Part 1 of this paper deals with the major philosophies of elementary industrial arts. Five philosophy groupings are identified: Industrial Arts (1) as a means of developing habits, attitudes, problem solving abilities, and interests, (2) as a means to meet developmental needs of children, (3) as a program for involving students in making objects…

This study investigates the relationships among different types of resources in science and student science career interests. A survey method was used to collect data from over 600 middle school students in several states. Classrooms were classified into resources use types based on teacher responses to six questions indicating the regular use of…

This paper discusses the use of tools that allow the development and presentation of time- and place-independent courseware. Such tools make the Internet another valuable delivery method for distance education courses. The use of the tools is discussed in relationship to a course currently being offered at the Community College of Southern Nevada…

The shift to new paradigms in education pushed by new media has initiated a critical rethinking in the conversation about and practice of teaching and learning. This paper proposes a new description of curriculum design based on a traditional conceptual knowledge framework. The goal is to make a theoretical contribution for interpreting the…

Learning is an active, constructive and collaborative process, where people construct knowledge from their experiences in the world. People construct new knowledge with particular effectiveness when they engage in constructing personally meaningful products, that is meaningful to themselves or to others around them. The construction of knowledge…

The Didactics of Informatics research group at the University of Paderborn (Germany) is involved in efforts to design, implement and evaluate a curriculum for Media education for prospective teachers at the secondary school level. One major issue is the question of whether it is necessary for future teachers to learn the basic concepts of…

This paper reviews a set of studies that examined what students learn in various virtual reality environments (VREs) designed to promote an understanding of environmental science. The goal of the reported studies was to provide an update to the classic distinction between the role of media versus method in promoting learning (Clark, 1999). Media…

Originally part of a symposium on educational media for the deaf, the paper describes a pilot experiment with six deaf students at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf using the DAVID (Data Analysis in Video Interactive Device) system to learn lipreading. Results indicated that the system is at least equal to conventional instruction.…

Originally part of a symposium on educational media for the deaf, the paper reviews some of the past, current, and future applications of computer technology to the learning and communications problems of the deaf. (PHR)

Urges distance educators to pay more attention to planning proper student interactions with "wetware," the internal processing/storage/retrieval systems and strategies used by the distance education learner. Notes that while hardware and software have developed, there has been little research into the differing learning styles of distance…

Examines the effectiveness of the radio in education and the crucial role of the radio in distance education in first half of the 20th century; dramatic social changes in the 1960s that led to a review of educational institutions and of educational media; and the radio today as a neglected but inexpensive medium of communication that should be…

This ethnography explores the leadership qualities of a public school district media director, the person who "orchestrates" the use of technology. Using observation, interviews, and artifact analysis, the following questions were investigated: (1) What are the beliefs and values which underlie this media director's decisions?; (2) What are the…

This paper reports on student reaction to the use of computer programs in political science courses during 1991-1995 at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. The courses were junior-senior level courses, except for the honors section. Three types of software were used: (1) simulations; (2) Internet materials; and (3) data processing software…

To examine the effects of word processing on basic writers, a pilot study compared two classes of basic writers (40 students)--one class using word processors and one class using handwriting--at Glenville State College in West Virginia. At the beginning of the semester, students from both sections wrote one explanatory essay and one persuasive…

Social implications of distance education at the university level are considered, based primarily on the case of La Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED) of Costa Rica. UNED, which is Costa Rica's attempt to implement Great Britain's open university philosophy of education, was developed in response to the following needs: to provide…