In the present paper, the authors report on a comparative study on the pedagogic effectiveness of printed self-learning text with face-to-face tutorial support, interactive multimedia CD-ROM and online learning in an introductory computing module at the certificate level offered at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), India. The study…

The end of the school year is a hectic time for high school principals. Summer often provides a brief opportunity to "kick-back" and take time to rest, relax and spend some time thinking about the coming school year. As the school year ends the author would like to introduce several new or updated resources that every high school principal will…

Open education, as embodied in open educational resources (OER) and OpenCourseWare (OCW), has met and dealt with several key problems. The movement now has a critical mass of available content. Leveraging no small amount of funding and associated development, open education has the tools to collect, disseminate, and support the discovery of open…

From a variation on community service to a discipline-specific strategy to a powerful pedagogy to a vehicle of democracy and the common good, community-based learning has proven itself to be an educational resource whose time has come. In this article, the authors trace the recent history of community-based teaching and learning and its symbiotic…

November 9, 2009, marked the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. The Wall, a symbol of the Cold War, separated the German people for 28 years (1961-1989), keeping those on the East side isolated. Although the construction and dismantling of the Berlin Wall is a significant part of history, the topic is little covered in the…

"Education Matters" is the monthly newsletter of the Association of American Educators (AAE), an organization dedicated to advancing the American teaching profession through personal growth, professional development, teacher advocacy and protection. This issue of the newsletter includes: (1) Creating New Paths, Attracting New Teachers: Why…

Developing countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on schools, educational materials and teachers, but relatively little is known about how effective these expenditures are at increasing students' years of completed schooling and, more importantly, the skills that they learn while in school. This paper examines studies published…

Teachers are forced to use state-adopted texts, approved materials and methods in order to facilitate learning. The creativity of designing a lesson plan that meets the needs of each student, while fostering the imagination and creativity, can be all but lost when constrained by such parameters. So what can teachers do to enhance the learning…

Brain science is a new and complex field. It has emerged with the application of new technologies for brain imaging like Magnetic Resonance Images (MRIs) and Computer Axial Tomography (CAT) scans. Since the brain is the site for learning, educators stand to benefit from this knowledge when it is applied to improving methods of teaching or…

A quantitative method of mapping the web usage of an innovative educational portal is applied to analyze the behaviour of users of the COSMOS Science Education Portal. The COSMOS Portal contains user-generated resources (that are uploaded by its users). It has been designed to support a science teacher's search, retrieval and access to both,…

Support for intellectual freedom, a concept codified in the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights and Code of Ethics, is one of the core tenets of modern librarianship. According to the most recent interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights, academic librarians are encouraged to incorporate the principles of intellectual freedom…

The most successful school library media specialists are those who collaborate with teachers as full partners in the instructional process. Without assertive action by the school library media specialist, however, school administrators and teachers are likely to be more aware of the media specialist's administrative role than the roles of teacher,…

Hundreds of thousands of children and youth with disabilities across the country are receiving secondary transition services. Secondary transition is the process of preparing students with disabilities for life after they leave high school, including participation in post-secondary education or training, employment and independent living.…

The development of the resource file is a common experience in teacher preparation programs. The author examines strategies for transforming what has been a project composed of physical resources to one emphasizing digital resources. Methods for finding, tagging, storing and retrieving resources are explored.

Despite the growing availability and popularity of simulations and other active teaching techniques, many instructors may be deterred from using simulations because of the potentially high costs involved. Instructors could spend a preponderance of their time and resources developing and executing simulations, but such an approach is not necessary.…