"Alabama Education News" is published monthly except for June, July, and December by the Alabama Department of Education. This publication, authorized by Section 16-2-4 of the "Code of Alabama", as recompiled in 1975, is a public service of the Alabama Department of Education designed to inform citizens and educators about…

"Education Matters" is the monthly newsletter of the Association of American Educators (AAE), an organization dedicated to advancing the American teaching profession through personal growth, professional development, teacher advocacy and protection. This issue of the newsletter includes: (1) Teaching as Leadership: 6 Traits of Highly…

Contemporary changes in pedagogy point to the need for a higher level of video production value in most classroom video, replacing the default video protocol of an unattended camera in the back of the classroom. The rich and complex environment of today's classroom can be captured more fully using the higher level, but still easily manageable,…

Social work, like other professions, finds itself influenced by postmodernism and hypertechnology. Social work educators are striving to adapt in the face of rapidity of knowledge expansion and of technological advancement, which impact the nature of pedagogy. Recent emphases on effectiveness and efficiency of technological innovations are…

Nigeria no doubt is at the threshold of transformation in information and communication technology (ICT), a development that should be utilized to meet the demand of time, especially in the education sector. One area in which ICT has made enormous impact is in open and distance learning. Undoubtedly, the demand on the conventional higher education…

Challenges facing teacher education in an increasingly global society are actually reflections of four major shifts in society--shifts that teacher educators must understand and accommodate to develop programs that capture the essence of the schools of tomorrow rather than stagnate in models of yesterday. First, electronic technology has become…

The Mechanical Equivalent of Heat Apparatus from PASCO scientific provides the means for doing a simple experiment to determine the mechanical equivalent of heat, "J." A necessary step of this experiment is to determine the temperature of an aluminum cylinder. By measuring the resistance of a thermistor embedded in the cylinder, one is able to…

"Mashup" is a new technology term used to describe a web application that combines data or technology from several different sources. You can apply this concept in your classroom by having students create their own mashup maps. Google Maps provides you with the simple tools, map databases, and online help you'll need to quickly master this…

The efficiency of teaching algorithms can be highly improved by utilizing the senses as educational aids. The authors have developed a new didactical method and a software tool which exemplifies, for the case of simple algorithms, how the involvement of eyesight, hearing and the kinaesthesia can help in the teaching and learning process. This…

An Excel add-in--XSEOS--that implements several excess Gibbs free energy models and equations of state has been developed for educational use. Several traditional and modern thermodynamic models are available in the package with a user-friendly interface. XSEOS has open code, is freely available, and should be useful for instructors and students…

Last year, the Centennial Ave. Elementary School in Roosevelt, New York received a new shipment of the New York State Science 21 kits. The new science program from the previous year was out, and the new science program for this year was in. As consulting university professors, the authors' task was to help the third grade teachers bring Science 21…

This article attempts to provide a review of literature pertaining to computer technology use in education. The authors discuss the benefits of learning with technology tools when integrated into teaching. The argument that introducing computer technology into schools will neither improve nor change the quality of classroom instruction unless…

The authors describe the development and delivery of a team-building exercise in an online organizational behavior undergraduate course. Qualitative data of student perceptions, collected at the end of the course, revealed both positive and negative reactions to various aspects of the team-building exercise. Based on these reactions, the authors…

Not that many years back, portals were nothing more than splash pages from which users could click on links to navigate a school's web-based resources. Today, however, they are much more: single sign-on gateways that easily enable users to do everything from pay tuition and view transcripts, to purchase parking permits, and sell used books. Still,…

In this article, the author provides technology-based techniques for prewriting invention and drafting that offer students new ways to look at and think about writing topics and tasks. Rather than creating electronic versions of existing paper-and-pencil invention strategies, the author suggests strategies using commonly owned and used computer…