The Internet is having a profound impact on the literacy practices of today’s students. Acknowledging the complex processes associated with reading online, the Survey of Online Reading Attitudes and Behaviors (SORAB) was created to further our understandings in this area. A factor analysis revealed the instrument included five factors that are hypothesized to contribute to students’ overall dispositions for reading online. Additional analysis revealed SORAB scores were strongly correlated with general attitudes toward technology and moderately correlated with context for Internet use. Implications are discussed in relation to future validation efforts as well as potential uses of the instrument.

The Internet is having a profound impact on the literacy practices of students worldwide; yet, there are few instruments available to facilitate cross-cultural comparisons and conclusions specific to cognitive and affective variables related to Internet proficiency. This research was conducted to examine the measurement invariance of the Cross-Cultural Survey of Online Reading Attitudes and Behaviors (SORAB-XC) across a sample of participants from South Korea and the United States. Strong structural validity information was noted for SORAB-XC in each sample, and the results revealed measurement invariance of the item loadings of SORAB-XC between the samples, which justifies the comparison across the samples with respect to the relations between latent factor variables. Implications for future research address the use of the instrument in each individual context; however, additional refinements are required to enable cross-cultural mean comparisons. Facility with the Internet represents an important factor in a world that is increasingly dependent on technology. Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, Castek, and Henry (2013) note information and communication technologies, such as the Internet, allow " organized workplaces to identify important problems , address them, and nimbly modify and customize solutions as contexts and technologies change. .. with team members situated in different locations around the globe " (p. 1145). Effectiveness in these areas provides a distinct advantage in global societies. However, proficiency for each of these actions is dependent on skills and dispositions specific to the online environment. Users must understand the unique strategies required for proficient use to engage

The purpose of this paper is to report the experiences of three different, grant-funded teacher professional development projects for STEM education. The projects took place in three different southern U.S. states. Each project involved the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and included either new or established instructional technologies. The research-base supporting the design of the projects will be summarized. The implementation of the projects will be described and implications and lessons learned from the projects will be shared. The information and experiences related in this paper may aid others involved with similar efforts, or those considering similar projects.