This newsletter article addresses the increasing role of telecommunications and its effect on American Indian institutions. Advocates believe that telecommunications could make rural Indian reservations more viable places to live, work, educate children, and treat illnesses. Additionally, new technology could revolutionize reservation economies.…

As of December 1995, at least 28 federal programs administered by 15 federal agencies provided funds that either were specifically designated for telecommunications projects in rural areas or could be used for that purpose. Interviews with community leaders and rural development experts identified specific actions that must be taken to lay the…

This document presents witness testimony and supplemental materials from a Congressional hearing focused on the role of technology in promoting distance learning in the United States. Distance learning programs make educational resources available to citizens, regardless of socioeconomic status or geographic location, and enable citizens to remain…

Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) began offering courses by Desktop Videoconferencing (DVC) in fall 1995 and continues to experiment with ways to use this new and flexible teaching tool. This paper describes the MTSU DVC system in an attempt to expose educators to this new technology and its many possibilities, and to stimulate discussion…

The Long Island Team is a collaborative system of K-12 students and teachers, university students and faculty, and community members who have been linked by telecommunications and in-person sessions. Since 1993 the group has culminated their work together at an annual sharing event. This paper provides the history of the learning community, a list…

This brochure highlights 95 Texas laws that were passed in the 1995 legislative session and have particular impact on the 3.5 million Texans with disabilities. Major issues addressed in these laws include telecommunications, employment, health insurance and services, transportation, and education. Each bill listing includes a brief descriptive…

The authors' experiences with electronic bulletin boards are recounted. Begun in 1986, the Physics Forum bulletin board for Massachusetts high school physics teachers spent its first few years as a resource of limited use only. In 1989, however, the National Science Foundation awarded the Five Colleges/Western Massachusetts Partnership a grant…

This teacher's guide is designed to accompany a videotape by the same title which shows communications and education experts discussing the information superhighway, the government's role in its construction, privacy and regulation issues, and the effects of technological advancement on education. The goals of this guide are to help students to:…

The American Library Association (ALA) expresses the basic principles of librarianship in its "Code of Ethics" and in the "Library Bill of Rights" and its interpretations. All library system and network policies, procedures or regulations relating to electronic resources and services should be scrutinized for potential…

This report describes 2-year outcomes of the Iowa Distance Education Alliance (IDEA), a partnership involving educational institutions across Iowa that received funding from the federal Star Schools Program to demonstrate the use of the Iowa Communication Network's (ICN's) fiber-optic technology for K-12 instruction. First-year project activities…

The basic premise for this paper is that any educational program or technology should be evaluated on the basis of the theoretical foundations or perspectives on which it is implicitly or explicitly based. Structured in three main sections, it reviews recent literature in areas related to the many aspects that influence learning through…

This guide to searching the Georgetown University Catalogue of Projects in Electronic Text database provides information on electronic text projects in the humanities throughout the world as well as a variety of information on the many collections of literary works, historical documents, and linguistic data that are available from commercial…

This project provided access to telecommunication networks and research databases at 13 sites in the Mid-Atlantic region from May 1 to June 4, 1993. The project objectives were to pilot a regionally-developed education database; to provide access to this database and the Internet; to train participants to use telecommunications technology; to…

The Telecommunications Foundation of Africa (TFA) was created in 1992 out of a conviction that insufficient telecommunications in Africa are an impediment to economic growth, and that more resources could be mobilized to strengthen this sector. This volume was made by TFA for readers both inside and outside of Africa and the telecommunications…

Inservice training and staff development for rural schools are complicated by limited access to advanced training programs, limited financial resources, and a high attrition rate among rural educators. One way in which rural schools and universities can collaboratively work to fill this void is through distance education, which can help rural…