Playground safety is a critical issue in the United States. About 60-70% of all playground injury lawsuits carry a claim relating to inadequate maintenance. The article discusses U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission guidelines and American Society for Testing and Materials safety standards for playgrounds. (SM)

There has been much interest in using software tools to scaffold learners in complex tasks, that is, to provide supports that enable students to deal with more complex content and skill demands than they could otherwise handle. Many different approaches to scaffolding techniques have been presented in a broad range of software tools. I argue that…

Contends that the level of safety built into roads is largely unpremeditated and that roads and highways are not as safe as they might be. Discusses practices, standards, and deficiencies in highway and traffic safety related to geometric design and traffic engineering. Recommends increased transportation engineering professionalism and public…

The 11 papers in this collection focus on research in instructional television, the theme of a conference attended by media producers, researchers, and policy makers from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States. The opening paper by Deane Hutton discusses two parallel but contrasting…

Readability in distance learning, the cloze procedure as a means of assessing readability, and the preparation of distance learning materials are addressed in the following 14 conference papers: "Some Suggestions for Improving the Reading/Comprehension Skills of Students at a Distance" (Jean Anderson); "Student Response to the…

This report provides a summary of the 2-year IVSET (Interactive Videodisc for Special Education Technology ) project which refined microcomputer and videodisc system hardware, produced instructional packages, and investigated the system effectiveness. These activities built on the achievements of a pilot project which had developed a preliminary…

This report is a collection of 11 recent papers by the Human-Machine Interaction Group at the University of California, San Diego. The following papers are included: (1) "Stages and Levels in Human-Machine Interaction," Donald A. Norman; (2) "The Nature of Expertise in UNIX," Stephen W. Draper; (3) "Users in the Real…

The Shelter Care Competition, devised to help communities identify cost-effective shelter care facilities for juveniles, sought to generate new ideas for, and to apply environmental characteristics to, residential facilities. The designs were submitted by university students who incorporated the concept of adaptive re-use as a cost effective…

This paper describes the results of a 6-year period of design, implementation, testing, and iterative redesign of a programming language, user aids, and curriculum materials for use by psychology students learning how to write simple computer programs. The SOLO language, which was the resulting product, is primarily a simple, database…