Presents the 1999 winners of the Foxfire Exemplary Classrooms Awards. The winners were diverse in grade level, urban and rural settings, years of experience with the Foxfire core practices, and ideas about how to implement the Foxfire approach. Activities and experiences from each winning classroom are highlighted. Criteria for winning an award…

Interviews with staff and students explore the purposes of Puget Sound Community School (Seattle, Washington), which offers self-directed and community-based learning for students aged 12-18. Since its inception 7 years ago, the alternative school gradually became more scheduled, until the students initiated a restructuring to restore flexibility.…

In "Turning Points 2000," Jackson and Davis noted that "changes in middle grades practices have least often occurred where they are needed most: in high-poverty urban and rural communities where unacceptably poor student achievement is rampant". Even so, in many struggling schools, some teams have achieved success. Their…

This study characterizes how learning and teaching differs as the responsibility for choosing curriculum goals and the strategies to reach those goals shifts between teacher and the students. Three different pedagogical approaches were used with 125 seventh-grade and eighth-grade students. All three curricula focus on electromagnetism, and were…

The heterogeneous backgrounds and interests of prospective students has been an emerging challenge in Information Systems (IS) education. Pounding waves of technology carried students away from the shores of traditional IS training. Pragmatists avoided the traditional IS programs, many of which struggled among budget reduction, competing training…

This paper focused on student participation in controlling classroom activity. Issue-Based Discussion is described and promoted as a form of activity that can be used in the classroom to both enculturate students into the ready-made-culture of modern, western science and empower them to share in the control of activity as they participate in a…

This book describes a comprehensive strategy for getting to know students learning behaviors and includes everything from theoretical constructs to projects for classroom use. Glosses direct the reader to further information on subjects discussed in the book: cognitive science, brain science, learning styles, multiple intelligences, and…

This paper demonstrates how learners can work on problems involved in learning a foreign language on their own through reading strategies and the help of a well-stocked, language resources center. Using this self-access approach and the resources center, the learner can accomplish the goal of learning with only minimal assistance from other…

This paper rejects the hardware-based "levels of interaction" made popular in interactive video literature to describe human-machine interaction in favor of a new taxonomy of learner-media interaction based on the type of cognitive engagement experienced by learners. Interaction can be described on three levels, based on the quality of…

The most popular application of computers in the classroom is word processing. Essex County College in Newark, New Jersey, was one of the first institutions to teach students to write with the computer. Using computers in education provides the following benefits: (1) students find it easier to make changes when writing with the computer than when…

Much of the reason behind educational reform is the belief that schools are not economically productive enough, that students are not learning enough for the resources invested in education. Other critics reject economic productivity as a framework for educational reform and support philosophical, psychological, or moral frameworks. However,…

Arguing that what sets the computer apart from all other teaching devices is its potential for interactivity, this paper examines the concept of interactivity and explores ways in which its power can be harnessed and put to work. A discussion of interactivity in human-to-human communication sets a context within which to view human/computer…

Emphasizing higher order thinking skills is of primary concern within mathematics. Learning environments emphasizing the learners understanding of the subject matter are constantly under review, with one learner-centered emphasis upon instruction leading the way: WebQuests. The design and development of WebQuests for the mathematical classroom…

Globalization and technology are two of the many drivers that impact today's education locally and internationally. The purpose of the research study was to identify how online learners in Korea and the U.S. perceived online learning motivation differently and what learner characteristics and cultural orientation affected the online learners'…

Learning style has been an important area of study to improve learner satisfaction and learning outcomes. This study examined the effect of flexible learning schedule on learning and application of learning made by a group of undergraduate students. Results revealed flexible learning schedule influenced students' learning. Various reasons why…