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Educators must consider how today's technology-mediated environments expand our conceptualization of learning contexts and the continuities and tensions between learning and participation in various settings. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted educational systems worldwide, necessitating emergency remote teaching and coinciding with increased social media use. Such shifts require reconceptualization of learning boundaries in a digital age. This article explores British and American teachers' professional learning spanning social media, place and time. We collected #UKEdchat tweets and #Edchat tweets over 28 months, 1 January 2019-30 April 2021, and identified tweeters who were middle or secondary school teachers in the U.K. and U.S. to interview. From analysis of these data, we report on the tensions, synergies and experiences of boundary-crossing teachers with implications for research and practice.

"Online learning"--learning that involves interactions that are mediated through using digital, typically internet-based, technology--is pervasive, multi-faceted, and evolving, creating opportunities and challenges for educational research in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this special issue, we advance an interdisciplinary agenda for online learning research at the intersection of educational technology, educational psychology, and the learning sciences. In this first article in the issue, we define online learning including its variants, review historical and current contexts, explore its multidimensionality, and assert key issues shaping contemporary online learning. We propose five important lenses: "community," "engagement," "pedagogy," "equity," and "design-based research," through which scholarly communities are creating knowledge that influences research and practice in online learning contexts. These lenses highlight points of conceptual overlap between the online and psychological learning literatures. The special issue is organized around these lenses and includes an article representing each one, complemented by commentaries that offer critical appraisal and synthesis.

Blended learning, which combines online and face-to-face pedagogy, is a fast-growing mode of instruction as universities strive for equitable and alternative pathways to course enrollment, retention, and educational attainment. However, challenges to successfully implementing blended instruction are that "social presence," or students' ability to project their personal characteristics into the learning space, is reduced with potential negative effects on student engagement, persistence, and academic achievement. Instructors are experimenting with robotmediated communication (RMC) to address these challenges. Results from a study of RMC at a large public university suggest that it offers advantages over traditionally used videoconferencing, including affordances for fostering students' embodiment in the classroom, their feelings of belonging and trust, and their ability to contribute ideas in authentic ways.

Information on children's writing in online spaces is scarce. What young writers know or need to know to be effective communicators online can inform elementary writing instruction and technology integration in writing classrooms. This study adds to the nascent research on children's online writing by reporting on the writing processes of eight second-grade children ("tweeters") when composing short-form writing online for their class Twitter account. This multicase study, with data drawn from think-aloud transcripts, video-stimulated recall interview transcripts, and published tweets, suggests that young children's short-form writing includes a motivation to tweet, goal setting, and writing schema knowledge specific to Twitter. On the other hand, children's short-form online writing for Twitter shared attributes with traditional writing typically emphasized in school. We discuss how writing for social media can enhance children's developing writing processes. Implications for elementary writing instruction and social media integration in similar classroom contexts are discussed.

In spring 2020, K-12 schools adopted remote learning amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Using activity theory, the authors examine the educational response to this global health crisis in the United States and the United Kingdom. Data are drawn from key news media publications in each country between 1 February and 31 May 2020. The authors critically examine the tensions and contradictions within and between interrelated systems (schooling, educational policy, home learning). They consider how remote digital pedagogy was perceived and enacted by different stakeholders: teachers, parents, policymakers. Tensions arose between digital pedagogy, system rules and teachers' digital skills, leading to different experiences for students. The division of labour shifted; parental responsibility for managing children's learning increased. Digital equity issues prevailed in both countries (technology access, social support), disadvantaging students from low-income families. National educational policy system responses were more coordinated in the UK than in the US.

