Bulletin of the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology, Volume 14, Number 4, October 2012 1 elcome to the Bulletin of the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology, Volume 14, Number 4, October 2012 issue. This is the first issue which implements the decisions made in the last board meeting of the Technical Committee on Learning Technology during the 2012 International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT) in Rome. In particular, the name of the publication is changed to Bulletin of the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology, the formatting of the articles is modified to comply with IEEE guidelines and the length of the articles is extended to 4 pages. This issue is edited by Guest Editor Prof. Davinia Hernández-Leo, and includes articles on Technology- Augmented Physical Educational Spaces. The issue also includes a section with regular articles (i.e. articles that are not related to the special theme). In this regular section, So & Lam describe a study which examines how Facebook is being used as a platform to communicate and to foster participation and interaction between students and other parties. Vu & Fadde describe a study which examines what characteristics, factors, traits, and classroom behaviors make an effective instructor in an online learning environment. We sincerely hope that the issue will help in keeping you abreast of the current research and developments in Learning Technology. We also would like to take the opportunity to invite you to contribute your own work (e.g. work in progress, project reports, dissertation abstracts, case studies, event announcements) in this Bulletin, if you are involved in research and/or implementation of any aspect of advanced learning technology. For more details, please refer to the author guidelines at http://www.ieeetclt.org/content/bulletin. Special theme of the next issue: “Eliminating boundaries: innovative learning environments to integrate formal, informal and on-the-move learning experiences” Guest Editor: Prof. George Magoulas, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK (gmagoulas@dcs.bbk.ac.uk) Deadline for submission of articles: December 15, 2012 Articles that are not in the area of the special theme are most welcome as well and will be published in the regular article section. D. Hernández-Leo is with the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Information and Communication Technologies Department, Roc Boronat 138, 08018 Barcelona, Spain (e-mail: davinia.hernandez@ upf.edu). SPECIAL ISSUE ON TECHNOLOGY-AUGMENTED PHYSICAL EDUCATIONAL SPACES The introduction of technologies in physical educational spaces has brought new possibilities to education that are transforming the learning scenarios. Computational artifacts have moved from being conceived as a means to support distance communication to be elements embedded in augmented physical spaces that can enrich face-to-face learning experiences [2, 5]. Augmented physical educational spaces go beyond the desktop computing by using interactive artifacts and technological facilities derived from: tangible interfaces, mobile and ubiquitous computing, and augmented reality. In tangible user interfaces a person interacts with digital information through the physical environment. This type of interaction involves explicit contact with the computing artefacts [1]. Ubiquitous computing deals with situating and embedding devices (RFID, QR codes, location-aware services...) within a space so that computational power is available everywhere (wearable devices, roomware, mobile phones, ...) and the interaction with the devices is mediated through this space [3, 4]. These devices can also facilitate augmented reality scenarios, overlaying digital information to real objects to enhance the learning benefits. The special theme of this issue focuses on the improvement and application of information and communication technologies to augment physical spaces for teaching and learning purposes. It includes 13 papers with authors of 8 different countries: USA, Canada, Israel, UK, Greece, Finland, Norway and Spain. The majority of the papers describe current research on specific technological approaches (tabletops, augmented reality, mobile learning, affective computing and backchannels) that enhance educational physical environments, while two papers call for reflection about teacher training/adoption challenges and the need of further advances in learning theory to understand the nature of our interactions with technology-augmented physical spaces. In “A glimpse to the ambient classroom,” Asterios Leonidis, Maria Korozi, George Margetis, Stavroula Ntoa, Margherita Antona and Constantine Stephanidis present several different technological solutions (an augmented desk, a study table, a tabletop for mini-games,…) that augment physical educational materials traditionally used in a classroom setting: books and paper cards. Similarly, Fotis Liarokapis describes a low cost Augmented Reality technology to provide students with an interactive augmentation of teaching material focused on computer graphics principles in his paper “Augmented Reality Interfaces for Assisting Computer Games University Students.” With the Editorial Charalampos Karagiannidis and Sabine Graf, Co-Editors Davinia Hernández-Leo, Guest Editor W