Guest Editorial: Joint Special Issue on "Innovation in Technologies for Educational Computing"

The papers in this special issue focus on new and innovative technologies for educational computer 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.