This paper focuses on the ways educators can work within the guidelines of copyright while using digital media to develop educational content in legal and ethical ways by exploring several key contemporary trends in digital content creation. Educators need not create learning materials from scratch, as the pool of resources available via the…

Educational games and simulations are excellent active learning tools that offer students hands-on experience. Little research is available on developing games and simulations and how teachers can be assisted in making their own games and simulations. In this context, the paper presents a multi-step process of how to develop games and simulations…

The website "Earthlearningidea" was developed for the International Year of Planet Earth in 2007 and continues with one new activity per fortnight. Activities are devised to catch the attention of students and to enable them to enjoy the science of the Earth. Many activities require minimal equipment, for schools in developing countries, but there…

Screencasts are videos that record the actions that take place on the computer screen, most often including a narrative audio track, in order to demonstrate various computer-related tasks, such as how to use a software program or navigate a certain Web site. All that is needed is a standard microphone and screen recording software, which can be…

In most cases digital learning objects are used for individual learning (reading, looking, playing, quizzes) or by teachers in their class-room or online teaching (presentations). In PILOT project we argue that learning objects should be designed and presented in a special way in order to promote truly social constructivist learning. The project…

With the exception of the procedures developed by Porter and colleagues (Porter, 2002), other methods of defining and measuring alignment are essentially limited to alignment between tests and standards. Porter's procedures have been generalized to investigating the alignment between content standards, tests, textbooks, and even classroom…

This article describes a network among the Commonwealth's 28 smallest countries created to enhance the professional capacity of educators, developing new course materials, and enabling the transfer of courses and qualifications across borders. The focus is on topics such as entrepreneurship, tourism, professional development of educators, life…

This paper presents two cases of the use of a World Wide Web-based system designed to support online educational procedures. The system presented, called DVT (Dynamic Virtual Trainer), consists of one or more server machines that store structured educational material in the form of autonomous units that may be accessed, combined, and presented to…

Two bodies of literature define the process for developing electronic teaching portfolios to support long-term professional growth: the multimedia development process (decide/assess, design/plan, develop, implement, evaluate) and the portfolio development process (collection, selection, reflection, projection/direction, presentation). As further…

Discusses several theoretical and technical aspects of computer-graphics development that are useful for creating hypermedia and multimedia materials. Topics addressed include primary bitmap attributes in computer graphics, the jigsaw principle, and raster layering. (MSE)

This paper describes the development of a database-driven World Wide Web-based tutorial to support pre/in-service teacher education in learning Web page creation. The paper focuses on querying the tutorial database. Advantages, disadvantages, software and hardware, and revisions are reported. Contains 10 references. (MES)

Discusses biological applications of virtual reality technology that are under development, including making extraordinary scientific images available for the teaching of science. Explores the technology and the development of three-dimensional images. (LZ)

This paper discusses the development and implementation of a computer-based directed study preservice teacher education course. Specifically, it explains the procedures followed to create the ten multimedia CD-ROMs that comprise the course, and how preservice teachers use the CD-ROMs. Topics to be covered include (1) rationale for course creation;…

This paper on electronic fact books begins with a section that presents background on fact books, dating back to the publication of "Statistics of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities" by the U.S. Office of Education in 1867. The second section considers advantages of fact books as data resources and for decision making, planning, self…

Provides guidelines on how to adapt common games such as checkers, tic tac toe, obstacle courses, and memory joggers into interactive games in multimedia courseware. Emphasizes creating generic games that can be recycled and used for multiple topics to save development time and keep costs low. Discusses topic themes, game structure, and…