Chapter 1. Maximizing the Affordances of Contemporary Technologies in Education: Promise and Possibilities -- Chapter 2. Improving Science Education through Developing Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Teachers -- Chapter 3. Toward Understanding the Practice and Potential of Educational Technologies on Our Campuses: Should We Be Skeptics First? -- Chapter 4. Promoting engagement through participatory social practices in next generation social media contexts -- Chapter 5. Signaling in Disciplinarily-Integrated Games: Challenges in Integrating Proven Cognitive Scaffolds within Game Mechanics to Promote Representational Competence -- Chapter 6. Cognitive Tools for Scaffolding Argumentation -- Chapter 7. Learning Analytics: Using Data-Informed Decision-Making to Improve Teaching and Learning -- Chapter 8. Enhancing Self-Regulated Learning for Information Problem Solving with Ambient Big Data Gathered by nStudy -- Chapter 9. Project Based Learning Progressions: Identifying the Nodes of learning in a Project Based Environment -- Chapter 10. MOOCS and the Future of Higher Education -- Chapter 11. Just Posting in the Same Place: Confronting the Paucity of Collaborative Behavior in U.S., K-12 Wikis. .

This edited volume provides a critical discussion of theoretical, methodological, and practical developments of contemporary forms of educational technologies. Specifically, the book discusses the use of contemporary technologies such as the Flipped Classroom (FC), Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Social Media, Serious Educational Games (SEG), Wikis, innovative learning software tools, and learning analytic approach for making sense of big data. While some of these contemporary educational technologies have been touted as panaceas, researchers and developers have been faced with enormous challenges in enhancing the use of these technologies to arouse student attention and improve persistent motivation, engagement, and learning. Hence, the book examines how contemporary technologies can engender student motivation and result in improved engagement and learning. Each chapter also discusses the road ahead and where appropriate, uses the current trend to predict future affordances of technologies.