Brain images are believed to have a particularly persuasive influence on the public perception of research on cognition. Three experiments are reported showing that presenting brain images with articles summarizing cognitive neuroscience research resulted in higher ratings of scientific reasoning for arguments made in those articles, as compared…

This article presents a brief history of crossing or assistance cards for travelers who are deaf-blind, along with two studies on variables that predict effective solicitation of assistance to cross a street. Although gender does not greatly affect efficiency, the larger size of a communication card positively influences the receipt of assistance.…

It is not enough for students to acquire knowledge about how food is produced and processed; they must also come to understand the biological and environmental contexts in which food production, processing, and transportation take place. Through diagramming, students begin to understand that our food system has a series of interacting parts and…

Cartoons are part of a much larger effort by chemical educators to introduce activities to enhance learning and student participation. There are a variety of cartoon types used in teaching that have been evaluated and discussed within the chemical education community including caricatures, comics, and concept cartoons. This article focuses on the…

The purpose of this article is to propose a new design for the presentation of the periodic system of the elements. It is a system that highlights the fundamental importance of elements as basic substances rather than elements as simple substances, a distinction that is explained in the article. The proposed table is a variant of the Janet or…

Tablet PCs provide numerous benefits over traditional electronically projected lectures that use software such as PowerPoint. Flexibility and spontaneity can be achieved by editing or creating notes in real-time. The input pen or stylus is a very useful tool, especially for courses that involve the extensive use of equations or mathematical…

Although picture-book reading is commonplace during infancy, little is known about the impact of this activity on learning. A previous study showed that 18- and 24-month-olds imitated a novel action sequence presented in a book that was illustrated with realistic color photos, whereas they failed to imitate from books illustrated with less…

Physical educators at all grade levels often provide instruction in open environments and classrooms without walls, such as gymnasiums, school playgrounds and athletic fields. Open teaching environments present unique challenges when it comes to implementing and displaying class information such as class schedules, routines and procedures, rules…

The influence of phonological similarity on bilingual language processing was examined within and across languages in three experiments. Phonological similarity was manipulated within a language by varying neighborhood density, and across languages by varying extent of cross-linguistic overlap between native and non-native languages. In Experiment…

The purpose of the conference presentation upon which this paper is inspired was to present an innovative approach to motivate students to write in a second language during a first-year Spanish class. Usually, students comply with writing exercises that convey basic thoughts, due to constrained vocabulary and limited knowledge of grammatical…

This paper describes the development of an instrument to assess teachers' views on their geometry instruction and their classroom learning environments in six government high schools in southwest Sydney. The sample consisted of 18 Years 9/10 ESL teachers from participating schools. The study involved completion of a survey form using a modified…

This exploratory study examined the relationship between use of an interactive (touchscreen) whiteboard and development of school readiness skills. Over one school year, public school regular education prekindergarten classrooms used an interactive whiteboard with preloaded literacy and math activities. The children were low-income and English…

This study used qualitative and quantitative approaches to evaluate the effectiveness of self-learning modules (SLMs) developed to facilitate and individualize students' learning of basic medical sciences. Twenty physiology and nineteen microanatomy SLMs were designed with interactive images, animations, narrations, and self-assessments. Of 41…

In order to reach distance students in times of financial uncertainty, librarians must be creative. While much has been written about Camtasia, Captivate and Jing tutorial software, Adobe Presenter, a Microsoft PowerPoint plug-in, has not been discussed. This article describes how our library team created multimedia tutorial projects at Idaho…

Students are familiar with some or all depictions of branded products in popular television shows. But they probably have no idea the number of legal and public policy issues these product appearances are generating. This article explains how embedded advertising in television shows can be the attention-grabbing vehicle for teaching numerous…