A student doesn't have to be a programming whiz kid to use innovative technology and tools to make a great multimedia presentation, demonstration, or collaborative learning project. Many digital programs and software are easy to use and help students find the best way to package and present their information. New social networking tools can also help students reach a larger and more targeted audience with their message. There are so many cool new Web sites, software, apps, and other digital tools designed just for creating, improving, facilitating, and showcasing multimedia presentations, demonstrations, and collaborative learning experiences, and they are discussed in great detail here. Any student can create an amazing presentation or speech. All that is required is imagination, creativity, a little help from the latest digital technology, and this superb guidebook to the readily available tools and their astounding capabilities. This text supports Common Core Standards for the reading of technical accounts and texts.

With Web 2.0 tools, students have creative options for book reports that go beyond the traditional plot summaries and dioramas. Teens can use digital storytelling tools to share information about their books and generate enthusiasm for reading. The author discusses a variety of options for creating book reports with digital tools, including using movie-making programs to create exciting book trailers, crafting multimedia slide shows, making original animations starring an avatar, and more. Projects fulfill numerous Common Core Standards, including determining a text’s theme and showing how it is conveyed through details, and incorporating multimedia components in presentations to clarify information.

A science fair project is an opportunity for teens to choose a subject of interest, investigate it using the scientific method, and share their findings. While the scientific method never goes out of date, much about science fair research and presentation has changed with the advent of digital tools. Readers learn how they can use digital tools to brainstorm a question, research and take notes, collaborate with teammates, record and organize data, and create presentations using multimedia. As required by the Common Core, readers learn to use technology to produce and publish their work and to collaborate with others.

In the not-too-distant past, students were expected to turn in only handwritten or typed papers. However, with today's ease of access to the Internet and free applications, teachers are now expecting students to go beyond the confines of text-only productions. Various online programs make it possible to create multi-layered term papers that are rich in images, audio, and even video. And most of these tools are free to use! Students can now access their work from nearly anywhere that has an Internet connection. In the case of collaborative research projects, this same technology allows team members to work with each other even when they are in different locations. A wide variety of online and offline tools, techniques, and tips to help students research, write, edit, prepare, and present term papers are discussed and explained here. This revelatory guidebook to the latest in term paper technology also supports Common Core Standards for the reading of technical accounts and texts.

Gone are the days when students stood in front of the class with a notecard, a photocopied pie chart, and a poster board collage. Today, so many innovative—and free—resources are available on the Internet or a standard computer, that students can give presentations worthy of a boardroom or TED talk. Providing tips on finding free online photos, maps, and other art; putting together a multimedia report; and speaking in front of a group, this handy resource will help propel any reader’s report straight to the top of the class.

There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy. In 2000, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition was published and its influence has been wide and deep. The report summarized insights on the nature of learning in school-aged children; described principles for the design of effective learning environments; and provided examples of how that could be implemented in the classroom. Since then, researchers have continued to investigate the nature of learning and have generated new findings related to the neurological processes involved in learning, individual and cultural variability related to learning, and educational technologies. In addition to expanding scientific understanding of the mechanisms of learning and how the brain adapts throughout the lifespan, there have been important discoveries about influences on learning, particularly sociocultural factors and the structure of learning environments. How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures provides a much-needed update incorporating insights gained from this research over the past decade. The book expands on the foundation laid out in the 2000 report and takes an in-depth look at the constellation of influences that affect individual learning. How People Learn II will become an indispensable resource to understand learning throughout the lifespan for educators of students and adults.

Even though digital technologies are ubiquitous in education, assessment methods continue to employ traditional assessments even though they are inadequate to provide information about a student's reasoning and conceptual understanding. Digital-based assessment models allow students to demonstrate higher-order skills while integrating digital technologies as a powerful teaching tool. Digital technologies can support inquiry-based learning that is essential to developing a deep conceptual understanding of the content. The Handbook of Research on Digital-Based Assessment and Innovative Practices in Education identifies digital tools and applications for effective assessment of learning, shares various models of digital-based assessment in education, and considers best pedagogical practices for assessment in education. Covering a range of topics such as formative assessments, design thinking, virtual reality, and equity, this major reference work is crucial for educational technologists, instructional designers, policymakers, administrators, faculty, researchers, academicians, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.