Educators recognize that group work and physical involvement with learning materials can greatly enhance the understanding and retention of difficult concepts. As a result, math manipulatives--such as pattern blocks and number lines--have increasingly been making their way into classrooms and children's museums. Yet without the constant guidance…

Hypermedia has long been considered to have great potential to support educational tasks and applications. Many success stories of hypermedia support in education have been reported. Much of this work has been done in the context of traditional closed hypermedia systems rather than more contemporary open hypermedia systems. Developing hypermedia…

This article reports on the development and systematic evaluation of an innovative early years programme aimed at encouraging young children to respect differences within a deeply divided society that is emerging out of a prolonged period of violent conflict. The programme, the Media Initiative for Children--Northern Ireland, has been the product…

If the notion of public and private spheres seems somehow quaint or old-fashioned, the distinction between public and private corporations will be that much more obscure. Yet Channel One broadcasts in a public school classroom are indisputably the result of a contract between a private corporation (Alloy Media + Marketing) and a public corporation…

The 4th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2011) brings together researchers from computer science, education, psychology, psychometrics, and statistics to analyze large datasets to answer educational research questions. The conference, held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, July 6-9, 2011, follows the three previous editions…

MOO stands for "Multi-user domain, Object-Oriented." Early multi-user domains, or "MUDs," began as net-based dungeons-and-dragons type games, but MOOs have evolved from these origins to become some of cyberspace's most fascinating and engaging online communities. MOOs are social environments in a text-based virtual reality…

In February 1993, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting commissioned focus groups with Hispanic viewers to determine the perceptions of public television by Hispanics. The project was conducted by Norman Hecht Research and included Hispanic viewers and non-viewers in four cities--New York, Miami, San Antonio, and Los Angeles. The topic for…

Implementation of the first U.S. television program rating system based on identifying content that could be viewed by specific age groups began in January, 1997. This exploratory survey examined the context of how young people responded to the ratings system. Participating in the May 1997 survey were 462 students in fourth, eighth, and tenth…

Duquesne University (Pennsylvania) has committed to the electronic delivery of an MBA (Masters in Business Administration) program to Northern Jiaotong University in Beijing, China. This paper describes the process of preparing a course for electronic delivery, along with related course preparation issues. The university's partnership with…

The Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) Committee of the Mississippi Legislature is authorized to review any public entity at the request of the legislature. In response to numerous allegations by agency employees and citizens and to anonymous complaints, the PEER Committee reviewed the Mississippi…

This booklet examines the influence of television on children and adolescents in developing and developed nations, reviewing research on television's relationship to child health and development. The first section reviews specific research on such variables as number of television sets in use, amount of time spent watching television, age, sex,…

Satellite television is proposed as a useful source of authentic materials for French language instruction at the college level. It is argued that this medium illustrates to students that the language is used in a wide variety of everyday situations and contexts. The discussion begins with a brief description of common satellite technology,…

In all likelihood, currently employed therapists and teachers grew up with computer technology. Part of their computer culture included programming computers for entertainment using popular consumer software like Microsoft Basic. Within this social-educational milieu, the "FACTS+" curriculum represents one long-term project covering the…

A critical first step in developing training systems is gathering quality information about a trainee's competency in a skill or knowledge domain. Such information includes an estimate of what the trainee knows prior to training, how much has been learned from training, how well the trainee may perform in future task situations, and whether to…

This digest reports recent findings on violent television content, highlights the recently developed television ratings system, and offers suggestions for parental mediation of children's television viewing. The National Television Violence Study has demonstrated that not all violence is equal. Certain plot elements in portrayals of violence are…