At a conference in 1988 the Maricopa Community Colleges (Arizona) began the process that resulted in development of the Ocotillo Action/Research Groups to study the development of educational technologies in the community college setting. This year-end report presents the following reports of the various working groups, which summarize activities…

Humankind has become accustomed to reading and learning from printed books. The computer offers us the possibility to exploit another medium whose key advantage is flexibility through extensive memory, computational speed, and versatile representational means. Specifically, we have the hypercard application, an integrated piece of software, with…

This paper reviews literature on the use of computers at work and home, computer skills needed by new teachers, and suggestions for administrators to support computer usage in schools. A survey of 52 school districts serving the Houston area of southeast Texas is reported, indicating that 22,664 computers were in use, with a mean of 436 computers…

This collection of 111 readings on educational technology is intended for use in formal teacher training courses or inservice programs for teachers. The articles, most of which focus on computer technology, were originally published in journals in the field of educational technology. The articles are arranged in eight chapters that address: (1)…

The objectives of this research were to review existing computer-assisted instruction systems for propositional calculus proofs or elementary logic and to develop an instructional computer program that guides students in the valid construction of propositional calculus proofs. The system is unique in that it provides assistance at each step of the…

The use of computer assisted instruction in teaching statistical concepts was studied. Students enrolled in classes in education who lacked statistical experience participated. Knowledge questions for pretest and posttest assessments were prepared from a pool of questions used in the statistics department of the College of Education at Virginia…

"A Computer for Every Teacher" was a project of the Indiana Department of Education to provide each teacher and administrator in four schools with a computer and printer for personal and professional use. This equipment was accompanied by software and realistic amounts of training. Its focus was to improve teacher productivity and to enhance…

Whether gender differences in performance using computer software are due to sex stereotyping or gender differentiation in the programs was investigated in two studies. An adventure game, "King and Crown," with all male characters, and a gender neutral game, "Honeybears," were played by 26 female and 26 male 11- and…

This study examined whether the inquiry-based problem solving model supports sustained exploration of a multimedia database. This model contains five steps: (1) analyze the discrepant event from which a problem question is generated; (2) generate questions; (3) gather data; (4) analyze information; and (5) evaluate self. A group of 24 seventh…

It was hypothesized that a visual strategy that incorporates a humorous theme and cartoons with humorous comments relevant to the content helps motivate students to focus on and retain computer-based instructional material. An experiment to assess this hypothesis was undertaken with 43 college students who received a humorous presentation on…

The ways in which Digital Video Interactive (DVI), a new video technology, can help students learn concepts of physics were studied in a project that included software design and production as well as formative and summative evaluation. DVI provides real-time motion, with the full-motion image contained to a window on part of the screen so that…

This enthnographic study examines the process of implementing an interactive videodisc program in a senior high school. The research questions were: What happened during the implementation process and what factors facilitated or hindered the implementation of the innovation? Descriptive data were collected through participant observation,…

This paper argues that the concepts and techniques used in the development of expert systems should be expanded and applied to the field of education, particularly in the area of intelligent tutoring systems. It is noted that expert systems are a well known area of artificial intelligence and have been proven effective in well-defined topic areas.…

This guide for using computers in the whole language classroom provides teachers with practical ideas for the use of computers to promote group interaction and cooperative learning, including: (1) software webs to assist theme development; (2) pre-computer activities to motivate students; (3) computer activities to develop software competence; (4)…

This study sought to examine the group dynamics of children working and learning collaboratively on a computer-based instructional writing task. Standard 3 and 4 children at two urban primary schools in the Dunedin area of New Zealand were assigned the task of producing illustrated interactive stories using the "Twist-a-plot" program.…