This article describes a university-sponsored experiential-based simulation, the NANO SCENARIO, to increase the public's awareness and affect attitudes on the societal implications of nanoscience and nanotechnology by bringing together diverse stakeholders' perspectives in a participatory learning environment. Nanotechnology has the potential for…

In this paper, I review both mathematics education and CSCL literature and discuss how we can better take advantage of CSCL tools for developing mathematical proof skills. I introduce a model of proof in school mathematics that incorporates both empirical and deductive ways of knowing. I argue that two major forces have given rise to this…

Teacher education for literacy teaching is often fairly narrow in focus. New approaches are needed that are sociocultural in orientation and take due account of the diversity of language forms, both traditional and contemporary, formal and informal, literary and non-literary. We believe this need can be met by largely adopting a…

"The logic of convergence and uniformity in teacher production" argues for a need to understand teacher education within the history of economic institutions. In the contemporary world, so the argument goes, where global information, capital flows, and opened markets are said to be making the world "flat", it is crucial to…

This article explores the experiences of students who used interactive learning material on handheld computers in a gallery to support their understanding and appreciation of artwork. The article considers the wider implications of using technology to change relationships between teacher, learners and subject matter, and attempts to offer positive…

For the past eight years, the Speak Up National Research Project has endeavored to stimulate new discussions around these kinds of questions and to provide a context to help education, parent, policy and business leaders think beyond today and envision tomorrow. This report is the first in a two part series to document the key national findings…

The events of September 11, 2001, the terrorist attack that destroyed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York changed the world, and while the effects were much reduced in faraway Australia, they became immediately apparent online. Any view through the global window was likely to be changed, an impossible to anticipate. To me,…

The author proposes a citizen-and community-oriented approach to using information technology, whereby people are considered as participant members of the society. This empowering approach views people as subjects and actors who have abilities to develop, not as objects who lack these abilities and need one-way help from authorities. Empowerment…

Classroom practice in the real world has become increasingly incommensurate with the lived experience of students. Young people, consisting of all age cohorts and class fractions, have never known their world to not include the Internet. They have been utilizing this technology since before they started kindergarten, whether it was in games that…

The activities surrounding the National Digital Library Program (NDLP) at the Library of Congress (1995-2000) are used to study institutional processes associated with technological innovation in the library context. The study identified modalities of successful innovation and the characteristics of creative decision making. Theories of social…

Editor-in-chief James Morrison sat down with Deneen Frazier Bowen at the 2005 National Educational Computing Conference to discuss her unique presentation "The Natives are Restless," a series of dramatic sketches dealing with the utilization of technology in educational settings. Bowen's sketches examined students' difficulties in relating school…

The transforming effects of the tremendous advances in technology that have reshaped the economy and many other elements of American society have had an equally profound impact on historical agencies. The personal computer, the Internet, and associated electronic communications developments have already transformed the museum and historical agency…

The rapid increase in the number of low-cost computers, the proliferation of user-friendly software, and the development of electronic networks have created the "informatics era." The Internet is a rapidly growing communication resource that is becoming mainstream in the American society. Computer-based electronic political advocacy by social…

The Knowledge Age is at hand, and with it, new worldwide demands for Learning Societies. The shape of learning-with-ICT to come--new lifelong skills, new kinds of learners, new learning theory, new global ways of learning, and new learning tools--are all highlighted. The top ten challenges for using ICT to help invent the Learning Societies of the…

The authors examine strategic priorities for local studies libraries in the context of the interactive Web. They examine the implications for access, investigations and the needs of different users. The philosophy that has previously guided local studies is articulated as a number of maxims, taking into account also social inclusion and lifelong…