An overly narrow and specialized focus on technology in schools discourages the use of computers to promote higher-order thinking. Many districts have concentrated on skills training, failed to supply such necessary supports as professional development, conflated technology use with instructional quality, and classified all software applications…

See how several educators are exploring the potential of technology in their classrooms. Citing several Web sites that provide and catalog primary source documents, two teachers show how classrooms can use digitized documents as historians and scholars do. An English teacher in Israel uses technology to engage students as foreign ambassadors. One…

Information technology has been changing the academy for the past fifty years, but those changes are small compared with what can be expected in the next fifty years. Three relatively recent IT "subrevolutions" have had an increasing impact on research, scholarly communication, and education. These are namely: (1) "PC subrevolution" that began in…

We integrate available and new technologies to strongly enhance student engagement in upper division undergraduate courses on human evolution and history. First, we use peer-mentored discussion groups through the Blackboard system--appropriately scaled, constructed, and incentivized. These allow day-to-day monitoring of student understanding.…

Distance education, due to recent technological innovations, can provide almost the same instructional contact and interaction for the student as traditional settings. The growth of distance learning opportunities has allowed students to access courses and degree programs at their convenience. Educational institutions are creating new approaches…

National attention has been focused on the fact that math and science scores for students in the United States are among the lowest in the world. In DeSchryver's (1998) article, "Fifteen Years and Still a Nation at Risk," it was noted that American twelfth graders ranked nineteenth out of 21 industrialized nations in mathematics…

To what extent have Canadian schools incorporated notions of multiliteracies into their curricula and instruction? What pedagogical options are implied by a multiliteracies perspective? How might consideration of multiliteracies affect policies and practices at various levels of the educational system--ministries of education, faculties of…

As early as 1923, Jean Piaget challenged teachers to reevaluate their goals for students and to promote critical thinking rather than conformity. Piaget described two important educational goals. The first "principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have…

This study examines the benefits of reading strategy training on adolescent readers' comprehension of science text. Training was provided via an automated reading strategy trainer called the Interactive Strategy Trainer for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART), which is an interactive reading strategy trainer that utilizes animated agents to…

This paper reports on a 2-year study designed to investigate the trajectory of change in an urban 5th grade teacher as she introduces science inquiry using the Web-Based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE). Data for this study included videotapes and transcripts of classroom instruction, and audiotapes and transcripts of interviews conducted with…

The effect of intervening use of molecular visualization software was tested on 73 first-year general chemistry students. Pretests and posttests included both traditional multiple-choice questions and model-building activities. Overall students improved after working with the software, although students performed less well on the model-building…

In this article, the authors show how effective use of new technology can increase academic productivity and enhance educational quality in higher learning institutions. The authors sought to develop an instructional model that integrates information technology with faculty resources to enhance teaching and learning in the academic environment.…

Research studies have shown that effective classroom management is a necessary condition for successful ICT integration in schools. Drawing upon the classroom management practices of teachers in a Singapore primary school, this article describes how the elements of classroom management facilitate the creation of a conducive learning environment to…

Forty-one primary student teachers were divided into two groups and were instructed how to integrate certain Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools in learning activities. Only one group was guided to use Filamentality, a fill-in-the-blank interactive Web site, and to organize Internet information in a Hotlist and a Scrapbook.…

As a science subject leader and year 6 teacher in North Bristol, the author has spent the last few months exploring how an interactive whiteboard (IWB) can be used to teach science skills, particularly those that are repeatedly highlighted as problematic, such as analysis and evaluation of evidence. The IWB came with software called…