Describes the development of strategies and software to help people work collaboratively while at a distance from one another. The importance of collaborative activities, the shared spaces concept behind groupware, examples of software that support synchronous and asynchronous group activities, and design issues for educational groupware are…

Notes that much of the new instructional software has been disappointing in terms of its appropriateness for young children. Reviews several programs notable for their developmental appropriateness in the areas of creative arts, language arts, thematic approaches, and computer accessibility. (HTH)

Explores the current status of technological support for qualitative research. Describes the development of computer programs that support the qualitative process. Focuses on Metamorph, an innovative text-retrieval software tool that quickly scans documents, manuals, and unstructured records to find information. (KS)

Announces the winners of an annual software contest for innovative software in physics education. Winning entries include an application to help students visualize the origin of energy bands in a solid, a package on the radioastronomy of pulsars, and a school-level science simulation program. Also includes student winners, honorable mentions,…

Argues that the prevailing computer science orientation to data visualizations is severely limited for addressing usability concerns associated with supporting users in three critical problem areas: sophisticated visual literacy, complex data analysis, and new paradigms of visual inquiry. Argues that current object-oriented usability…

Describes Hyper Apuntes, an interactive learning environment developed at the University Carlos III of Madrid which teaches students the basic concepts of computer programming. Discusses results of an evaluation of the courseware that assessed its usability and utility and collected suggestions for improving the system. (Author/LRW)

Focuses on criteria for design and evaluation of the user interface of foreign language multimedia software. A hybrid model is proposed that combines cognitive and software engineering approaches. Based on this proposed contextualized model of interface design, domain-specific evaluation criteria are developed to describe how well the user…

This introductory column on books and software concerned with special education technology presents an article by JuHye Yook on the software design process. It discusses the rationale for developing new software for students with reading disabilities, the design and development process, and analysis of the software design. Software use by two…

PLUS, an authoring system designed to develop cross-platform courseware for different computer types, was evaluated for its portability (ability to run on multiple platforms without adjustment). The procedures and computer equipment used are described, and results are presented. It is concluded that PLUS produces highly portable programs. (MSE)

Discusses how children's descriptions and evaluations of computer software are important ways to learn about how computers can be used in the learning process; describes how these evaluations can be an informal way of "child-testing" educational software. Offers examples of children's comments and suggests three Web sites that feature children's…

Discusses use of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development as a theoretical construct for designing Ecolab educational software. Describes an evaluation of the software with elementary school students, noting the usefulness of the ZPD construct despite students' inability to set up challenging tasks and seek appropriate assistance. Considers issues…

This paper focuses on the design and evaluation of the computer-assisted vocabulary learning (CAVL) software WUFUN. It draws on the current research findings of vocabulary acquisition and CALL, aiming to help Chinese university students to improve their learning of English vocabulary, particularly that with which they experience most difficulty.…

This study assessed the effectiveness of using a CALL lesson (Computer Assisted Language Learning) over a conventional lesson to facilitate learning of English prepositions at Bario, Malaysia. CALL was developed by the Ministry of Education, Malaysia as support material to enhance learning of English prepositions. Both the conventional and the…

The standard display of web pages is inadequate for users who are visually impaired. Most visually impaired people obtain information from a web page in a linear fashion via a screen reader, whereas sighted users can immediately obtain a bird's-eye view of a web page's organization and content by quickly scanning the page. AcceSS (which stands for…

The proliferation of computer software for young children necessitates that early childhood teachers have the knowledge and skills needed to evaluate and select developmentally appropriate software. This article describes the manner in which one university prepares early childhood teacher candidates to analyze software for the young children in…