Guidelines for the planning and purchase of microcomputer systems are presented in outline form. These guidelines are directed to educators in developmental education, special education, and learning center environments; however, they are applicable to all educators intending to use microcomputers. First, a discussion of hardware considerations is…

This electronic utility promises to instantly deliver to the classroom a vast array of constantly updated instructional materials--software, textbooks, news services, video, databases, reference sources, word processing, and spreadsheet tools--and to bring all of technology's capabilities together into one integrated system. (Author)

Discusses the dissatisfaction of teachers with using computers in the classroom and argues that the problem is not the computers themselves, but rather the deplorable state of educational software. (SRT)

A review of the technological and psychological literature suggests the existence of two psychological constructs that severely impact on teachers' use of new technology, especially computers: Technophobia and Computerphobia. The review explores some suggestions for avoiding, overcoming and general coping with these problems by both the teachers…

Considers three powerful techniques--heuristics, context trees, and search via backward chaining--that a knowledge engineer might employ to develop an expert system to automate performance engineering, i.e., the branch of instructional technology that focuses on the problems of business and industry. (MBR)

By nearly all accounts, the Web has overwhelmingly become the primary resource for prospective students to research potential college choices. Using this medium, however, prospects are able to do their research independently and privately, without having to contact the institution via phone, mail or email to make a formal inquiry. Consequently,…

A computer teacher in a middle school in East Tennessee observed that his students were entering the middle school program with computer familiarity but without the touch keyboarding skills necessary to operate the computer efficiently. It was also observed that even with instruction and practice using drill and practice keyboarding software, the…

Discusses the need for standardization for learning technologies in computer-based training systems. Highlights include institutions and organizations involved in standardization; a survey of educational metadata; how these data models are applied by actual software systems to facilitate the location of learning resources; and educational…

Describes a unique project using commercial haptic interfaces to augment the teaching of simple machines in elementary school. Suggests that the use of haptics in virtual simple-machine simulations has the potential for deeper, more engaging learning. (Contains 13 references.) (Author/YDS)

Many school districts have planned only for upfront software and hardware costs (one-quarter of "real" costs). This article examines major cost components of client-server computing, discusses TCO (total cost of ownership) as a tool for managing investment in technology, and considers how to leverage cost-reduction strategies. (MLH)

In this article, the author suggests solutions to unleash student creativity. The article focuses on the author's idea for electronic portfolios, Web-based collections of a student's work. To put her idea into practice, the author created an electronic portfolio project that spanned five 90-minute class sessions (about one session every week or…

The three utility commercial programs available on the Internet are like software packages purchased through a vendor or the Internet, shareware programs are developed by individuals and distributed via the Internet for a small fee to obtain the complete version of the product, and freeware programs are distributed via the Internet free of cost.…

When compared with, say, blogging, the deployment of learning objects has been slow indeed. While blog aggregation services are recording millions of blogs and hundreds of millions of blog posts, academic learning object repositories number their resources only in the thousands, and even major corporate repositories have only one or two million…

A self-proclaimed technophobe, Kuroly takes the plunge with his eighth-grade class. As a group, they learn PowerPoint, research poets on the Web, and record favorite poems, all of which results in a triumphant series of PowerPoint presentations on favorite poets.

In this article Harvey Quamen examines how the philosophy of open source software might be of particular benefit to humanities scholars in the near future--particularly for academic journals with limited financial resources. To this end he provides a case study in which he describes his use of open source technology (MySQL database software and…