Purpose: In a public health crisis where social distancing, or physical distancing while in public spaces, is the new normal, social media offer respite from being alone. Recent statistics show spikes in social media usage worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. More than just easing loneliness, such freely available digital tools offer affordances for education in an emergency. Design/methodology/approach: This paper summarizes insights from literature reviews of over a decade of research and recent case studies on the benefits of teaching with social media in K-12 education. Findings: The authors highlight three affordances of social media for fostering active learning, community building and civic participation and describe how social media can be used in conjunction with conventional learning management systems. Furthermore, the authors argue that the unprecedented health crisis that is faced today requires the participation of responsible citizens of all ages; K-12 public education is on the front lines of preparing informed and active citizens and the integration of social media as part of remote education plans can help. Practical implications: The paper includes instructional guidelines for K-12 teachers and instructional designers in various settings who seek to integrate social media as part of their strategy for teaching students at a distance and facilitating their civic participation. Originality/value: This paper fulfills an identified need for evidence-based and pragmatic approaches to K-12 online teaching and learning using technologies already widely in use (i.e. social media).

Purpose: As higher education moves to formats that are not face-to-face classes in the wake of a global pandemic, educators need research-based guidelines to inform instructional planning and implementation. This study aims to provide recommendations for teaching with social media, as a complement and enhancement to traditional online teaching approaches. Design/methodology/approach: The study draws on reviews of the research literature and the authors' own experiences in studying and integrating social media into remote teaching and learning in university settings. Findings: Learning environments that blend asynchronous online elements, where students can go at their own pace, on their own time, have some choice over their learning and are regularly and meaningfully engaging with other students, their teacher and the subject matter are most successful for student learning. Social media, with its affordances for personal profiling, relationship-building, content creation and socializing, when thoughtfully integrated into an online education plan, can help students and teachers stay connected while apart, enhance students' engagement and make remote learning seem less remote. Practical implications: The paper includes instructional guidelines for instructors and instructional designers in various post-secondary settings who seek to integrate social media as part of their strategy for remote higher education. Originality/value: This study fulfills an identified need for pragmatic approaches to online higher education using social media.

Students today spend more time writing on social media than they do in formal classrooms and have developed distinct and complex literacies separate from traditional writing curricula. Although several studies have explored teens' informal literacy practices online, research investigating how these spaces may inform or be effectively utilized in the classroom remains inconclusive. This systematic literature review identifies and critically evaluates the existing knowledge base on how social media have been integrated in high school writing instruction, with particular emphasis on which factors improved student learning and which factors created barriers to student learning. Social media platforms were found to be potentially authentic learning spaces, yet sometimes low student participation hindered effective implementation. Specific teaching strategies, such as modeling and scaffolding instruction, and directions for future research are described.

Background and Context: The increasingly widespread use of social media to expand one's social connections is a relatively new but important phenomenon that has implications for teaching, learning, and teachers' professional knowledge and development in the 21st century. Educational research in this area is expanding, but further investigation is necessary to better determine how to best support teachers in their professional development, collaboration, and classroom teaching. Prior literature reviews have focused extensively on higher education settings or particular platforms or platform types (e.g., Facebook, microblogging). This article provides needed insights into K-12 settings and encompasses work from a variety of social media types. We describe a systematic review of more than a decade of educational research from various countries to present the state of the field in K-12 teachers' use of social media for teaching and professional learning across various platforms. Research Questions: To define social media's potentially beneficial roles in teaching and learning, we must first take an in-depth look at teachers' current social media practices. Toward this end, we approached our review with the following research question: How are social media perceived and used by K-12 teachers for their teaching or professional learning, and with what impacts on teachers' practices? Research Design: Guided by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) established standards for rigor and quality in systematic literature reviews, this article reviews empirical research to examine how social media are perceived and used by K-12 teachers with what impacts on teachers' practices. Findings: We find that social media features offer several benefits for helping teachers fulfill their goals for classroom teaching, including enhancing student engagement, community connections, and teacher-student interactions, but these affordances come with challenges that must be navigated. The literature also suggests that social media features provide benefits for teachers' professional learning within both formal professional development programs and informal learning networks. Conclusions: Implications of this literature review for future research and the design of educational practices are discussed in the final section. Among our conclusions are calls for more data triangulation between teachers' and students' learning and experiences on social media, more attention to teachers' observational behaviors on social media, and further exploration of how social media facilitates interplay between teachers' formal and informal learning.

