The potential of technology to connect people and provide access to education, commerce, employment and entertainment has never been greater or more rapidly changing. Communication technologies and new media promise to "revolutionize our lives" by breaking down barriers and expanding access for disabled people. Yet, it is also true that technology…

In view of the strong growth of transnational education programmes in Australian universities, there is growing interest in the experiences of students participating in such programmes. This article reports on the perceived student satisfaction with several aspects of their transnational programmes, including instructors, technology, and programme…

One can hardly mention higher education today without hearing the word "innovation," or its understudies "change," "reinvention," "transformation." Last summer the National Governors Association opened its meeting with a plenary session on higher education, innovation, and economic growth. But there is nothing funny about the need for innovation…

Technological advances through mathematics and science have made possible the modification of boarding sports. This article discusses the development of sport technologies that use boards and also touches on the social and cultural effects of the new technologies. It identifies many new forms of sports equipment that were spawned from modifying…

For those unfamiliar with Star Trek, "Dunsel" was a term introduced in the episode titled "The Ultimate Computer." It is a term used by Star Fleet cadets to refer to an entity that serves no useful purpose, in this case a human who has been replaced by a machine. The episode touches on finding the best balance between human and machine to run a…

Currently manufactured microchips are expensive to make, require specialized equipment, and leave a large environmental footprint. To counter this, an alternative procedure that is cheaper and leaves a smaller environmental footprint should be made. The goal of this research project is to develop a process that creates microchips from polystyrene…

In order to track social change during a period of the rapid advances brought about by new information technologies (IT), a targeted module of IT-relevant and Internet questions was added to the 2000, 2002 and 2004 samples of the General Social Survey (GSS). The general issue inherent in and guiding the questions asked (as well as the analyses…

Documents from the Army during World War II arrived with the censor's approval stamp, certifying that no harm would come to the nation if those depictions of life at the front fell into enemy hands. That was the censorship of another time. Everyone understood why it was important and knew that the government needed to control the communication…

Deep penetration of personal computers, data communication networks, and the Internet has created a massive platform for data collection, dissemination, storage, and retrieval. Large amounts of textual data are now available at a very low cost. Valuable information, such as consumer preferences, new product developments, trends, and opportunities,…

The perpetual connectivity made possible by twenty-first-century technology has profoundly affected instruction and learning. Emerging technologies that upend traditional notions of communication and community also influence the ways we design and evaluate instruction and how we understand learning and learning environments. In "Instruction and…

In order to ease the burden of electronic note entry on physicians, electronic documentation support tools have been developed to assist in note authoring. There is little evidence of the effects of these tools on attributes of clinical documentation, including document quality. Furthermore, the resultant abundance of duplicated text and…

The negative impact of online gaming on adolescents has received much attention. The question of how to reduce their pathological use of online gaming is a critical issue. Based on the concept of external justification in dissonance theory, this experimental study aimed to examine whether severity of threat and justification of effort would impact…

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has a long history of data collection, environmental scanning, and trends analysis. Its most recent work, "Futures Thinking for Academic Librarians," uses a 15-year horizon to look beyond the worries of the current economic cycle and the short-term future in order to anticipate the changing…

As an undergraduate in the 1960s, the author mostly used a slide rule for calculations and a Marchant-brand motor-operated mechanical calculator for statistics. This was after an elementary education replete with learning multiplication tables and taking speed and accuracy tests in arithmetic. Times have changed and assuming even basic calculation…

In order to understand the realistic use and impact of ICT on physics teaching in Ireland, a survey was used to gather information on teacher attitudes, confidence and concerns. Practical problems in the regular use of ICT affect some more than others. Factors such as availability of equipment and time to learn new skills (and interest in those…