This book examines the promise and some of the perils of the new digital age in higher education. It addresses how cost and affordability impact on universal access, noting that current virtual and distance education options will result in a digital divide. The book advocates removing barriers to higher education in order to make digitized…

This booklet, which is intended for general readers wishing to understand important trends in vocational education and training (VET) in Australia, provides an overview of the basic issues in online delivery of VET. The following topics are discussed in the booklet's first six sections: (1) basic principles of online delivery; (2) benefits and…

English is not the most widely spoken language in the world, but it is the most widely used by non-native speakers, making the teaching of English as a Second Language a very important endeavor. This book provides an overview of English language teaching, giving the reader a general background on the issues related to language…

Educators must work together to ensure that every American young person has access to the skills and experiences needed to become a full participant, can articulate their understanding of how media shapes perceptions, and has been socialized into the emerging ethical standards that should shape their practices as media makers and participants in…

This "Handbook" provides a comprehensive and international representation of state-of-the art research, theory, and practice related to principal areas in which significant developments are occurring in the study of literacy and technology. It offers a glimpse of the commonalities faced by literacy educators around the world, together…

Briefly describes a World Wide Web site developed in conjunction with the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and IBM. The New Deal Network is seen as being more than an online photographic archive. It will include online essays, discussion groups, and teaching guides. The Web site is http://newdeal.marist.edu. (MJP)

This article presents sets of observations and recommendations for Web-based distance learning, based on formative and summative performance and opinion data collected from participants involved in the design, development, and utilization of Wired Class, a Web-based learning environment that was developed to teach mathematics to Egyptian secondary…

Interactive television (iTV) is a new media technology that has great potential for supporting second language learning, particularly for independent adult learners. It has many characteristics demanded by modern second language (L2) learning theories and is technologically quite sophisticated. However, in order for it to succeed it needs to fit…

This paper discusses a framework for designing online tasks that capitalizes on the possibilities that the Internet and the Web offer for language learning. To present such a framework, we draw from constructivist theories (Brooks and Brooks, 1993) and their application to educational technology (Newby, Stepich, Lehman and Russell, 1996; Jonassen,…

This paper reports on a study carried out in Thailand investigating the relationship between students' use of an e-learning system and their learning outcomes in a course on Business Statistics. The results show a clear relationship between accesses to the e-learning system, as measured by number of "hits", and outcomes, as measured by…

Closing the digital divide requires much more than buying equipment, it requires increasing the knowledge and skills of teachers using the technology, and access to digital tools in the community. In such a larger system of change, technology can serve as a catalyst for increasing teacher and student learning. The Anaheim City School District…

This article describes the implementation and evaluation of a learning objects based computer aided system for an advanced engineering course at Ghent University, Belgium. A new syllabus concept was introduced: students had access to a Web-delivered component and received an identical printed component as two sources of information additional to…

The purpose of "Focus" is to provide coverage of poverty-related research, events, and issues, and to acquaint a large audience with the work of the Institute for Research on Poverty by means of short essays on selected pieces of research. This issue contains the following articles: (1) The new global labor market (Richard B. Freeman);…

These 19 papers were selected from the Eighth National Conference on College Teaching and Learning and focus on the theme of "Teaching, Learning, and Technology: Creative Uses of the World Wide Web." Titles include: (1) "Guided Web Exploration for Teaching Critical Thinking" (Judith A. Baker); (2) "Top Ten Strategies for Using Humor as an…

This book, written by graduate students at the Catholic University (District of Columbia) School of Library and Information Science, examines current priorities, policies, and practices of public libraries. Following an introduction, "Reinventing Libraries: Responding to the Forces of Change" (Lisa Crisman), chapters include: (1) "A…