This book offers practical advice to teachers who wish to use classroom computers to harness the potential of telecommunications as a learning tool. Chapter 1 describes the Kids On-Line project, in which they established electronic mail interactions between a classroom in California and a classroom in Kentucky, as well as a list of key…

The communication technology and policy section of the Proceedings contains the following 11 papers: "The Battle for the Net Frontier: Technology and Policy in an Age of Hype and Sensationalism" (Jan H. Samoriski); "Uses and Gratifications of the World Wide Web" (Barbara K. Kaye); "Comparing Consumer Feedback Channels:…

Originally begun as a government-sponsored project for scientists, engineers, and military personnel to exchange information with great speed and efficiency, the Internet has become a virtual community, an online culture arisen from the depths of computerized networking and communication. This paper presents positive and negative aspects of the…

The Internet is a network of networks which continually accumulates and amasses information, much of which is without organization and evaluation. This study addresses the need for establishing a database of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), and for collecting, organizing, indexing, and publishing catalogs of URLs. Librarians and information…

Despite enormous growth of the Internet and its proliferation of tools, resources, and on-line communities, the connection between local learning environments and virtual learning environments remains tenuous. This paper examines this relationship, based upon a case study of an academic unit at the University of Colorado at Denver. Drawing on…

Materials presented here include a variety of resources for teachers of Esperanto: a brief guide to Esperanto teaching, including suggested teacher qualifications, a listing of instructional materials and resources, including serials, with details of publication, activities in preparation for teaching, grade-level class activities, notes on…

Intended to help teachers explore the instructional use of computers meant for books and literature, this book describes how to organize classrooms for an online project, how to create a community of readers in the classroom, and how to teach children to talk about books. It also discusses such practical needs as computer equipment, staff…

In March 1995, the Alaska Department of Education conducted an instructional technology survey of all schools and school districts. The purposes of the survey were to collect data on the numbers and types of instructional technologies currently being used in Alaska schools, to collect information on the utilization of those technologies, to…

This paper discusses the development of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and the increasing trend among federal agencies to reduce printed output and distribute information in electronic form--on floppy disks, CD ROMs, and, since the development of the National Information Infrastructure (NII), the Internet. Many libraries do not have…

The topic for this paper developed as a result of observations made during the course of a joint Internet pilot project with K-12 teachers and administrators in the city of Saskatoon (Canada); the project was designed to determine the amount of professional development time the participants needed to become functional Internet users and to explore…

This book seeks to provide an account of general and specialized sources, in print and non-print formats, that comprise the bibliographic and textual structure of federal government information. This particular edition endeavors to update and broaden discussion of government information available electronically via the Internet. Chapters are: (1)…

Technology adoption concerns are increasingly important to understanding constructivist learning environments and learning communities. As instruction begins to move toward more open, participatory models, "end users"--both teachers and learners--are asked to take more responsibility in the learning process. Issues such as the variable…

The Rural Policy Research Institute's Rural Telecommunications Task Force assessed the rural impacts and unintended or adverse rural consequences of the Federal-State Joint Board's recommendations to the FCC regarding Section 254 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Ten critical rural components of the Joint Board recommendations are listed: (1)…

A discussion of technology use in elementary school foreign language instruction looks at current uses of technology in the classroom and discusses its effectiveness and potential use. An introductory section describes various types of technology applied to instruction, including: computers and computer software; CD-ROM; telecommunications and…

This paper describes a survey to determine the impact on teaching and learning in education by teachers, library media specialists, and students participating in Bell Atlantic's "World School" Internet program in West Virginia schools. Teachers, library media specialists, and students with K-12 Access e-mail accounts participated in this…