On May 7, 1997, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted a Universal Service Order outlining a plan to guarantee that all eligible schools, libraries, and rural health care providers have affordable connections to the Internet. By making $2.5 billion available annually, this program will provide discounts (commonly known as the E-rate)…

Some of the newest methods of distance learning (DL) use the Internet and the World Wide Web. DL on the Internet usually takes one of the following forms: electronic mail; bulletin boards/newsgroups; downloading of course materials or tutorials; interactive tutorials on the Web; real-time, interactive conferencing; "intranets" (internal,…

Federal legislation authorizing the creation of the National Research and Education Network (NREN)--i.e., the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-194)--was signed into law by the President in December 1991. This network is envisioned as an expansion and enhancement of the existing U.S. Internet, the collection of interconnected…

In June 1994, the Texas Center for Educational Technology (TCET) posted a survey on several educational listservs and conference groups on the Internet requesting comments, observations, and opinions from educators having experience with telephones in classrooms. Most of the respondents agreed on the need to equip K-12 classrooms with modern…