Institute of Educational Technology
The Open University
ann.jones@open.ac.uk
Institute of Educational Technology
The Open University
martin.weller@open.ac.uk
This special issue of JIME features selected chapters from the forthcoming book 'Reusing Resources: Learning in Open Networks for Work, Life and Education' edited by Alison Littlejohn and Chris Pegler. The five chapters and the editorial (which contains substantial quotations from Chapter 1 of the book) are reproduced in JIME under an open license with permission from the publisher Routledge.
In addition to the book chapters, the issue also includes two articles which explore the practical use of online tools in education. Ford, Veletsiantos and Resta analyse the use and evolution of a Twitter hashtag for community network building, knowledge exchange and support in 'The Structure and Characteristics of #PhDCHat, an Emergent Online Social Network".
In 'Developing an Open Resource Bank for Interactive Teaching of STEM: Perspectives of school teachers and teacher educators' Hassler, Hennessy, Knight and Connolly examine the literature and seek user perspectives of Open Educational Resources by teachers and teacher educators, which informs the development of the ORBIT OER resource bank.
The issue includes a book review of Littlejohn and Margaryan's "Technology-enhanced professional learning: process, practices and tools.
This is the last issue that Anna Page, our journal manager, will be working on. We would like to express our deep appreciation of Anna's work and support in this role over the last three years, and to wish her well in her new post as senior producer in a different area of the Open University, the Open Media Unit.