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Purpose – To introduce classroom teachers to an integrated digital literacies perspective and provide a range of strategies and tools to support struggling readers in becoming successful digital readers and multimodal composers.Design/methodology/approach – The chapter begins with the rationale for integrating technology to support struggling readers’ achievement, explains universal design for learning principles, and then offers specific strategies, digital tools, and media for reading and composing.Findings – Provides research support for the use of technology to provide students’ access to grade-level text, enhance comprehension, improve writing, and develop multimodal composition skills.Research limitations/implications – The authors do not address all areas of technology and literacy integration. Instead, they focus on key priority areas for using technology to develop struggling readers’ literacy.Practical implications – The chapter provides theoretical and research-based strategies and digital resources for using technology to improve struggling readers’ comprehension and composition that should be helpful to classroom teachers.Originality/value of chapter – Teachers need support in integrating technology and literacy in ways that will make a meaningful difference for their struggling readers’ achievement and engagement.

Encouraging technology-based entrepreneurship is central to the policy agendas of governmental and non-governmental economic development agencies in many industrialised and newly industrialising countries. Entrepreneurs are central to venture creation and evidence indicates that, following secondary and, typically, tertiary education, most work for one or more employers prior to establishing a technology-based venture on their own or with others. As a result of this ‘entrepreneurial apprenticeship’ many technology entrepreneurs establish businesses in their mid-to-late 30s. Developing a thorough understanding of product/service markets and devising strategies to access, serve and support customers are major challenges for founders of technology-based businesses. Ventures established by individuals or groups with relevant commercial experience benefit from the know-how and networks of their founders. This chapter explores the role of university business plan competitions in stimulating entrepreneurial activity and technology transfer from two universities in Northern Ireland by focusing on entrants in the 2007 £25k Enterprise Award Scheme business planning competition. Such initiatives tend to attract students/recent graduates and members of university staff and raise the question as to how such teams develop commercially robust ventures, given that, on the face of it, most have little or no commercial experience. Based on analysis of the business plans of the top 10 ventures from the 2007 competition this chapter explores characteristics of the entrepreneurial teams, their choice of product/service offerings and aspects of the markets they target.

Business plan writing seems the panacea to gain stakeholder legitimacy and financial backing. Our chapter explores the contributions and disconnections between business plan writing and the start-up process for incubated technology entrepreneurs. The study is set in the South East Enterprise Platform Programme (SEEPP), an incubator programme for technology graduate entrepreneurs in the South East of Ireland. Using a purposive sample of technology entrepreneurs in start-up mode, we took a qualitative approach consisting of content analysis of 40 business plans and in-depth interviews with 25 technology entrepreneurs. Our research found that writing a detailed business plan constrains the technology entrepreneur’s natural penchant for action, compelling them to focus on business plan writing rather than enactment. Technology entrepreneurs favour a market-led rather than funding-led operational level document to plan, and learn from, near-term activities using milestones.

In the late 1970s, the much beloved tradition of Asilomar began. But then, of course, it was not even located at Asilomar. Rather it was a much smaller event that was held at Pajaro Dunes. Nonetheless, it featured what ultimately became the traditional blend of informal sessions that mixed students and faculty from around the University. The most memorable conference of that time featured working papers by Jeff Pfeffer and Jerry Salancik, John Meyer and Brian Rowan, and Mike Hannan and John Freeman. Each of these pairs of authors presented fledgling work that would go on to become keystone statements for three highly influential theories: resource dependence (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978), “new” institutional theory (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), and population ecology (Hannan & Freeman, 1977).

A key element in the development of a technology, a company or an industry is the availability of finance. While much effort has been directed at understanding the roles of venture capital, angel investment and public investment, there does not appear to be much analysis of the industry-level effects as a new industry is emerging. In this chapter, we investigate the patterns of public and private investments and the role of government in support of financing the emergence of science and technology industries. We also examine the criteria used by venture capitalists in their assessment of investment opportunities regarding new technology-based ventures. We focus on the analysis of investment at stage between prototyping and commercialisation of a new technology. This stage has been labelled as the ‘valley of death’ from an investor perspective, which reflects greater risks for investors due to the high level of both technology and market uncertainty.

To enhance the understanding of entrepreneurial communication strategies in the start-up phase of the business, a resource dependence perspective is presented. Resources can be categorized in several ways. Penrose (1959), one of the pioneers in the resource-based view, and the subsequent work of, for example, Wernerfelt (1984) and Barney (1991), have brought the individual, the entrepreneur and especially resources within the business into focus. The process school of the resource-based view focuses on processes and activities and internal strategic capabilities (Tucker, Meyer, & Westerman, 1996). Furthermore, capabilities are based on developing, carrying and exchanging information through the business's human capital (Tucker et al., 1996). Grant (1991, p. 122) defined such capabilities as ‘complex patterns of coordination and cooperation between people, and between people and (tangible) resources’. Baum, Locke, and Smith (2001) and Lee, Lee, and Pennings (2001) found that new businesses’ internal capabilities are the primary determinants of the businesses’ performance. One of the intangible resources could be a business reputation (Deephouse, 2000). A positive reputation creates advantages in order to obtain, for example, financial capital.

Inclusive education is gaining momentum across the globe. Various types of technology offer necessary supports for students with disabilities in order to access and succeed in general education. This chapter focusses on the implementation of assistive and mainstream technology in inclusive classrooms. The importance of assistive technology (AT) services is discussed. Factors such as coordination and collaboration between service providers, situated training, technology integration with fidelity, and data-driven decision-making are imperative for effective implementation. Several models and resources for AT implementation are presented along with how they offer guidance to general and special education teachers as well as related service providers. Despite some barriers to technology use in inclusive settings, educators should strive to overcome fears and existing challenges in an effort to provide better learning opportunities to all students, including those with unique abilities and needs.

In this chapter, we examine the current research on how technology is applied to benefit students with emotional and/or behavioral disorders (EBD). First, we describe the iterative yet unpredictable nature of technological innovation to suggest that incremental successes are qualified by the creation of often unforeseen consequences. We then identify commonly used nonelectronic technologies in education to emphasize that the hoped-for advances in electronic technology have failed to deliver on their decades-old promise of educational revolution. We continue with our review of the literature on empirical studies examining how technology is used to support students with EBD. These findings indicate that the research design primarily employed in this field is single-subject. Examples of specific findings include web-based graphic organizers for student writing, virtual self-modeling for targeting student behaviors, and virtual coaching for teachers of students with EBD. We conclude by reviewing how leaders in the field of special education predict the field will change in the future. Overall, with an increased emphasis on research accessibility and practitioner-validated knowledge, and advances in neuroscience and artificial technologies, practitioners may hold a more central role to the creation and dissemination of knowledge.