The successful integration of information technologies in the teaching of biology and other sciences is in part dependent on the transition from closed to open teaching and learning environments. This paper outlines the transition from a closed model of schooling in rural Newfoundland and Labrador to the beginnings of an open model. Seniors in a…

A great deal of experimentation with telecommunications technologies is occurring in both New Zealand and Atlantic Canadian rural schools. New Zealand has developed a National Information and Communications Technology Strategy, the objectives and initiatives of which are described. On both the North and South Islands, small rural schools have…

This paper describes two pilot programs that are developing networks among rural New Zealand schools to address the educational isolation of students. A program located in the South Island consists of a consortium of six small rural high schools using distance education technology to offer an expanded curriculum to rural students. The goal of the…

The TeleLearning and Rural Education Centre was established in January 1997 at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in one of the most sparsely populated and economically depressed areas of Canada. Of 462 schools in Newfoundland and Labrador, 66 percent are rural and over half have enrollments of under 200 students. The Centre was established to…