Educational technology can be a catalyst for creating new learning structures. For the past six years, Central Harlem's Earth Lab project has been designing, implementing, and observing effects of a local area network system intended to facilitate collaborative work in elementary earth science. System coordinates small groups, promotes teacher…

This report describes Earth Lab, a project which is demonstrating new ways of using computers for upper-elementary and middle-school science instruction, and finding ways to integrate local-area and telecommunications networks. The discussion covers software, classroom activities, formative research on communications networks, and integration of…

Technologies can play a role in restructuring schools, but they can also effectively support existing school structures depending on how they are designed and used. This paper contrasts the organizational impact of two technology systems in terms of the physical location in the school, the curriculum, how time is scheduled, and the opportunities…

This paper identifies a paradigm shift that must take place in school networking. The ultimate goal is to retool the schools with a local technical infrastructure that gives teachers and students immediate access to communication systems and information resources, thereby supporting the implementation of advances in pedagogy and educational…

Discusses the integration of technology into the curriculum and how to design an interactive technological learning environment based on the concept of scientific sense-making. Highlights include the importance of sense-making in science education and an experiment on curriculum design for a fifth- to sixth-grade unit on seasonal change. (Contains…

In the fall of 1990, seven teachers at the Ralph Bunche School, a public elementary school in Harlem (New York) began an experiment in school restructuring they called the Computer Mini-School. An unexpected outcome of the project was an increase in standardized test scores among their 120 students. This outcome is explored. It is argued that the…