The papers in this special section examines new technologies for educational computing applications. Educational computing encompasses the full range of uses of computers pursuant to conducting the profession of educators. History of educational computing is scattered of innovations and discoveries pertaining both technical matters and learning sciences, which all contributed at shaping the way education is delivered today. In some cases, revolutionary technologies with a disruptive potential have been introduced, which brought immediate changes to common education practice, such as with distance and ubiquitous learning, massive online open courses, etc. In other cases, developments in the field have been the result of rediscovery of methods presented years before, as it is happening today, for instance, with virtual and augmented reality applications. Lastly, there are cases in which new approaches to educational computing derive from an evolution of existing solutions, which are sometimes applied for the first time to education, e.g., in reaction to changes in the society. An example is represented by gamification, which indeed has been made possible by achievements in the field of mobile computing, but also responds to the changed habits of a generation of learners who has grown up playing video games.

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客座社论：“教育计算技术创新”联合特刊

本专题中的论文研究了用于教育计算应用程序的新技术。教育计算包括根据从事教育工作者的职业对计算机的全方位使用。教育计算的历史分散着与技术问题和学习科学相关的创新和发现，这些都有助于塑造当今教育的交付方式。在某些情况下，引入了具有颠覆性潜力的革命性技术，为普通教育实践带来了直接变化，例如远程泛在学习、海量在线公开课程等。在其他情况下，该领域的发展已成为结果重新发现多年前提出的方法，例如今天正在发生的，与虚拟和增强现实应用程序。最后，在某些情况下，教育计算的新方法源自现有解决方案的演变，这些解决方案有时首次应用于教育，例如，对社会变化的反应。一个例子是游戏化，这确实是由于移动计算领域的成就而成为可能的，但也响应了一代玩电子游戏长大的学习者改变的习惯。