In 1991, educators at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia began developing ideas for integrating telecommunications into the instructional practices of public school teachers using Virginia's Public Education Network. Teachers from across the state were invited to participate in a telecommunications project called the…

Dynamic Learning Communities (DLCs) offer an alternative approach to the traditional Instructional Design (ID) format for learning. This paper outlines the concept of a dynamic learning community as an alternative to teacher-controlled or pre-designed instructional systems. DLCs are groups of people, who form a learning community generally…

This paper explores questions about the ways in which students, teachers, administrators, and parents negotiate new sets of roles and expectations for schooling in the innovative climate of a new middle school. A new school in an Australian city has implemented a coordinated package of approaches including integrated curriculum, portfolio…

This paper examines the development of science content knowledge of elementary teachers (N=25) as a result of participating in a summer science Institute funded by the Massachusetts Department of Education and the National Science Foundation. The institute was designed to integrate the physical, life, and earth sciences by addressing the National…

This paper describes major characteristics of Australia and its education system, including changes in the structure of higher education as former Colleges of Advanced Education, where most teacher education in Australia had been conducted, amalgamated with existing universities or became new universities. Preservice teacher education models are…

The Levels of Computer Use assessment (LCU) was developed to classify teachers' use of computers so that variations of use could be studied. The LCU was derived from the model of Instructional Transformation of L. P. Rieber and P. W. Welliver. The model describes the process of the adoption of innovation, focusing on the adoption of the computer…

A high school teacher was studied who was known to have begun implementation of a modern paradigm of mathematics education, as described in the "Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics" and the "Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics," both by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. His…

Computerized systems have dramatically altered the way that information can be organized, published, searched and retrieved. This paper: (1) examines the components of subject access in online systems; (2) identifies the potential for subject access enhancements, such as enriching the contents of the database and improving user-system interaction,…

This paper presents a qualitative description of one of Hawaii's educational reform projects: the Electronic School Pilot Project, an innovative method of integrating advanced telecommunications technology into the classroom as a proposed cure for statewide inadequate or low performance on national standard exams (e.g., ACT and SAT). The…

This paper describes an ongoing experiment at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne regarding the use of World Wide Web-based document annotations for educational purposes. An annotation tool called Medium was built, merging database and Web technologies, to be used as a companion for classical university courses and collaborative…

This paper describes the use of email to extend dialogue in a secondary English methods course. The purpose of this email project was to provide opportunities for students to reflect on and respond individually to issues discussed in the methods classes and their own teaching during the clinical experiences and to provide individual guidance to…

This paper recalibrates strategies for faculty recruitment, training, and compensation for distance education. The new options evolving from distance technologies create opportunities for innovative recruitment strategies. Whether the model is individually- or team-oriented, distance technologies mean that a more diverse, qualified, talented, and…

This paper suggests that educational resources and opportunities currently in operation in rural Australia are brought forward during times of crisis. The paper discusses five aspects of education in rural Australia that are a response to the perceived sense of crisis and that have improved the general and comparative quality of rural education,…

Using matched pairs of geography questions, a new testing method for machine-scored fill-in-the-blank, multiple-digit testing (MDT) questions was compared to the traditional multiple-choice (MC) style. Data were from 118 matched or parallel test items for 4 tests from 764 college students of geography. The new method produced superior results when…

Five papers focussing on educational technology are presented in this issue. "Computerised Instructional Technologies: Considerations for Lectures and Instructional Designers" (Helen Geissinger) and "The Higher Education Distance Learner and Technology" (Terry Geddes) locates the new technologies within a solidly grounded…