In a pilot study of an affordable and low-maintenance social media solution for adjunct faculty socialization or onboarding at the community college, interested adjuncts were offered the opportunity to participate in a social media-like experience made possible by the Moodle Social wall format plugin. Though qualitative data did not suggest this opportunity supported three socialization constructs (information, ownership, and connectedness), a small subset of adjunct faculty participants expressed excitement about its potential, describing it as a tool facilitating connectedness and information sharing in related comments. Practical suggestions are noted related to the design and research of social media interventions.

As new technologies shape and are shaped by human practices, educators and researchers must consider the impact that participating in social media--to access, reflect upon, question, evaluate and disseminate scholarship--is having on their professional development and practices. This paper investigates how members of the educational research community use social media to advance professional learning and scholarship dissemination in online-offline networks. Specifically, we examine whether and how participating in the microblogging service, Twitter, as a conference backchannel, facilitated professional learning and participation in the annual meetings of American educational researchers in 2012 and 2016, respectively, and the nature of that participation. Insights from this paper will benefit educators of varying disciplines and experience levels interested in the changing nature of social media in education, scholarship, and professional learning ecologies.

This conceptual exploration revisits a key question from earlier work (Greenhow & Gleason, 2014): What is scholarship reconsidered in the age of social media? "Social scholarship" is a framework that expanded Boyers' (1990) conceptualization of scholarship to consider how social media affect discovery and research, teaching and learning, integration, and application. This paper critically reflects on how social scholarship continues to evolve in light of changing understandings in the field of educational technology and the role social media play in the academy. We provide recent examples of social scholarship such as altmetrics, interdisciplinary projects, crowdsourced educational technology syllabi and reconsideration of the needs of research participants. Moreover, we share concrete examples of how scholars might enact social scholarship, with what benefits and challenges, and surface new concerns regarding openness, equity, access, literacy, privacy and ethical considerations. Our paper concludes with recommendations for preparing scholars to enact social scholarship while mitigating the challenges it poses.

This paper discusses access and use of information and communication technologies among urban high school students from low-income families, a topic of great interest to teacher educators, educational policymakers, and others concerned with digital literacy instruction. Recent reports from national digital learning initiatives have portrayed today's teens as digital natives--youth who are constantly online, perceive themselves as Internet-savvy, and prefer technology-enhanced learning experiences. However, this portrait may not be true for all learners. This study investigated trends in Internet use among students from low-income families compared to national trends. In the spring of 2007, students from low-income families responded to a survey assessing their access to the Internet, frequency and type of use, and capacity to use the Internet. The researchers also conducted focus groups with students. In this paper, we discuss findings and implications for teachers seeking to understand similar students' Internet access, use, and capacity and suggest implications for digital literacy instruction, technology policy, and teacher education. (Contains 2 tables and 3 footnotes.)

This study compared the abilities of inservice and preservice teachers to demonstrate an understanding of technology integration and to apply such knowledge to instructional decision-making. Using a set of online content-specific multimedia scenarios to resolve complex problems of teaching with technology in a simulated school environment, inservice teachers outperformed preservice teachers on criteria measuring practical and pedagogical content knowledge about technology integration; however, preservice and inservice teachers scored similarly in their ability to make an instructional decision about technology. In addition, both preservice and inservice teachers demonstrated a lack of weighing competing options in the case and a lack of orientation toward reflective and adjustable practices. Overall, inservice teachers demonstrated consideration of a broader range of classroom- and school-level factors in making a technology integration decision. Understanding, capturing, and measuring these differences is essential to advance theory on the dimensions of technological pedagogical content knowledge, and how it develops in different teacher sub-groups to advance the work of teacher educators concerned with designing courses about technology integration appropriate to learners' needs. (Contains 4 tables.)

