This digest focuses on the advantages of distance learning (DL) in teacher preparation, explaining that teacher candidates need to be ready to embrace rapidly changing technologies throughout their careers. Teacher education programs can extend the traditional uses of DL by bringing campus-based courses into school-based classrooms, expanding…

The practice of weblogging--or "blogging," as it is popularly known--has gone through a series of growth spurts during the past four years. At present, a weblog is best defined as "a website that is updated frequently, with new material posted at the top of the page" (Blood, 2002b). Two recent developments, in particular,…

In response to online discussions regarding whether communication educators should teach students in public speaking how to utilize Microsoft PowerPoint for developing visual aids, this paper identifies arguments both for and against the practice. The paper begins by delineating the three relevant questions and describes the positions offered by…

The Internet is a growing source of information for persons worldwide, but for many people with disabilities the Internet can be a confusing jumble of images, frames, scripts, and colors that make little sense. Although learning how to make Web pages accessible to all takes some effort, it is effort well spent for one very good reason:…

The authors developed a Web-based Adaptive Educational System (Web-based AES) named ITMS (Individualized Teaching Material System). ITMS adaptively integrates knowledge on the distributed Web pages and generates individualized teaching material that has various contents. ITMS also presumes the learners' knowledge levels from the states of their…

This paper discusses stigmergy (i.e., the effect of communication through the environment) in relation to the Internet, especially with regard to World Wide Web-based learning. The paper begins by examining ways in which stigmergy occurs on the Web and then goes on to describe its use in the construction of a continually evolving system, CoFIND…

The K-12 Gas Station is a national World Wide Web site in Taiwan that serves as the educational portal that provides teachers, parents, pupils, and public communities with rich content for all subject matters in grades K-12. The K-12 Gas Station plays a critical role in the efforts to build up a technology-based learning environment to help…

Developing standards for e-learning will have important implications for instructional designers. The most obvious change is that designers will not be designing courses any more; they will be designing small, stand-alone units of instruction called learning objects. This will create a learning object economy that will bring new challenges as well…

This study investigated whether participation in a computer lab would improve high school students' performance on Spanish vocabulary, grammar, and listening comprehension. Students participated in classroom and computer lab activities. Analysis of student data (including student surveys) throughout five units indicated that the computer lab was a…

The computer revolution has contributed greatly to the increased use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, and GIS is now being used to inform education policy. This paper introduces the technology of GIS to education researchers and policy analysts and illustrates its use with some recent research on charter schools. Its potential…

The backlash against public access to information, coupled with misinterpretations of the relationship between fair use and the First Amendment, not only threaten educators' ability to access information for educational purposes, but create roadblocks for the public's constitutionally supported right to participate in democratic dialogue. The…

This book seeks to develop, enhance, and expand students' understanding of mathematics by using technology. Topics covered include the advantages of spreadsheets along with the opportunity to explore the 'what if?' type of questions encountered in the problem-solving process, enhancing the user's insight into the development and use of algorithms,…

In the early years of the Internet, there was an expectation that the availability and easy access to online resources of unparalleled abundance would increase educational equity throughout the socio-economic spectrum. In fact, research suggests that patterns of technology access often mirror existing inequalities rather than mitigate them, and if…

This commencement address reflects on what students should learn in a core curriculum, what good learning environments should be like, and what quality teaching will look like in the future. It examines changes in education over the years, discussing the transformation in teaching and learning brought about by information technology. In this…

The 2001 Campus Computing Survey, the 12th such survey, is the largest continuing study of the role of computing and information technology in U.S. higher education today. The survey results in this report summarize data from 590 two- and four-year, public and private colleges across the United States, representing a 38.4% response rate. The focus…