Editorial on ICT: From E-readers and computer games to basketball

The third issue of EAIT for 2013 contains 8 articles covering a range of topics relating to ICT and Education. Firstly there is an article by Maria Rasmusson and Monica Eklund from Sweden: It’s easier to read on the Internet—you just click on what you want to read... In the article the authors note that today’s youth spend a lot of time on the Internet, and that on-line reading is thus an issue worth investigating. Their study explores reading on the Internet, with pairs of Swedish students aged 10 and 15. The study found that five main categories of skills and abilities were relevant: traditional literacy, multimodal literacy, path-finding, IT abilities, and information abilities. The article also highlights the crucial need for the ability of students to be able to spell and to know web address conventions in English. Next follows an article by Marcy Zipke from the USA titled: Teachers’ thoughts on e-readers in the elementary school classroom. The article investigates advantages and disadvantages to teaching elementary literacy with e-readers, using a convenience sample of ten e-reader novice teachers equipped with Kindle e-readers. The article discusses issues with implications related to pedagogy including the text-to-speech and dictionary functions and the idea of unlimited access to books. Individual and group performance of computerized educational tasks is an article by Joseph Klein from Israel. His study examines the conditions under which task performance is accomplished more efficiently by a single individual or by a group. The study involved use of a computer game based on educational software and arranged in five levels of difficulty. A comparison was made of the speed in which objectives were attained when performed individually compared to when divided among groups of two to four partners. Marina Papastergiou and Vassilis Gerodimos from Greece discuss basketball and ICT in an article titled: Can learning of basketball be enhanced through a web-based multimedia course? An experimental study. This study aimed to create a web-based multimedia course for Physical Education students to familiarise them with the Educ Inf Technol (2013) 18:399–400 DOI 10.1007/s10639-013-9265-9