No state should be forced to make a Solomon-like decision between laptops and books for their students. Yet that is what appears to be taking place this year in Texas. The Texas state legislature has proposed a new law to outfit all secondary students with laptops at an estimated cost of $707.7 million over the next two years, according to Craig…

The methodology of compiling an academic genealogy using the Internet and computer technology is described. Details on the use of the Internet both to gather information and to make the results available are provided.

In selecting a Claude Bernard Distinguished Lecturer, the Teaching Section looks for an individual who has made major contributions to physiology education. Dr. Harold Modell has certainly earned this honor. Harold has an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota, a Masters in biomedical engineering from Iowa State, and, continuing the…

Increasing numbers of states, districts, and schools provide every student with a computing device; for example, the middle schools in Maine maintain wireless Internet access and the students receive laptops. Research can provide policymakers with better evidence of the benefits and costs of 1:1 computing and establish which factors make 1:1…

Creating a forum for conflict management students to conceptualize and implement collaborative negotiation techniques can be difficult to manage during classroom time. A computer-based simulation assigned in conjunction with in-class activities offers three distinct advantages for students who are beginning negotiators: (1) classroom time may be…

Multimedia is one of the biggest buzzwords around in education in this age of computer technology. Multimedia is short for multiple media and simply means using computers to bring together words, photographs, sounds, animations and video. In this article, the author talks about multimedia presentations as a powerful education learning tool. It is…

With gym time getting squeezed out by standardized tests and extracurriculars, schools are beginning to digitize physical education. This alternative method is first being offered by Minneapolis public schools in spring of 2005. In digital physical education, students can perform physical activities like they would in a traditional PE class but…

This note takes up the issue of parallel curves while illustrating the utility of "Mathematica" in computations. This work complements results presented earlier. The presented treatment, considering the more general case of parametric curves, provides an analysis of the appearance of cusp singularities, and emphasizes the utility of symbolic…

Explanations are essential in the teaching process. Tracers are one possibility to provide students with explanations in an intelligent tutoring system. Their development can be divided into four steps: (a) the definition of the trace model; (b) the extraction of the information from this model; (c) the analysis and abstraction of the extracted…

Music teachers are used to finding creative methods for accomplishing large tasks in spite of overwhelming obstacles, such as an insufficient budget and limited time. Yet, when it comes to incorporating technology into the classroom, many allow these obstacles to get the best of them. Finding ways to use computers in the classroom with limited…

There has been considerable emphasis on the availability and reuse of learning content in recent years. Since 2000, the ADL initiative has refined the recommendations contained in the SCORM documents through progressive stages represented in the SCORM 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 documents. Fundamental to SCORM is the notion of the Shareable Content…

The author's conceptualization of an Information Commons (IC) is revisited and elaborated in reaction to Bailey and Tierney's article. The IC's role as testbed for instructional support and knowledge discovery is explored, and progress on pertinent research is reviewed. Prospects for media-rich learning environments relate the IC to the…

This paper describes a pilot project with the purpose of evaluating the usefulness of tablet PCs for university professors. The focus is on the value of tablets primarily with respect to teaching and learning (and not for research or administrative work). Sixty-four professors, distributed across the various schools of a university, were provided…

We have used the GPS receiver and a PC interface to track different types of motion. Various hands-on experiments that enlighten the physics of motion at the secondary school level are suggested (visualization of 2D and 3D motion, measuring car drag coefficient and fuel consumption). (Contains 8 figures.)

This article features the latest classroom technologies namely the FLY Pentop, WriteToLearn, and a new iris scan identification system. The FLY Pentop is a computerized pen from Leapster that "magically" understands what kids write and draw on special FLY paper. WriteToLearn is an automatic grading software from Pearson Knowledge Technologies and…