Online delivery methods offer much promise for anytime, anywhere adult learning. As a method of outreach, and to provide support for just-in-time learning, teacher educators are increasingly deciding to design Web sites that are online, resource-based learning environments for teachers and preservice teachers. Automated evaluation tools and data collection methods can help such Web site designers develop and use online, resource-based learning environments to meet their goals of providing high quality learning opportunities for teachers. This article presents a three-pronged approach for evaluating issues of pedagogical design and user-centered functionality in online, resource-based Web sites. Checklist, Web site traffic analysis, and talk aloud protocols are each described and then illustrated through their application to a site aimed at educating teachers about technology integration. We discuss the relevance for developing effective learning environments when teacher educators apply this evaluation approach to resource-based learning environments. (Contains 1 table and 3 footnotes.)

The increasingly widespread use of social network sites to expand and deepen one's social connections is a relatively new but potentially important phenomenon that has implications for teaching and learning and teacher education in the 21st century. This paper surveys the educational research literature to examine: How such technologies are perceived and used by K-12 learners and teachers with what impacts on pedagogy or students' learning. Selected studies were summarized and categorized according to the four types introduced by Roblyer (2005) as studies most needed to move the educational technology field forward. These include studies that establish the technology's effectiveness at improving student learning; investigate implementation strategies; monitor social impact; and report on common uses to shape the direction of the field. We found the most prevalent type of study conducted related to our focal topic was research on common uses. The least common type of study conducted was research that established the technology's effectiveness at improving student learning. Implications for the design of future research and teacher education initiatives are discussed.

Traditional civic education in the U.S. often does not meet the needs of students. Whether through outdated or uninspiring methods or by functionally disenfranchising students who are not part of the predominant power structure, mainstream civic education maintains hegemonic structures and, in turn, systems of oppression. Scholars have argued that reconceptualizing citizenship is an important component to addressing these shortcomings. Further, an increased use of social media as a tool for new forms of civic participation has been observed, but little research has been done to examine how teachers are using these platforms in their teaching of civics. This study explored high school social studies teachers' conceptualizations of citizenship and their use of the social media platform, Twitter, with their students for civic education. Findings showed that teachers' conceptions of citizenship were influenced by their local context: teachers observed geographic or racial barriers for their students' civic participation, which informed how they understood and taught about civic participation. Teachers' use of Twitter was intended to provide ways for students to disrupt the systems that established these barriers; however, teachers' practice of using Twitter did not always align with their intentions.

It is argued that social media has the potential to bridge formal and informal learning through participatory digital cultures. Exemplars of sophisticated use by young people support this claim, although the majority of young people adopt the role of consumers rather than full participants. Scholars have suggested the potential of social media for integrating formal and informal learning, yet this work is commonly under-theorized. We propose a model theorizing social media as a space for learning with varying attributes of formality and informality. Through two contrasting case studies, we apply our model together with social constructivism and connectivism as theoretical lenses through which to tease out the complexities of learning in various settings. We conclude that our model could reveal new understandings of social media in education, and outline future research directions.

Social media are fundamentally changing core practices in various industries. Although surveys indicate that social media are impacting social scientists, we know little about how education scholars, specifically, use social media for their work or professional learning. This article explores how educational scholars incorporated the social media, Twitter, as a conference "backchannel." Using qualitative interview data collected from members of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and considering previous analysis of AERA conference tweet data, we describe participants' purposes and practices and their perceptions of how using this social media impacts participation in the conference community. We discuss implications for those concerned with research dissemination, faculty professional development, and academic identity.

This article defines Twitter[TM]; outlines the features, affordances, and common uses; and conceptualizes "tweeting" as a literacy practice, comprising both traditional and new literacies, and impacting both informal and formal learning settings. Also provided is an overview of traditional and new literacies, and insights from a scan of the research literature to date on tweeting as a literacy practice. The authors outline areas for inquiry and the challenges to conducting such research.

