyday information behavior, cyber-bullying, gaming in virtual environments, learning labs, social networks, intellectual disabilities, and current and future systems. Whether they are referred to as digital natives, the Google-generation, or generation M, today's youth are active consumers and avid producers of digital information. Smart phones are the new generation's communication tools, social networks are their interaction venues, and virtual environments are their new playgrounds. This new digital communication era has prompted researchers from a variety of disciplines to contribute to this book on the information behavior of children and teens. One of the many conclusions that may be drawn from the chapters in the book is that information behavior is a multifaceted phenomenon, evolving alongside the rapid developments in information and communication technologies. The new generation tends to multitask, managing many activities simultaneously, such as scanning for and skimming information, texting brief messages, and posting audio and visual information on social media. While children and teens are tech savvy, they lack certain information and media literacy skills essential in today's digital environment. For researchers, the authors pose questions for further investigation in the hope that innovative services will be offered and novel systems will be developed to help the new generation. For teachers and information professionals, the authors provide a broad background to assist them with a more in-depth and thorough understanding and appreciation of children's and teens' information behavior.

With the advent of virtual environments and communities, the metaverse has been rapidly expanding in recent years as businesses and industries have begun to see the value and opportunities this technology provides. In order to ensure this technology is utilized to its full potential, further study on the best practices, challenges, and future directions is required. The Research Anthology on Virtual Environments and Building the Metaverse considers the latest research regarding the metaverse and discusses potential issues and benefits of the technology. The book also examines strategies and tactics businesses and companies can use when implementing the metaverse into their operations. Covering key topics such as immersion, augmented reality, and virtual worlds, this major reference work is ideal for computer scientists, business owners, managers, industry professionals, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of Hispanic applied linguistics, allowing students to understand the field from a variety of perspectives and offering insight into the ever-growing number of professional opportunies afforded to Spanish language program graduates. The goal of this book is to re-contextualize the notion of applied linguistics as simply the application of theoretical linguistic concepts to practical settings and to consider it as its own field that addresses language-based issues and problems in a real-world context. The book is organized into five parts: 1) perspectives on learning Spanish 2) issues and environments in Spanish teaching 3) Spanish in the professions 4) the discourses of Spanish and 5) social and political contexts for Spanish. The book’s all-inclusive coverage gives students the theoretical and sociocultural context for study in Hispanic applied linguistics while offering practical information on its application in the professional sector.