Social Media Tools and Platforms in Learning Environments

This volume covers original research work on the use of social computing and related technologies in education, including the emerging applications of Web 2.0 as an educational platform, and examines the associated privacy, risk, security, and policy issues.

Bebo White

Bebo White is a Departmental Associate (Emeritus) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the U.S. national laboratory for high-energy physics and basic energy science at Stanford University. Working as a computational physicist, he first became involved with the emerging Web technology while on sabbatical at CERN in 1989.

Upon his return he was part of the team that established the first American Web site at SLAC (the fifth site in the world). Ever since, his academic research interests have evolved in parallel with Web technology.He is often considered to be the "first American Webmaster" and one of the founders of the discipline of Web Engineering.

In addition to his work at SLAC, he also holds faculty appointments at several other institutions, is involved with a number of major conferences series, and is a frequent conference speaker. He is the author (or co-author) of nine books, and over 100 papers and journal articles. His current research interests are Web Science, Social Media in Education, and Cloud Computing. However, given the opportunity, he will talk mercilessly about high-energy physics, jug band music and wine.

Irwin King

Irwin King is Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Currently, he is on leave to work with AT&T Labs Research in San Francisco. He is also a Visiting Professor at the School of Information, University of California at Berkeley.

As one of the leading experts in Social Computing, Irwin's research interests include machine learning, social computing, web intelligence, data mining, and multimedia information processing. In these research areas, he has over 220 technical publications in top international journals and conferences. In addition, he has contributed over 20 book chapters and edited volumes. He also has over 30 research and applied grants. One notable patented system hehas developed is the VeriGuide System, which detects similar sentences to promote academic integrity, honesty, and quality.

Irwin the Book Series Editor for "Social Media and Social Computing" with Taylor and Francis (CRC Press). He is also an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks (TNN) and ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data. In addition, he is a member of the Editorial Board and serves as Guest Editor of several international journals. Currently, he is a Vice-President and Governing Board Member of APNNA. He also serves as the Vice-President for Membership and a member of the Board of Governors with INNS. Professionally, he has served as reviewer and panel member for RGC Hong Kong, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and Natural Science, and Engineering of Academy of Finland.

Philip Tsang

Philip Tsang is currently Chair Professor and Vice President (Academic and Research) of the Caritas Institute of Higher Education in Hong Kong. In addition, he also serves as an advisor of the Hong Kong Doctors' Union and as editor of five international journals. He is a prolific and innovative researcher and a prominent practitioner in the important field of ICT in education, and has published over ten books on communication technologies and e-Learning. Prior to his current appointment, Philip was a senior member of the academic staff at the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) from 1996-2009, where he won the OUHK President's Award for Excellent Teaching and Research in 2006, 2007 and 2009.