In his keynote address the author acknowledges possibilities of personal computer technologies for disabled persons; raises such questions as amount of benefit to be derived, numbers of disabled to benefit, and whether the disabled will be "have nots;" then explains work of the Committee on Personal Computers and the Handicapped. (MC)

This paper reports on a project designed to address deficits discovered in the scheduling and documentation of training events for employees at a large psychiatric treatment center which provides a therapeutic community for the treatment of 400 severely emotionally disturbed and developmentally disabled children, adolescents, and young adults. The…

The acute care pediatric/adolescent unit at Saint Joseph Hospital in Chicago, Illinois offers patients computer services consisting of recreation, general education, newspaper, and patient education components. To gather information concerning patients' experience with computers and to assess the effectiveness of computer services, data were…

Among other services, the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory contracts with local school districts, state departments of education, social service agencies, colleges, universities, and other organizations to provide roughly 90 third-party evaluations per year of projects funded through such sources as Elementary and Secondary Education Act…

This paper describes a personal computer spreadsheet set up to carry out hierarchical log-linear analyses, a type of analysis useful for institutional research into multidimensional frequency tables formed from categorical variables such as faculty rank, student class level, gender, or retention status. The spreadsheet provides a concrete vehicle…

Discusses optimum school uses for microcomputers, how computers affect learning, and how computer effectiveness can be maximized. (JOW)

Provides the rationale for considering communication in a graphic domain and suggests a specific goal for designing work stations which provide graphic capabilities in educational settings. The central element of this recommendation is the "pictorial conversation", a highly interactive exchange that includes pictures as the central elements.…

Current instructional uses of computers primarily involve an individualized approach which requires assigning one student per computer. However, the computer can also serve as an "electronic chalkboard" in small and large group instruction in the middle school. The equipment required for the electronic chalkboard include: (1) the…

This paper examines some of the theoretical and practical issues confronting educational administrators who must make decisions regarding the implementation of microcomputers in their schools. A conceptual framework is offered for understanding the stages involved in the innovation decision process. Several attributes of innovations are discussed…

A survey of 287 staff developers was conducted during October 1986 to gather information on the use of computers in staff development offices. Questionnaires were mailed to every fifth member of the National Staff Development Council; 92 completed instruments were returned within one month for a return rate of 32%. Areas covered by the survey…

Alternative learning environments offering computer-related instruction are developing around the world. Storefront learning centers, museum-based computer facilities, and special theme parks are some of the new concepts. ComputerTown, USA! is a public access computer literacy project begun in 1979 to serve both adults and children in Menlo Park…

This paper discusses the potential for the use of microcomputers as an aid in the teaching of statistics, and reviews five of the approaches that have been taken: (1) CAI question and answer dialogs; (2) statistics as a tool in the teaching of a computer language; (3) the computer as a computational tool; (4) computer generated tests and homework;…

Graphing is a common and powerful symbol system for representing concrete data. Yet research has shown that students often have graphical misconceptions about how graphs are related to the concrete event. Currently, the Technical Education Research Center (TERC) is developing microcomputer-based laboratories (MBL) science units that use probes to…

Issues and strategies for developing a campus data communications system are discussed. It is suggested that individual microcomputer (MC) workstations will occasionally have a need for (1) access, via a data communications network, to a more powerful processor; (2) specialized software; (3) sophisticated output devices; (4) central data sets; or…

The evolution of computer hardware for college computing has mirrored the industry's growth. When computers were introduced into the educational environment, they had limited capacity and served one user at a time. Then came large mainframes with many terminals sharing the resource. Next, the use of computers in office automation emerged. As…