As endowments and fundraising campaigns have skyrocketed in recent decades, critics have attacked higher education for steeply increasing its production cost and price and the snowballing debt of students. In "Wealth, Cost, and Price in American Higher Education," Bruce A. Kimball and Sarah M. Iler reveal how these trends began 150 years…

This report discusses the effects of lead exposure and toxicity on children's cognitive development and school performance and addresses the role of schools in prevention of lead poisoning. Sources of lead exposure include mining, smelting and refining activities, lead paint, leaded gasoline, and industrial emissions. The results of lead poisoning…

This paper describes the application of a risk-based decision-making process in education and the use of risk communication with special education students and their parents. Risk-based decision making clarifies uncertainties inherent in a decision by examining the probability of a resulting harmful effect and the consequences of decisions made.…

Risk communication is a methodology recommended for rural special education professionals who communicate with parents and teachers. Using rural special education examples, the steps of risk-based decision making are described: hazard identification, hazard assessment, risk assessment, risk management, risk analysis, and risk communication.…

This paper provides basic information on searching the Internet and describes sites of interest in the area of rural special education. The first section traces the evolution of the Internet through various phases--ARPANET, NSFNET, CERNET, and the beginnings of the World Wide Web--and describes various protocols (methods and tools) developed to…

Computer mediated learning (CML) courses can overcome the temporal and spatial obstacles of isolated commuter students with busy schedules. Whether presented online or as an add-on to an on-campus course, the CML course needs a good syllabus. This paper discusses components of a CML syllabus and online activities for students. Typical components…

This paper outlines assumptions and principles related to computer mediated learning (CML) and suggests instructional design and classroom strategies for CML planning and practice. The pedagogy of control is contrasted with the pedagogy of choice and the latter constructivist viewpoint is recommended as the basis of CML. Assumptions about learning…

Asynchronous computer mediated learning (CML) provides a mechanism for student interaction that is unique among educational delivery systems. Collaborative interactive learning can lead to deeper learning than is possible without interaction among learners and may enable groups of learners to become more knowledgeable than the teacher in narrow…

Portfolios provide a means to represent excellence and variety in the work of one preparing to be a teacher. This paper reviews the implementation of portfolios with preservice teachers and describes appropriate electronic artifacts for inclusion in an electronic portfolio. Teaching portfolios are typically composed of artifacts, reproductions,…

The Internet is a useful tool for special education teachers and parents of children with disabilities in rural areas. For teachers there are multipurpose sites, sites for special education teachers, and sites related to specific disabilities. Parental education sites discuss learning about disabilities, coping strategies, support organizations,…

Intergenerational learning communities develop when learners from one class create materials that learners from later classes can use. If information for a class is collected and maintained in an electronic archive, each successive class, or generation, can use that material and build upon it. The compilation of documents results in a…

This paper discusses techniques and resources to use to stimulate creativity through a web site for several "generations" of gifted and talented learners. To organize a web site to stimulate creativity, two categories of development issues must be considered: intrinsic person variables, and process variables such as thinking skills,…

A hyperbook is a form of distance education that promotes computer-mediated learning and collaborative/constructive learning in the development of multigenerational learning communities. A hyperbook is composed of hypertext that resides on the Internet. Hypertext is text with embedded links that allow the reader to move around in the text or to…

When in the "zone of proximal development" for a particular skill or piece of information, a learner is ready to learn but lacks certain prerequisites. Scaffolding is an interactive process in which a teacher or facilitator assists such a learner to build a "structure" to contain and frame the new information. Scaffolding can…