Editor's Note
Beginnings and Endings
To a greater extent than many other professions, the lives of educators and scholars are caught in perpetual cycles of beginnings and endings. Each academic year has its own rhythm of deadlines, events and activities. Similarly, doctoral students begin their program and some are ready to graduate. These milestones beckon reflection and gratitude. At Meridian, we face such a moment, as the editing staff has had a changing of the guard. We would like to thank Gemma Mojica, Peter Holt Wilson, and Ji-eun Suh for their fine work and substantive service to Meridian. They willingly and enthusiastically devoted their extra time to strengthening the opportunities and capabilities inherent in this online media. The reach of their work is evident in the over 2.75 million hits Meridian received during their tenure.
As our journey begins at Meridian, we intend to broadcast a greater awareness of research and practice efforts at all levels of education -both domestically and abroad- to enlarge and facilitate communication among the network of educators effectively using instructional technologies. Toward that end, we have expanded our mission to include innovative information and communication technologies (ICT) research and practice found throughout Kindergarten through 12th grade education. In the current issue, “Integrating Interactive Online Content at an Early College High School: An Exploration of Moodle, Ning and Twitter" by Jonathan List and Brent Bryant represents Meridian's opening article as we transition into a Kindergarten through 12th grade education online journal. We hope both to expand our audience and the number and range of manuscripts received for review.
One expects to find dynamic content in their online experiences today. The current Editorial team hopes to streamline and to improve the efficiency of Meridian's online presence, and also to expand its readership through reporting quality research- and practitioner-based articles that span the union of ICT and Kindergarten through 12th grade education today.
Current Issue
Today's students have always been able to play video games at home and information has been just a click away. Due to these uses of ICT outside of school, students come to the classroom with some knowledge of technology. This Meridian issue explores students' knowledge of technology from a variety of perspectives.
• Jill Olthouse's article "Video Games: Why Kids Play and What They Learn" provides an overview on what video games afford in regards to student learning and gives some examples of the technological knowledge some students bring with them to the classroom.
• In "Learning to Play, Play to Learn: Building a better educational game", Matthew Johnson discusses the decisions made in the design of an educational game. Some considerations that must be made in the design are the potential users' technological knowledge.
• Angelia Reed-Griffin and Kelli Slaten's article "Junior Seahawk Academy: Working with 21st Century Technology Tools" discusses students' perceptions on the benefits of having a designated session on using technology tools that assist in collecting and analyzing data which was provided to increase students' technological knowledge.
• In "Integrating Interactive Online Content at an Early College High School: An Exploration of Moodle, Ning and Twitter", Jonathon List and Brent Bryant investigate and compare whether students were able to meaningfully use web 2.0 technology tools that were specifically designed for education that students had no experience using to technology tools that most students had used at home in a non-educational way.
• Also included in this groundbreaking issue of Meridian is a Brazilian translation of Dr. Harriet Stubbs' article, "Using Technology to Develop Global Teachers: An Innovative Model." Meridian is grateful to the people involved on the ground in Brazil who assisted in the translation process! Please see the Portuguese translation for further information on this group of fantastic educators.
The common theme for all of these articles is that, in some way, they all discuss or take into account the level of students' knowledge of technology.
Engaging Diverse Communities
Progress in understanding how best to teach and learn with ICT, not only requires an expanded vision, but a pluralism of perspectives. We want to reach out to researchers and practitioners in Kindergarten through 12th education from around the world who may not view Meridian as a home for their work. We want Meridian to be seen as a vehicle of dissemination for all researchers interested in sharing and expanding teaching and learning with computer technologies in Kindergarten through 12th classrooms and beyond. We seek to include researchers from all countries and to make translations of that work available to all readers. Meridian staff appreciates the courage of all educators using ICT in innovative ways, accordingly it is imperative that we continue sharing our work with the international community. We believe that the articles included in the International section of this issue further contribute to meeting this goal.
Lisa Hervey, Ryan Smith and Tom Warren
