Editorial on ICT and education internationally

Abstract

This first issue of EAIT for 2013 has articles from India, USA, Egypt, Cyprus, Spain, Finland and Greece, illustrating the word-wide and growing interest in education and information technologies. From a topic that began in the 1980s as an area of interest in relatively few countries, issues relating to ICT and education are now very much an international phenomenon as this issue illustrates. Applications of blogging in problem based learning by Rishu Chhabra and Vandana Sharma from Punjab Technical University, India, looks at an undergraduate course on relational database management systems in Computer Science and Engineering. The article describes how problem based learning and blogging have been introduced for practical sessions. It discusses how problems are designed to cover the syllabus topics, and how blogging was used to bridge the communication gap. Students’ perceptions of clickers as an instructional tool to promote active learning, is by James Oigara from Canisius College, and Jared Keengwe from the University of North Dakota, USA. In the article they write to describe a study to evaluate students’ perceptions of active learning in a Physical Geography undergraduate class. The study found that clickers do promote student engagement in the teaching and learning process, but that students did not find clickers to be a motivating factor to study more for the course. An interactive e-learning system for improving web programming skills, by Elgamal, Abas and Baladoh from Mansoura University, Egypt describes an interactive e-learning system that aims to provide an integrated environment for web programming. The system provides instructors with an online exam system and monitors, collects and keeps information about learners’ performance and activities. Locating ICT for primary education in a reformed Greek-Cypriot national curriculum: A documentary analysis approach by Yiasemina Karagiorgi from the Ministry of Education and Culture, Nicosia, Cyprus argues that educational technology in the Educ Inf Technol (2013) 18:1–2 DOI 10.1007/s10639-013-9249-9