Concern has been expressed that negative attitudes toward people with mental illnesses begin to develop early in childhood. This study examines one of the possible sources of learning of such negative attitudes--children's television programs. Two hundred sixty-nine (269) hours of children's television programming were videotaped, viewed, and…

In order to gain physical fitness and health, exercise must be performed at a sufficient level of intensity. Exercise intensity can be monitored with rated perceived exertion (RPE) scales to promote safe and effective programming. The usefulness of the Children's OMNI Scale as a subjective measure of intensity for adults with intellectual…

The objective, strategy, and implementation details of a new undergraduate course, Internet-based Instrumentation and Control, are presented. The course has a companion laboratory that is supported by the National Science Foundation and industry. The combination is offered to senior-level undergraduate engineering students interested in sensing,…

From the World Conservation Union to front-line practitioners, there is increasing recognition of the interaction between nature and people, and a growing integration of environmental and social issues. This also rings true for natural and cultural heritage educators as the line between nature and culture education slowly blurs. Perhaps the…

Collaboration scripts facilitate social and cognitive processes of collaborative learning by shaping the way learners interact with each other. Computer-supported collaboration scripts generally suffer from the problem of being restrained to a specific learning platform. A standardization of collaboration scripts first requires a specification of…

Shortly after the first commercial radio broadcast in 1920, the medium's popularity exploded and the number of stations on the dial grew tremendously. By 1930, however, a mere 10 years after the first radio broadcast occurred, the industry was dominated by large, commercial stations who sold advertising time in a variety of forms and were operated…

Within the framework of MIT's course 1.00: Introduction to Computers and Engineering Problem Solving, this paper describes an innovative project entitled: "Studio 1.00" that integrates lectures with in-class demonstrations, active learning sessions, and on-task feedback, through the use of wireless laptop computers. This paper also describes a…

A writing process of five stages, setting the topic and goals, planning the outline, organising the structure, building the content, and reviewing, is proposed to guide hypermedia authoring. To explore the effects of the system designed with writing-process guidance, this study enrolled 108 seventh graders at a junior high school as experimental…

Contact with the English language, especially from the 20th century onwards, has had as a consequence an increase in the number of words that are borrowed from English into Spanish. This process is particularly noticeable in Spanish for Specific Purposes, and, more specifically, in the case of Spanish computer language. Although sociocultural and…

Describes XML, a recent Web design language that will enable technical communicators to produce documentation that can reuse information and present it across multiple types of media for diverse audiences. Argues that XML requires more interdisciplinary approaches toward the teaching and research of technical communication, particularly with…

Discusses how, despite many obstacles, open-source software has the potential to strongly influence the future of software development and support in the academic world. (EV)

The paper reviews some recent advances in interior-point methods for linear programming and indicates directions in which future progress can be made. Most of the interior-point methods belong to any of three categories: affine-scaling methods, potential reduction methods and central path methods. These methods are discussed together with…

The U.S. Department of Education's "back to the basics" thrust of the 1980s took a terrible toll on enrollments for those teaching in the "practical arts." So, in the face of declining enrollments, angry employers wanting more program graduates, and a concerned advisory council, technology teachers must go on television and express their…

This paper introduces the language associated with a polygon microworld called Polygon R&D, which has the mathematical crispness of Logo and has the discreteness and simplicity of a Turing machine. In this microworld, polygons serve two purposes: as agents (similar to the turtles in Logo), and as data (landmarks in the plane). Programming the…

In its second year, the Tech Savvy Girls Project adopted "Teen Second Life" as a platform for interest-driven learning and designed projects and objects around themes important to them and their futures as technology-using, creative people. By using the building tools in an open-ended virtual world, they were able to pursue interests common to…