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DLRN Technology Resource Guide

Designing Instruction for Web Based Distance Learning

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Technology Tips for Differentiated Instruction

Technology innovations are coming faster and faster, bringing with them new learning environments, new tools and technologies, and new issues and consequences. Helping educators stay on top of the latest developments and their implications for learning, teaching and managing educational enterprises is the goal of this theme.

Resources

	Access and Opportunity: Policy Options for Interactive Video Education
	This document was produced by the Northwest Regional Education Lab to provide an overview of policy issues in video education

Essential Principles of High-Quality Online Teaching: Guidelines for Evaluating K-12 Online Teachers

This 2003 publication from Southern Regional Education Board looks at issues of high quality teaching in the online environment. As more and more K-12 students use Web-based courses, it is important to identify the essential qualities of online teachers. These teachers must know their subjects and how to teach them, must be able to communicate well via computers and the Web, and must be able to encourage active participation by students. This publication looks at the unique skills required for online teachers and concludes with a checklist that can be used to help determine whether such teachers meet standards in several areas.

Essential Principles of Quality

5{ Region Education Board (SREB) has prepared guidelines to assure states, school districts and schools that courses complying with the principles will be high-quality courses that effectively get students to meet academic goals. The principles also are intended to ensure that the characteristics of good teaching and learning are addressed during the development and use of electronically delivered courses. Essential Principles of Quality focuses on three primary areas in assessing the quality of Web-based courses: 1) curriculum, instruction and student assessment; 2) management; and 3) evaluation of delivered courses.

	Funding Online Education
	This report was prepared to examine the costs of k-12 online education and the various funding models in use around the country.

	Guide To Online High School Courses
	This guide is a product of the National Education Association,Virtual High School,Inc. and American Association of School Administrators, CNA Corporation, IBM Corporation, National Association of State Boards of Education, National School Boards Association, Verizon Communications.

	How One School in Clark County Nevada uses Handheld Devices
	The story describes how Bob Miller Middle School in Clark County, NV. made Palm handheld usage a reality. The goal was to find a way to use handhelds for every classroom application possible, from reading to writing, to arithmetic and science, to social studies and beyond.

	Net Choices, Net Gains: Supplementing the High School Curriculum with Online Courses
	Drawing from a review of the research literature, interviews with national experts in online learning, and the authors' evaluation of a statewide online learning program in California, this Knowledge Brief identifies key issues that schools should investigate when considering the online learning option.

New 'visualization' technologies can help students hone web searches

As useful as internet search engines are, they have a pretty big flaw: They often deliver too much information, and a lot of it isn't quite what students are looking for. But some intriguing new technologies are getting better at bringing order to all that chaos and could revolutionize how students and others mine the internet for information. Read full article at:

The article links to resources like Groxis Inc. http://www.groxis.com Vivisimo http://www.vivisimo.com TouchGraph LLC http://www.touchgraph.com Visual Thesaurus http://www.visualthesaurus.com

New format hastens textbook accessibility

Students with disabilities can anticipate faster access to curriculum materials now that the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has formally endorsed a voluntary national publishing paradigm known as the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). The standard will make it easier to convert traditional textbooks into formats such as Braille or text-to-speech. Read full article at:

	Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning
	Established in 2002, SCIL is dedicated to conducting scholarly research and related activities that advance the sciences, technologies and practices supporting learning and teaching form early childhood through postsecondary education.

	SuperTECH NEWS
	The November 2003 issue of this Bi-monthly newsletter from the BLE Group is focused on handheld devices. In addition to recent development in devices and applications they include advice on purchasing and implementing handheld programs.

The Use of Metadata for Identification and Retrieval of Resources for K-12 Education

Educators and publishers in the field of K-12 education have long had an interest in identifying and retrieving curriculum materials by the learning objectives these materials serve. A review of the efforts undertaken to accomplish this goal highlights a number of continuing problems and informs a set of criteria for the development of a schema that would be useful for identifying and retreiving educational resources.

	Videoconferencing Content
	An overview of content available through videoconferencing

	Virtual Schools: Trends and Issues
	Reviews model K-12 approaches to online learning and includes a list of online student learning opportunities.