The development of social capital in young people is positively associated with educational attainment, achievement, and psychosocial factors. Prior research has explored factors that contribute to social capital, such as offline social networks. To a lesser extent, studies have analyzed the relationship between online social networks and students' social capital. However, educational researchers have yet to examine this relationship among students from low-income families. It is especially important to consider low-income students since historically they have not reached the same educational attainment and achievement levels as their higher income peers. In this article, we conduct a regression analysis on survey responses from high school students from low-income families (n = 607) to examine the relationship between intensity of online social network site use, social capital, and other measures of psychological well-being. Results suggest positive associations between use of online social network sites and two forms of social capital. Qualitative data were also utilized to illuminate low income students' opportunities or barriers for forging and sustaining relationships through online social network sites and implications for future research and education are discussed. (Contains 7 tables and 1 footnote.)

Online social networks are increasingly important information and communication tools for young people and for the environmental movement. Networks may provide the motivation for young adults to increase environmental behaviors by increasing their knowledge of environmental issues and of the specific actions they can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This study examined an application within Facebook.com--the largest online social network in the world--that allowed users to post climate change news stories from other websites and comment on those stories. A survey revealed that users of the social networking application reported above average knowledge of climate change science and that self-reported environmental behaviors increased during young people's involvement with the "Facebook" application. Focus groups indicated that peer role modeling through interaction on the site motivated pro-environmental behaviors, that is, behavior that seeks to minimize the negative impact of one's actions on the natural and built world. Participation in a community of like-minded users spurred many participants to learn more about climate change and do more to limit its impact. (Contains 4 tables.)

Most U.S. teenagers participate in online social network sites, devoting hours to these networks, often at the expense of other leisure-time activities. This article describes young people's activities within one topic-focused niche network, outlining its unique features and the role of young people as content producers within and beyond the space. Links between youth's online contributions and their interest, self-expression, social connections, and civic involvement are discussed. (Contains 1 figure and 9 notes.)

All students today are increasingly expected to develop technological fluency, digital citizenship, and other twenty-first century competencies despite wide variability in the quality of learning opportunities schools provide. Social network sites (SNSs) available via the internet may provide promising contexts for learning to supplement school-based experiences. This qualitative study examines how high school students from low-income families in the USA use the SNS, "MySpace," for identity formation and informal learning. The analysis revealed that SNSs used outside of school allowed students to formulate and explore various dimensions of their identity and demonstrate twenty-first century skills; however, students did not perceive a connection between their online activities and learning in classrooms. We discuss how learning with such technologies might be incorporated into the students' overall learning ecology to reduce educational inequities and how current institutionalized approaches might shift to accommodate such change.

In the past decade, significant shifts have occurred in the nature of the Internet and the conceptualization of classrooms. Such shifts have affected constructs of learning and instruction and paths for future research. In this article, the authors build on three ideas set forth in comments on their article "Web 2.0 and Classroom Research: What Path Should We Take "Now"?" The authors believe that these comments, which extend ideas from their initial article, make important contributions to the vision for transformative scholarship and practice they outlined. Specifically, the authors discuss the professional development of teachers, considerations for building research capacity and social scholarship, and the importance of bridging divides to advance a common research agenda on learning and teaching with Web 2.0.

Since Windschitl first outlined a research agenda for the World Wide Web and classroom research, significant shifts have occurred in the nature of the Web and the conceptualization of classrooms. Such shifts have affected constructs of learning and instruction, and paths for future research. This article discusses the characteristics of Web 2.0 that differentiate it from the Web of the 1990s, describes the contextual conditions in which students use the Web today, and examines how Web 2.0's unique capabilities and youth's proclivities in using it influence learning and teaching. Two important themes, "learner participation and creativity and online identity formation," emerged from this analysis and support a new wave of research questions. A stronger research focus on students' everyday use of Web 2.0 technologies and their learning with Web 2.0 both in and outside of classrooms is needed. Finally, insights on how educational scholarship might be transformed with Web 2.0 in light of these themes are discussed.

