Compares three online databases designed for elementary school use for searching periodicals. Highlights include limiting the ability to surf the Web; print capabilities; available resources included in the database, including full text versus abstracts; user-support materials; reading levels; and ease of interface use. (LRW)

Describes the first of three levels, or generations, in the development of online courses. Explores the design and value of generation one (G1) activities, including steps such as prewriting, drafting, editing, and presenting. Discusses the value of G1 courses and provides some examples. Future issues will address G2 and G3 online courses.…

Describes one teacher's effort to change the classroom environment in order to create student-directed exploratory learning. Presents a lesson in which students use the computer program Lesson Graph to study the effects of coefficients on linear equations. (ASK)

Describes the development and evaluation of an Internet-based tutorial for teaching spirometry interpretation to nonpulmonologists. Concludes that computer-based tutorials can effectively train off-site practitioners in spirometry interpretation. Contains 23 references. (Author/WRM)

Describes a study designing and implementing technology-based investigations and evaluates their impact on student learning. Discusses a teacher's mediation of the students' use of technology through curriculum materials, and considers some attributes of computers and graphics calculators that determined which tool was selected for each…

Presents lessons learned from a Minnesota project that used a computerized system to help teachers implement the state's academic-content standards. The project also created new ways of looking at curriculum that have become useful tools for Minnesota teachers. The paper explains the project's vision, early steps, unforeseen obstacles, and…

Urges teachers of gifted students to allow students unstructured recreational computer time in the classroom to encourage student exploration and discovery, to promote creativity, to develop problem-solving skills, and to allow time to revisit programs and complete their own tasks. Different types of educational computer programs are referenced.…

Social scientists, who frequently complain that the federal government spends too little on them, are passing up what scholars in the physical and natural sciences see as the government's best give-aways: free access to supercomputers. Some social scientists say the supercomputers are difficult to use; others find desktop computers provide…

Telematics in the form of text-based, computer-mediated communications can support teaching and learning and can help the formation and cohesion of communities of learners. This paper examines the development of a "critical community of learners" through this medium, based on experiences with students studying the Open University (OU)…

Considers questions posed by students during e-mail tutorials to elicit information from guest lecturers and the use of that information by students in their essays. Findings indicate: tutees tend to pose questions to elicit information or clarification rather than to elicit opinions of the guest lecturer; and two-thirds of tutees' essays cited…

Examines the computer-related attitudes and attainments of 48 primary (6-11 years) school-aged children. Results show boys hold more favorable attitudes towards computers than girls. Boys hold more positive attitudes and achieve higher levels of computer-related attainment than girls. (Author/AEF)

Considers whether cultivation of true collaborative learning is a realistic ambition with very young children; analysis of the social dynamic suggests that it is well within the reach of children as a form of social exchange. Argues that the new technology offers a potential for supporting the development of collaborative learning in early…

Continues a discussion of the three chief information stations in a videoconference class. Describes the instructor camera at information station #2, an intermediary station between the three stations, and the student camera at station #1, the information station for interactive student participation. (AEF)

Describes selected commercial and academic Web sites providing interactive services (Amazon; Jones Library, Amherst, MA; Pine Crest Lower School, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Barnes & Noble; Cal State's Information Literacy Tutorials; PBS's techknow site; K.I.D.S. Report), and argues that libraries that stop at links and policy statements miss…

This article discusses how laptop computers can be used in gifted education to create learner-centered environments, promote independent inquiry, stimulate creativity, risk taking, and development of passions, encourage complexity of ideas and higher level thinking, offer a variety of grouping options, and provide for flexibility and mobility.…