Describes a study conducted to determine prevalence of educational software field testing by producers, number of teachers and students participating, evaluation criteria used, whether documentation includes field test results, field test value, and other evaluation methods utilized during product development. Textbook versus software evaluation,…

Summarizes developments, trends, and strategies of computer use in education by discussing the history of computers in education, benefits of computers for instruction, hardware and software selection and use, and types of computer programs. Examples of computer programs and computer applications used in food and nutrition education are included.…

Discusses the differences between the uses of microcomputers and minicomputers as educational tools. Outlines how a Maryland school district overcame the drawbacks it found in using microcomputers by developing a more comprehensive computer-assisted instruction program using minicomputers. (MD)

A brief review of shortcomings of commercially available computer assisted instruction (CAI) programs, is followed by a description of Wordsworth II, a sophisticated interactive CAI program written at Michigan Technological University for teaching English composition. Criteria met by each of the program's eight process-based modules are discussed…

The pre-math computer program for preschool children that is described is divided into subprograms representing different basic numerical concepts--discrimination, recognition, and recall--and presents research design used to test the program's effectiveness with Head Start preschool children. Results indicate the program was ineffective…

A college physics department has been operating a "computer games station" in a corridor, with unrestricted access. The design of this station and summary of programs used are described. Program focuses on acceleration, rotating vectors, Maxwell's demonstration, wave display, and Fourier synthesis. (JN)

Research on effective beginning reading instruction has helped to define what instructional methods and content are most valuable. The research has shown that three important aspects of beginning reading instruction are alphabetic principles, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. A review of research in Part 1 of this Technical Paper…

Getting real educational benefits from investments in technology requires careful planning. Based on the experience of implementing PLATO[R] at over 5,000 sites, a nine-step planning model for implementing technology was developed. The nine planning tasks are based on the understanding of the factors that are critical to the success of most…

Any educational technology is only as good as the way it is used for learning. There are many different instructional models using many different types of software, and not all models are equally effective in meeting users' needs. This Technical Paper begins with an overview of ways computer technologies can be used in instruction, and groups them…

The second session of IT@EDU98 consisted of four papers on multimedia and was chaired by Luu Tien Hiep (Lotus College, Vietnam). "Multimedia Education" (Tran Van Hao, Ngo Huy Hoang) describes "Multimedia Education v. 1.0," an educational software program for elementary school children that uses games to teach counting,…

This paper presents the use of an XML grammar for two complementary projects--CHAMELEON (Cooperative Hypermedia Adaptive MultimEdia Learning Objects) and EIT (Enabling Informal Teamwork). Areas of applications are modular courseware documents and the collaborative authoring process of didactical units. A number of requirements for a suitable…

This paper show instructors how to develop their own streaming multimedia presentations that can be loaded onto a schools' server and played by students over the Internet. Topics covered include: the use of courseware to create an online course or to complement face-to-face instruction; features of Oncourse, Indiana Universitys proprietary version…

It is well established that Web-based courseware must not restrict itself to the mere delivery of instructional material, but must be grounded in some sound model of instruction and learning. This paper discusses one such model, based on the best of instructional design principles and tries to overcome two of the most serious problems that are…

Teachers have acknowledged the richer learning environment and interactivity of multimedia teaching, its flexibility to different learning styles, and learner control that allows the learner to fully engage in the learning process. However, they still have problems in courseware design because their work is mainly centered on exercises and not on…

This paper describes the development of a database-driven World Wide Web-based tutorial to support pre/in-service teacher education in learning Web page creation. The paper focuses on querying the tutorial database. Advantages, disadvantages, software and hardware, and revisions are reported. Contains 10 references. (MES)