This article is a report on the findings of a study (phase one) conducted at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates about making some important decisions regarding its instructional technology and the effects it will have on its students. The study was conducted to determine student perceptions about using more than one type of computer. A…

This article features ImaginOn: The Joe and Joan Martin Center," a learning facility wherein students are provided with an original approach to education, learning, and the arts. ImaginOn is a joint venture of the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLMC) and the Children's Theater of Charlotte. ImaginOn's mission is to "bring…

A relatively new feature of human performance technology (HPT) is e-training, which, while considerably more economical and time-efficient than traveling to a remote location for training, presents other challenges. Course length remains a problem, and there are professional organizations for which performance improvement is too difficult to…

As an information and instruction librarian at SUNY-Cortland, the author is responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining the Library's Web site. In this article, she describes her experience in combining print/microform holdings list. She pursued a strategy that would make the two holding lists "appear" as one by using XML. She iterates…

Online library services have been mostly available uniquely in English. To serve the diverse communities that uses library services, a growing number of libraries have been investigating the ins and outs of offering virtual reference in languages other than English. Developing this kind of service in languages spoken by various library user groups…

Short on funding and IT staff, a Western Canada library struggled to provide adequate public computing resources. Staff turned to a Linux-based solution that supports up to 10 users from a single computer, and blends Web browsing and productivity applications with session management, Internet filtering, and user authentication. In this article,…

Technology is an integral part of educational goals today. A study of technology use in a large urban Midwestern school district found that teachers have equipment available to them, but it is oftentimes inadequate, inconvenient, or not working. Teachers would like to use technology, but in reality they don't use it. Part of the reason is lack of…

Students are, increasingly, digital content producers, and participate extensively in evolving online social networks. The emergence of the former represents subtle changes in students' experience of images, audience, copyright, ownership of learning, and technology. Experiencing the latter places students in an awkward position in terms of…

Research has shown that technology-enhanced visualizations can improve inquiry learning in science when they are designed to support knowledge integration. Visualizations play an especially important role in supporting science learning at elementary and middle school levels because they can make unseen and complex processes visible. We identify 4…

The Technology Enhanced Elementary and Middle School Science II project (TEEMSS), funded by the National Science Foundation, produced 15 inquiry-based instructional science units for teaching in grades 3-8. Each unit uses computers and probeware to support students' investigations of real-world phenomena using probes (e.g., for temperature or…

Australia wide, all school systems are in the process of providing teachers with computers and there is an expectation that new teachers will possess the expertise to use them in their teaching. In addition to using computers for basic word processing and data manipulation, early-career science teachers need to be able to use a range of…

This collection provides an overview of literature entered into the ERIC database in 1990 on computer applications in elementary and secondary education, adult education, and special education. The first of four sections contains a list of overview documents on computer assisted instruction. Focusing on special applications, the second section…

Because a significant portion of U.S. students lacks critical mathematic skills, schools across the country are investing heavily in computerized curriculums as a way to enhance education output, even though there is surprisingly little evidence that they actually improve student achievement. In this paper we present results from a randomized…

This paper explores the Web 2.0 ethos with respect to the application of pedagogy within 3D online virtual environments. 3D worlds can create a synthetic experience capturing the essence of "being" in a particular world or context. The AliveX3D platform adopts the Web 2.0 ethos and applies it to online 3D virtual environment forming a Web…

The Maui Hawaii Educational consortium (the Maui School District and Maui Community College) sought scientifically based evidence for the effectiveness of the "Cognitive Tutor (CT) Algebra I Curriculum" to inform adoption decisions. Decision makers were particularly interested in whether the use of the "CT" program affects…