Very little research has examined the applications wearable technologies can have in education despite industry experts forecasting major growth in the global market for these innovative devices (Futuresource Consulting, 2015). Notwithstanding this profound challenge, in the next 3 to 5 years school districts will need to make multimillion-dollar investments into supporting these technologies as they begin to enter the learning environment. Given this gap in the research literature, this chapter explores the potential decision-making challenges school districts and their leaders will have to face when wearables become more commonplace in education. Using the Strategic Model for Technology Acquisition (Ribeiro, 2015), the author outlines both the innovative opportunities and potential problems wearables pose for both school leaders and stakeholders in the near future. Moreover, this chapter is meant to serve as an informative resource for education leaders and presents strategic and research-validated approaches for procuring and supporting wearable technologies.

Funded by a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) grant from a large researchintensive university in western Canada, this paper reports on findings from a design-based research (DBR) study (McKenney & Reeves, 2012). The researchers investigated the ways, and the extent to which, particular technological supports and pedagogical techniques impacted the acquisition of academic writing skills for Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) students working within a blended learning environment. Situated within the context of a large mandatory firstyear education course, the impetus to undertake this study was based on the observation by the researchers [course instructor and teaching assistant (TA)] that many of the students struggled with academic writing. Notably, however, there are no stand-alone academic writing courses in the University's B.Ed. program. The study was designed to assist the 190 students taking the course in 2016 and the 182 students enrolled in 2017.The need to develop greater competencies in this area is supported by research that suggests undergraduate students' level of academic writing proficiency greatly impacts their academic achievement (Calhoun & Haley, 2003;Saidy, 2015). Several studies have concluded that university instructors in disciplines outside of English have great difficulty helping students improve their writing. Research suggests this is due to insufficient training in writing instruction, and concerns about the need to focus on course content (C. Fallahi, Wood, Austad, & H. Fallahi, 2006;Goddard, 2002). Increasingly instructors are seeking to overcome these challenges by leveraging the opportunities of blended learning environments, which contain a mix of in-class instruction and online activities where technological supports can be embedded to aid students in developing writing skills. Presently, there is no clear agreement within the research literature on how academic writing supports can be best integrated into blended learning environments. This study seeks to respond to the need for more empirical research by creating, implementing, and assessing a series of writing interventions that were specifically tailored to the assignments and unique writing needs of over 372 first-year B.Ed. students taking this course. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework:This study was informed by insights from both composition studies (Babcock & Thonus, 2012;Graham, Gillespie, & McKeown, 2012) and the literature on blended learning environments and educational technology (Birch, 2016;Tuomainen, 2016). Composition theorists assert that writing is a social act and that notions of the solitary writer are anachronistic at best. Accordingly, to help students gain writing competencies and a greater sense of selfefficacy, they need opportunities to learn through trial and error. Rather than offering corrections, the instructor engages in a "collaborative dialogue" involving a process of "asking questions and making suggestions for discussion and consideration" (Babcock & Thonus, 2012, p. 112).A systema...

Very little research has examined the applications wearable technologies can have in education despite industry experts forecasting major growth in the global market for these innovative devices (Futuresource Consulting, 2015). Notwithstanding this profound challenge, in the next 3 to 5 years school districts will need to make multimillion-dollar investments into supporting these technologies as they begin to enter the learning environment. Given this gap in the research literature, this chapter explores the potential decision-making challenges school districts and their leaders will have to face when wearables become more commonplace in education. Using the Strategic Model for Technology Acquisition (Ribeiro, 2015), the author outlines both the innovative opportunities and potential problems wearables pose for both school leaders and stakeholders in the near future. Moreover, this chapter is meant to serve as an informative resource for education leaders and presents strategic and research-validated approaches for procuring and supporting wearable technologies.

In the past 20 years, the creative economy has emerged as a framework to explore creativity as an ecosystem with direct and indirect value. The creative economy lens does not view fields such as education, arts, culture, and innovation as isolated. Rather, by adopting an ecosystem view, the creative economy maps the interdependence of these fields as unique drivers of direct and indirect economic outputs. In this book, the authors identify an active ecosystem, incorporating all organizations who participate in, or contribute to, improving individual or community well-being through the development and delivery of sport and active recreational experiences. By viewing them as part of a complex active ecosystem, the authors believe policymakers and practitioners are better positioned to shape ecosystem-level opportunities and maximize its impact on the community.

This chapter will deconstruct the value chain located within the active economy. This value chain includes community input resources (including human, economic, social/structural, built, and natural resources) which generate activities and outputs. The value of the active economy is defined by its impact on a community's economic, human, social, and environmental wellbeing. Herein, the literature associated with the impact of the active economy on the dimensions of community wellbeing is examined.