OpenStax Kinetic is an innovative research infrastructure that aims to transform education and learning research in the digital age. With its access to large sample sizes, authentic learning environments, experimental control, scalability, security and privacy protection, Kinetic provides an unparalleled opportunity for researchers to study the…

Susan Imel is retired from Ohio State University. From December 1981 until December 2003, she was the Adult Education Specialist at the ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education and Director from 1987 through 2003. This essay begins with a brief overview of the ERIC system including goals for the clearinghouses, followed by a…

Congressional offices are frequently contacted by constituents who are researching how to pay for postsecondary education. This report identifies various online sources targeted to students and parents that provide information on planning and acquiring funds for postsecondary education. Some resources also contain information on repaying,…

A number of resources provide psycholinguistic researchers with information about the words that the typical child or adult knows in a variety of languages. What is currently not available is a resource that provides information about the words that a typical adult learning a foreign language knows. We created such a resource for Spanish: The…

Backups are a modern fact of life. Every organization that has any kind of computing technology (and that is all of them these days) needs to back up its data in case of technological or user errors. Traditionally, large-scale backups have been done via an internal or external tape drive that takes magnetic tapes (minicassettes, essentially) and…

The silo is a well-worn metaphor in information systems used to illustrate separateness, isolation, and lack of connectivity. Through the many iterations of system development, libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) have sought to avoid silos and find the sweet spot between interface design and metadata interoperability. This effort is being…

In mid-April, Amazon EC2 services had a small problem. Apparently, a large swath of its cloud computing environment had such substantial trouble that a number of customers had server issues. A number of high-profile sites, including Reddit, Evite, and Foursquare, went down when Amazon experienced issues in their US East 1a region (Justinb 2011).…

For SCC Soft Computer, a clinical information management systems provider, learning and development long has played an essential role in maintaining a high-growth global company. In 2010, the organization proved through ramped-up offerings, improved training success rates, and continual programming evolution that training is still a top priority.…

The author recently created a presentation using HTML5 based on a tutorial put together by Marcin Wichary. The example presentation is part proof-of-concept, part instructional piece, and it is part of a larger site on HTML5 and how one can use it to create rich Web-based applications. The more he delved into HTML5, the more he found that it was…

North Carolina State University has incorporated many aspects of volunteer program administration and reporting into an on-line solution that integrates impact reporting into daily program management. The Extension Master Gardener Intranet automates many of the administrative tasks associated with volunteer management, increasing efficiency, and…

There is growing interest in collectibles of many types, as indicated by the popularity of television programs such as the History Channel's "Pawn Stars" and "American Pickers" and the Public Broadcasting Service's "Antiques Road Show." The availability of online auction sites such as eBay has enabled many people to collect items of interest as a…

The principal purpose of the report for the "Florida School District Adult and Technical Centers" is to provide timely, accurate, and comparative information about the Florida School District Adult and Technical Centers System. This report is intended for use by people who are interested in data relevant to education in the School…

This article presents a reading of the user interface in one public library system. Its aim is to find out the frames and competences required and used in the communication between the computer and the patron. The authors see the computer as a text that is to be read by the user who wants to search for information from the library. The transition…

Ask most men or women in the street who Charles Darwin was and the chances are that they will know something of the work he did: the work that has revolutionised our understanding of the living world and our place in it. The 200th centenary of his birth was in February 2009. Over the 150 years since the publication of his seminal work On the…

With fancy new software developments and growth in both the richness of content and delivery options for information resources, the Database Marketplace 2010 is a feast for buyers. Unfortunately, institutional budget cuts may force more of a famine mentality--with belt-tightening for most, and only purchases that are life-sustaining being served…