Participatory web-based technologies have the potential to change the way scholars engage in scholarship. One reason Web 2.0 technologies, such as online social networking, are not widely integrated in PreK-12 and postsecondary education is the lack of modeling by educators. Their lack of research-based best practices limits the ability to capitalize on learners' engagement with Web 2.0 technologies outside of school to change formal Web 1.0 classroom-based lessons. Such a lack of knowledge prevents both novice and senior scholars from cultivating the "serious online lives" (Lankshear 2007) that would help them discern overly hyped from educative uses of participatory technologies. In this article, the author proposes to examine the concept and application of "social scholarship" and to provide examples for K-12 and postsecondary educators and students who seek to integrate social scholarship into their research practices. As educators and students reflect on and re-envision what they do as scholars--using web-based social networking tools to enact semi-public virtual selves and become intertwined with the work of their peers--their use of these tools may, in turn, provide greater insight into their own scholarly attitudes and practices. Here, the author looks at some of the tools that provide social scholarship opportunities.

The recent editorial in this journal by Bull et al. ("Connecting Informal and Formal Learning Experiences in the Age of Participatory Media" Vol 8, Iss 2) discussed the challenges of bridging formal learning practices and informal learning opportunities within the context of today's Web-enhanced world. In this commentary, Christine Greenhow summarizes key points in the article, addressing what she sees as its central questions. Next, she offers three recommendations for bridging the gap between informal and formal learning and addresses the constraints that Bull et al. identify.

Christine Greenhow, J. D. Walker, Dan Donnelly, and Brad Cohen describe the implementation and evaluation of the University of Minnesota's Fair Use Analysis (FUA) tool, an interactive online application intended to educate users and foster defensible fair use practice in accordance with copyright law by guiding users through a robust, fact-specific, four-factor analysis. After examining the FUA tool's ability to improve both student understanding of the four factors involved in fair use analysis and the quality of student reasoning with those factors, Greenhow, Walker, Donnelly, and Cohen suggest that students still find certain aspects of fair use law particularly difficult to comprehend and offer recommendations for educators and administrators seeking to design or disseminate similar tools to promote informed instructional practices. (Contains 4 exhibits.)

Trends in higher education have contributed to the need for more coordination and collaboration among different constituencies involved in instructional design and delivery. As researchers and educational technologists working in a large public research university, our research focuses on understanding the interactions among various stakeholder groups involved in e-Learning courses. In this paper we provide an interpretation of how Activity-Oriented Design Methods (AODM) based on Activity Theory can be used to develop a more comprehensive understanding of collaborative knowledge building practices among course design teams and their students. We also discuss how these methods can inform instructional design and development within distance education programs. In the absence of universally accepted methods for applying activity theoretical perspectives, these methods provide an analytic scheme for identifying the essential elements of an activity and for examining their interrelationships or contradictions, which are essential to improving the activity overall. The procedures described here have been used in a series of e-Learning case studies at our institution. We draw from one case to illustrate our interpretation of Activity-Oriented Design Methods. The themes discussed in this paper have implications for a broad audience of educational researchers, technologists, instructional systems designers, faculty, course assistants, and administrators concerned with examining and advancing collaboration among different groups in developing e-Learning.

Today, information and communication technologies such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are some of the most popular technologies available on the Internet, with millions of users worldwide. Research is still trying to discover how people use them, for what purposes, and in what settings, and investigate how they may be shaping the ways they think, work, and communicate. In this article, the author describes two of the trends in using these tools that she and her colleagues see happening, based on their own research. First, social bookmarking sites, such as Delicious, Diigo, and CiteULike, can provide the resources to facilitate a scholarly approach to teaching where teachers concerned with developing research-based best practices can collectively assemble, annotate, recommend, and share scholarly resources, such as books, journal articles, websites, and contacts. Second, social networking tools, such as Facebook, Classroom 2.0, Ning, and Twitter, can be used to garner collective emotional support and recognition for one's creative practices. In their work studying the potential educational benefits and challenges of social network site use among urban teenagers, the author and her colleagues found that such technologies could function as social learning resources and spaces for new literacy practices. (Contains 9 resources.)