Sampson, D. G., Spector, J. M., Aedo, I., & Chen, N.-S. (2012). Guest Editorial: Advanced Learning Technologies. Educational Technology & Society, 15 (4), 1–2. 1 ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). © International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). The authors and the forum jointly retain the copyright of the articles. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IFETS must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from the editors at kinshuk@ieee.org. Guest Editorial: Advanced Learning Technologies Demetrios G. Sampson 1 , J. Michael Spector 2 , Ignacio Aedo 3 and Nian-Shing Chen 4 1 University of Piraeus, Greece // 2 University of North Texas, USA // 3 Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, // 4 National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan // sampson@iti.gr // Mike.Spector@unt.edu // ignacio.aedo@uc3m.es // nianshing@gmail.com The 11th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies was hosted at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia July 6-8, 2011. The Conference Co-Chairs were Prof. J. Michael Spector (who was at UGA-College of Education at the time) and Prof. Kinshuk (Athabasca University – School of Computing and Information Systems). The Program Chairs were Prof. Ignacio Aedo (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), Prof. Nian- Shing Chen (National Sun Yat-sen University of Taiwan), and Prof. Demetrios Sampson (University of Piraeus, Greece). The conference theme was “Cloudy with a Slight Chance for Gain,” which was intended to capture the dual emphasis on cloud computing for education and advanced assessment technologies. Other topics of interest included digital gaming technology, intelligent learning systems, and much more. Paper submissions represented more than 25 countries around the world. ICALT 2011 received 244 submissions (211 full papers, 24 short papers and 9 posters) and 60 of them were accepted as full papers (24,59%). The best seven of those are presented in this special issue of Educational Technology & Society. It is our pleasure to briefly introduce these seven papers and conclude with our own reflections. The first paper entitled “Are one-to-one computers necessary? An analysis of collaborative Web exploration activities supported by shared displays” is by Chia-Jung Chung, Chen-Chung Liu, and Yan-Jhin Shen, all of whom are from Taiwan. This paper is consistent with the dual theme of the conference emphasizing the role of cloud-based resources and assessment. The study these authors report involves the effect of having a shared computer with a small group exploring Web resources versus having one-to-one computers which shared displays. The findings suggest that the one-to-one computer treatment with shared displays was more effective in promoting collaboration and elaboration of the findings of Web explorations. The second paper entitled “Curriculum-guided crowd sourcing of assessments in a developing country” is by Imran Zualkernan (UAE), Anjana Raza (Pakistan), and Asad Karim (Pakistan). As the title directly implies, this paper also addressed both themes of the conference. The authors report the findings of an exploratory study aimed at determining if teachers in a developing country were able to create high quality, multiple-choice questions for elementary school students. The notion of crowd sourcing assessments was introduced to explore the willingness of the teachers to share their assessment items. Not surprisingly, the findings suggest that those with a readiness for adoption of new assessments had better attitudes and enjoyed the activity. However, there was no clear indication of which factors contributed to high quality items, although most of the teachers willingly embraced the activity. The paper entitled “PEDALE: A peer education diagnostic and learning environment” was contributed by Johannes Konert, Kristina Richter, Forian Mehm, Stefan Göbel, Regina Bruer, and Ralf Steinmetz, all from Germany. This paper focused primarily on the advanced assessment technology theme. The problem addressed involved dynamic formative assessment – specifically, how diagnosis and learning can be merged consistently and meaningfully so as to support both teachers and students in the context of an ongoing learning process. The authors present a model that integrates peer assessments into an adaptive diagnostic learning environment is presented. The focus of the research was on mathematics with the notion that the framework would generalize to other domains. The authors note that integrating a social network in the classroom environment is a vital element that warrants further investigation. The article entitled “Teaching Web security using portable virtual labs: us by Li-Chiou Chen and Lixin Tao, both from the USA. The contribution is focused on security issues arising in the context of cloud-based activities. The authors created a tool called Secure Web Development Teaching (SWEET) that introduces basic security concepts and best practices for use in developing Web applications. SWEET includes tutorials, teaching modules with virtual activities, and projects aimed at ensuring secure application development and implementation. The paper describes the design of the tool and the resources it provides. The results of using SWEET are generally positive, including adopting by a number of institutions.