Describes how and why a high school English teacher changed her classroom to allot more time for creative writing, to teach a research paper from a personal perspective, and to extend student appreciation of voice and conflict beyond the literature studied in class. Describes how this fostered opportunities for individual growth and transformed…

Frogwatch is a volunteer monitoring program developed in response to worldwide concern about declining populations of amphibians. Outlines a frog-monitoring program and a wetland study to be conducted alone or together. Explains the basics, including choosing a frog, introducing the topic, mapping, recordkeeping, equipment, survey procedures, and…

Offers suggestions on ways to use computers to individualize instruction for gifted students including drill and practice, simulation programs, independent research, creative projects, organization of data, and development of presentations. (DB)

Research topics are described for class projects on the American Civil War and presented in the following seven categories: causes of the Civil War; The Election of 1860; Abraham Lincoln; music and poetry of the era; slavery; Civil War soldiers; and women during the war. Web resources are shown for each section in box displays. (AEF)

To experience the world of professional science, students must have access to the scientific community and be allowed to become real scientists. A partnership involving the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Lewis Center for Educational Research has produced Jupiter Quest, an engaging curriculum…

Since 1994, the Teaching Library at the University of California-Berkeley has conducted an ongoing Survey of Information Literacy Competencies in selected academic departments to measure the "lower-order" information literacy skills of graduating seniors. The survey reveals that students think they know more about accessing information and…

Discusses the need to motivate students to make information literacy programs successful and demonstrates how a middle school library media specialist used Small and Arnone's Motivation Overlay for Information Skills Instruction to build a set of customized toolkits to improve student research that includes the Big6[TM] approach to library and…

Describes the Southwest Texas State University course "History Practicum: Researching, Writing, and Publishing Local History" that stresses computer proficiency, teamwork, and active learning. Students create and publish a guidebook for a town, city, or historic site in central Texas. Discusses the publication process of "San Marcos: A Guide to a…

A study investigated differences in ways that male and female supervisors (n=7) of undergraduate research in a British university approach supervision and the student-supervisor relationship. Results reveal contrasting ways of working and some differences in use of language to describe and discuss the practice of supervision, suggesting gender may…

Describes a project in which students at a school in Ghana develop an authentic but fictitious character who is captured and sold to the Europeans on the coast. Notes the stories are mailed to partner schools in the United States who write about what happens to these characters after becoming slaves. Notes students' intense interest and…

Describes an experiential learning strategy and field research project that was used as a means of transforming undergraduate students' gender understandings by engaging them in the research process from the development of hypotheses through the interpretation of data collected in field interviews. Discusses student reactions. (CMK)

Discusses the resources "The Great American History Machine: An Interactive Atlas of 19th and 20th Century U.S. Social and Political History" and "The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War." Describes how each is used to teach undergraduates in a course on history research methods. (CMK)

Discusses strategies to help students improve their research skills when using the Internet. Considers questioning techniques that can lead to deeper learning; identifying information problems; selecting appropriate keywords; search engines versus subject directories; Boolean operators; information literacy; library bookmarks; and using high…

Describes a global issues project in which students modeled the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Discusses project aspects while focusing on the use of the Alta Vista Forum for web-based threaded discussion. (CMK)

Describes a project in which secondary school students of German helped their teacher investigate, translate, and organize mid-nineteenth-century German-American papers, including "Einwanderer," an activity-based supplementary reader recounting the true story of a group of German immigrants to the United States in 1847. (MSE)