This article discusses the authors' implementation of Help Central, a site within the Lister Hill Library Collection on the University of Alabama-Birmingham's SharePoint server. Initially, Help Central was designed to address the inadequacies in the library's old, static HTML web-based support system, including haphazard issue reporting by staff…

Just a few years ago, virtual worlds were credited with the power to transform the universe. Used since the late 1990s in military and medical applications, virtual worlds first gained mainstream media attention when Linden Lab released Second Life in 2003. While other worlds, including open source environments, have launched since then (examples…

Searching for relevant information on the web is an important aspect of distance learning. This activity is a challenge for visually impaired distance learners. While sighted people have the ability to filter information in a fast and non sequential way, blind persons rely on tools that process the information in a sequential way. Learning is…

The Academy for Educational Development (AED) has many opportunities to apply expertise and creativity to the solution of perplexing human problems. It is much more rare, however, to find oneself at the nexus of a set of opportunities that make it possible to make a greater contribution than the original objective. Macedonia's commitment to…

This article talks about service level agreement (SLA). The essential goal of an SLA is to set a manageable foundation of appropriate expectations so that the relationship between parties (whether between product/service provider and a school, or a school and its constituents) will be workable and sustainable. Careful consideration of service…

By all accounts, the Denver School of Science and Technology (DSST) is a special school. It was the first public charter high school in Denver to become a one-to-one laptop school, thanks to a $1 million gift from Hewlett-Packard. Even though the school accepts applicants via a lottery system and its charter requires that 40% of its students come…

Post secondary education leaders and administrators are currently facing two separate but inter-related trends: the growth in online education, and the significant increase in adjunct (part-time) faculty. In order to maximize the educational quality and institutional effectiveness, education leaders must develop an approach that levers the…

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) located in the College of Education at Delta State was envisioned in the 1999-2000 school year as a catalyst for systemic change across the college and region as related to technology and its place in the education of the P-12 community. The Center's goals include: 1) implementing appropriate standards…

The proliferations of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and an increase in the number of external students and of the digital youth have put considerable pressure upon university staff to adopt ICT in their pedagogy. However, these challenges that include ICT technical skills and pedagogy require staff to continuously engage in…

The "Local Technology Plan Guidelines" serve as the basis for the Department's annual technology data collection. This report takes a look at the data submitted by 344 school districts, examining the progress Massachusetts school districts are making in meeting the recommended guidelines. In doing so, it will gauge the degree to which…

Teaching today's students requires an integration of learner-centered pedagogy with innovative technological resources. In this article, Blase Scarnati and Paula Garcia describe the redesign of a junior-level music history course guided by learner-centered principles and driven by a fusion of stimulating technology-based learning tools and…

This article discusses the part-time/Internet-based Master of Public Health (MPH) program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH). The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was the first school of public health in the United States to offer a Master of Public Health program via the Internet. The JHSPH MPH Program…

This article describes the development of a Web-based instrument that is part of a strategic planning initiative in technology in K-12 schools in Nebraska. The instrument provides rubrics for self-assessment of essential conditions necessary for integrating and adopting of technology. Essential conditions were defined by an extended panel of…

This document gives an overview of current needs expressed so far in the project for multimedia management and real-time communication services between groups of learners/workers and examine the kind of support that a standard-based technical solution "off-the-shelf" can help in solving main technical issues and in focusing on…

Due to latest developments in information and communication technology, the number of schools and colleges using computers in the classroom is increasing. Smart classrooms are being used at many universities in developed countries. Such smart classrooms are equipped with PC's and other types of multimedia and projection devices connected to the…