In a one-week voluntary summer course, students aged twelve to seventeen eagerly take ownership of their composing processes, learning to connect terms such as focus and point of view to the visual and verbal acts of photography and writing. High school teacher Mike Stracco grapples with how to channel the vitality of his summer course into…

Robert Rozema promotes the educational potential of the student-produced podcast--a genre with an authentic audience and out-of-school applicability. Podcasting allows students to cultivate creative, efficient writing when delving into literary works. Students write, revise, collaborate on, and produce book-talk podcasts about young adult novels…

In the context of internationalisation, the delivery of higher education programmes increasingly combines open learning with collaborations among people of diverse languages and cultures. In this paper we argue that while the literature on international education focuses on mapping modes of delivery in international education, there is also a need…

Inquiry-based science instruction can provide a rich context in which to build literacy skills in the elementary grades. The authors discuss the benefits of incorporating reading, writing, and speaking into science instruction. They describe the results of research on two models for combining language arts and science--the Science IDEAS model and…

Teaching GIS is relatively simple, a matter of helping students develop familiarity with the software. Mapping as an aid to thinking is harder to instruct. This article presents a laboratory and lecture package developed to teach the utility of mapping in a course on spatial data analysis. Following a historical review of the use of surface…

The purpose of this research was to design, create a prototype, and evaluate an Educational Data Acquisition System (EDAS) for use in secondary school science laboratories. The prototype of EDAS consisted of a microcomputer, data acquisition interface, sensors, software, and documentation. It provided the teacher and students with a…

Discusses digital books, or electronic books, and their relationship to libraries and communication between authors and readers. Topics include the scholarly market, for academic libraries, versus the consumer market; textbooks versus novels; digitization of older books; marketing; costs; and electronic books versus printed books. (LRW)

Describes a meta-analysis that indicated a slight student preference for a traditional educational format over a distance education format in higher education, and little difference in satisfaction levels, even when considering presence and type of interaction. Discusses meta-analysis as a method for synthesizing literature. (Contains 53…

Discusses how to design effective learning environments for continuing education that maximize learning, transfer of training, and motivation. Focuses on the process of changing traditional continuing education from lecture-based, on-site instruction to Web-based instruction and considers challenges of distance education. (Author/LRW)

This report compares two methods of teaching BASIC programming used to develop computer literacy among children in grades three through seven in British Columbia. Phase one of the project was designed to instruct children in grades five to seven on the arithmetic operations of writing simple BASIC programs. Instructional methods included using job…

Using PLATO, a computer-assisted instruction system, a test was conducted to see if students respond most favorably to an instructional package that included no graphic display, still graphic display, or animated graphic display. Forty-five students at the Naval Training Center, San Diego, were the subjects. With the learning of the sine-ratio…

Describes the development and installation of a hypermedia system for student use at the University of Texas Pan-American library that provides information about the library's resources as an alternative to existing printed materials. Highlights include selecting an authoring tool and computer hardware and the development of an icon-based system.…

Although students may aim for an oral presentation that is clearly organized, well supported, and effectively delivered, teachers recognize that the primary goal of a presentation is communication; that is, the message received should be as close as possible to the message sent. Tools of message transmission, such as PowerPoint, are just a means…

Concerns about faculty workload in the online environment are a reported deterrent to participation in distance teaching. To date, such concerns have been based primarily on anecdotal evidence rather than empirical research. This paper presents results of a study directly comparing the instructional workload in a turfgrass management course taught…

This paper begins with background on the objectives, courses, and students of the British Open University. The aims and structure of a proposed modern language program are then outlined, and plans for using print, television/video, radio/audiocassette, and software learning materials are briefly described. A summary of some experiences of…