This article discusses how Montessori teachers create authentic and meaningful experiences for older students in the modern technological age while fostering the sensitive stages of imagination and exploration of the world around them. Maria Montessori observed that children learn to read and write through their spontaneous, independent behavior.…

When Gilberto Zelaya visited South Africa in 2000, he was struck by the high level of voter participation and turnout in that country. Back in the United States, Zelaya decided to work on voter participation in this country. As the voter empowerment director for the Montgomery County Board of Elections in Maryland, he organized a pilot program in…

Many people donate books to libraries, but too often they are titles that the librarians cannot use because they are usually too old, too passe, or too tattered and worn to be added to the library collection, and so they end up in library sales. Librarians in Riverside County, California and members of the Library Systems & Services, LLC (LSSI)…

Cooperative learning, which is a relatively new form of pedagogy developed in North America, has recently been introduced into a number of schools in the UK. One such form of this pedagogy is referred to as Critical Skills. Two systematic evaluations of pilot projects which have implemented Critical Skills in UK schools have recently been…

This paper describes an evaluation by two science educators of the pilot offering of an interdisciplinary critical issues course in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) designed to fulfill the natural science general degree requirements at a major university. This social science general studies course is an STS interdisciplinary course that…

This paper proposes a systematic method of measuring subjects' free recall from printed hard news stories, based on schema theories of cognition. Citing literature that demonstrates the role of text structures and text schemas in the recall of written text, the paper suggests incorporating these processes into the assessment of recall of news. In…

This publication provides abstracts of 58 active and 42 completed projects designed to improve emergency medical services for children (EMSC). The projects were funded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Maternal and Child Health Bureau, in collaboration with the United States Department of Transportation's National…

Recent reports by government agencies show concern regarding the extent to which American workers lack the workplace skills necessary to meet the challenges of today's workplace. The Work Keys system, a program developed by American College Testing (ACT) to help improve the job skills of the workforce, is described. A pilot project is being…

This background paper analyzes technologies for tomorrow's information superhighways. Advanced networks will first be used to support scientists in their work, but will soon be deployed more widely in business, entertainment, health care, and education. Significant progress has been made toward the development of gigabit network technology since…

This is a step-by-step guide to designing and conducting an assessment of the in-house use of periodicals in a library. It focuses on in-house use because libraries that allow their periodicals to circulate probably already have mechanisms to track circulation. The guide consists of an explanatory text followed by a checklist. The checklist…

Responding to calls by Missouri's Coordinating Board of Higher Education and in turn by Northeast Missouri State University, the communication faculty appointed a committee on oral communication assessment. The committee submitted to the communication faculty an assessment proposal that focused on answering the question of whether the basic speech…

During the 1992-93 school year, Billings School District #2 implemented full inclusion of students with disabilities at Garfield Elementary. A Regular Education Initiative Committee of district administrators, teachers, board members, parents, community representatives, and Eastern Montana College faculty met on a regular basis to study the…

A pilot study of skills and resources in 46 Tanzanian villages is described and presented as an example of participatory research. The educational and motivational benefits derived by the villagers, the organization of the study, background information regarding Tanzania, and basic requirements for participatory research are discussed. (LH)

The Secondary Exploration of Technology (S. E. T.) project, an industrial arts research and development project providing continuity of learning for students from grades 7 through 12, is described. Three "Systems of Industry" courses for ninth and tenth grade students, modelled on the techniques of industry, are unique to the program.…