This issue of the "Early Childhood Bulletin" explains the developmental and learning implications of play for very young children and outlines ways in which assistive technology can open doors to play for children with disabilities. The importance of incorporating assistive technology into a child's early intervention program through the…

The Technology Mentor Fellowship Program (TMFP), a consortium consisting of 6 rural East Texas school districts, 1 urban Central Texas School district, and Texas A&M University has designed an approach for integrating technology into teacher preparation programs that impacted over 5,000 minority, language-minority, and children of poverty and…

The instructional design that is imperative towards the design and development of a Web-based course environment is of primary consideration when a graduate-level course is the focus of attention. Further, a multimedia course that incorporates the theoretical as well as hands-on elements that must be consistently focused upon and updated is of…

This paper describes the evaluation of high quality learning designs, which are being selected for possible redevelopment in a National Project funded by the Australian University Teaching Committee (AUTC). The project focuses on "Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Their Role in Flexible Learning" and is evaluating…

This paper presents and evaluates different types of student assessment measures--including discussion-generating questions, multiple choice questions, essay questions, and authentic projects--for on-line courses. The paper asserts that assessment should mimic how students will be evaluated on the job site in the real world, meaning that they…

This paper presents information for educators on delivering an Internet-based course. The paper is divided into three parts. Part 1, "Teaching on the Web, What Is It?," lists advantages and disadvantages of face-to-face classroom instruction, traditional distance education, and Internet-based education which combines features from both…

The purpose of the Web Retargetable Course Generation System, or "ReCourse," developed at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Massachusetts) is to facilitate both distance and on-campus learning via the World Wide Web. ReCourse's features include the ability to retarget a Web course for different levels of students, multi-user chat rooms, a…

This report summarizes findings and recommendations from the Road Ahead Program (1995-1997) of the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education (NFIE), a nonprofit foundation of the National Education Association and funded by Bill Gates, cofounder and CEO of Microsoft Corporation. Twenty-two sites in 15 states were selected by the NFIE.…

The ParlEuNet (European Parliament Network) under development at the Joint Research Center of the European Communities is a Web-based information system that will provide a multimedia educational platform for 10 secondary schools across Europe. Schools, teachers and pupils will use the system to teach, learn about, and prepare collaborative…

This document, a summary of reports presented at the 1998 annual symposium of the Forum for the Future of Higher Education, covers a wide range of issues that are likely to influence how colleges and universities deal with such questions as what business they are actually in, what are their institutional strengths, how will they compete in a…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of learning strategy and summarization within a computer-based chemistry and physics program. High school students worked individually or in cooperative dyads to complete science instruction; half of them completed summaries over the instructional content when directed to do so. The study…

This paper presents the methods and results of a year-long evaluation study, conducted for the purpose of determining disability accessibility barriers and potential solutions for those barriers found in four World Wide Web-based learning environments. The primary questions used to frame the evaluation study were: (1) Are there any features of the…

This pilot study explores the perceptions of distance education students of their classroom environment using the College/University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI), a traditional classroom assessment tool. The CUCEI has seven scales that cover the areas of personalization, involvement, student cohesiveness, satisfaction, task orientation,…

This document consists of online instructional materials designed for adult education use. It is a seven lesson course designed to help the student develop better spelling and grammar skills, write with greater purpose and focus, and exercise better word choice through an enriched vocabulary. Detailed lessons, complete with worksheets and…

The Community School District Six Laptop Project (New York, NY) was created in order to increase access to technology for families in a low-income area with a large immigrant population. As part of the project, the sixth-grade students in this study received IBM ThinkPads. Trends that appear in the literature on integrating technology into the…