Background: To comprehensively address the childhood and adolescent obesity epidemic, Arkansas enacted Act 1220 of 2003. Among a series of community- and school-based interventions, the Act requires each public school student to have his/her body mass index (BMI) assessed and reported annually to parents. The process of implementing this policy on…

This paper presents the results of a content, frame and discourse analysis of Internet sites concerned with Asperger's syndrome (AS). It investigated blogs written by people who have been diagnosed with AS, as well as organizations devoted to the support of people with AS and their families. The findings document the different and even…

In this paper, we suggest that self-organized learning can be supported through emergent and informal Web technologies and propose that these technologies can be used to encourage similar practices in higher education. Self-organized learning aims at increasing individual control over instructional functions through a process that involves…

This paper reports on a study that explored the online publishing activities of adults with learning difficulties, the strategies that carers and professionals have used to support these activities and the implications these strategies may have for empowerment and self-advocacy. Content analysis of 15 home pages revealed that despite having a…

Over the past two decades, distance education has become a reality of rural schooling in Newfoundland and Labrador. In this article, I provide historical background into the challenges facing rural schools in the province and how distance education was introduced to address that challenge. I also describe how that system of distance education…

In this paper, an evaluation of web sites regarded like projects is discussed. We give an overview of the Web Assessment Index (WAI), by presenting a web sites of Romanian Faculties of Economics case study. The WAI contains five categories: accessibility, access speed, navigability, content and reliability. We analyzed and presented a detailed…

This article presents qualitative results of the first three years of the New Mexico Laptop Learning Initiative (NMLLI). Results suggest that teachers, students, and their communities support this initiative to improve student learning. Descriptive statistics were used during year two to further understand how the laptops were being used by…

Blatant forms of prejudice towards disabled people appear to be disappearing in the UK. However, subtle forms of prejudice remain and may be highly damaging to the achievement of the vision of disabled people being "respected and included as equal members of society". In order to assist placing subtle forms of prejudice within a…

The purpose of this study was to determine barriers, roles, and information source preferences for teaching agricultural biotechnology topics. Agricultural science teachers were described primarily as 37 year-old males who had taught for 12 years, had bachelor's degrees, and had lived or worked on a farm or ranch. Equipment was perceived as the…

With the evolution of technology, students can now take online classes that may not be offered in their home schools. While online courses are commonly found in many high schools, WebQuests are used more commonly in elementary schools. Through the exploration of WebQuests, students are able to integrate the Internet into classroom activities. The…

Adaptive LMS have not yet reached the eLearning marketplace due to methodological, technological and management open issues. At aDeNu group, we have been working on two key challenges for the last five years in related research projects. Firstly, develop the general framework and a running architecture to support the adaptive life cycle (i.e.,…

Instructional engineering provides methods to conduct the design and adaptation of competence development programmes by the combination of diverse learning components (i.e. units of learning, learning activities, learning resources and learning services). It occurs through an established process workflow in which models with diverse levels of…

This article presents an interview with Dr. James Johnson Duderstadt, founder of the Millennium Project, the president emeritus and university professor of science and engineering at the University of Michigan. In this interview, Duderstadt talks about how he became an educator and how he decided to specialize in technology and distance education.…

e-Learning is bringing training to the attention of upper management in a way that other learning technologies have never done. Web-based training will remain predominant to the design and delivery of workplace learning in the 21st century because of its advantages over traditional classroom-based training. A comprehensive framework that…

A recent study carried out by European and African organizations into the potential for electronic distance training (EDT) on sustainability in African local governments concluded that EDT was both "useful and feasible". This article reflects on some of the theoretical and practical implications of that study. It focuses on the…