MicroObservatory Net: A Network of Automated Remote Telescopes Dedicated to Educational Use

Many students have a deep interest in astronomy, but a limited opportunity to use telescopes to explore the heavens. The MicroObservatory Network of automated telescopes is designed to provide access to classroom teachers who wish their students to conduct projects over the World Wide Web. The intuitive interface makes it easy for even 10-year-olds to take pictures. Telescopes can be remotely pointed and focused: filters, field of view, and exposure times can be changed easily. Images are archived at the website, along with sample challenges and a user bulletin board, all of which encourage collaboration among schools. Wide geographic separation of instruments provides access to distant night skies during local daytime. Since first light in 1995, we have learned much about remote troubleshooting, designing for unattended use, and for acquiring the kinds of images that students desire. This network can be scaled up from its present capability of 240,000 images each year to provide telescope access for all US students with an interest in astronomy. Our WWW address is http://mo-www.harvard.edu/MicroObservatory/     

The black and deaf movements in America since 1960. Parallelism and an agenda for the future.

This paper traces the political and educational movements of both black and hearing-impaired Americans since 1960 and compares their common as well as disparate but equally significant experiences. The purpose of the comparisons is to identify problems and proven solutions that collectively suggest a strategy for the continuing movement of hearing-impaired people. The authors, through their ethnicity--three are black and two are white--and personal and professional experiences bring divergent but relevant points of view to the question of multicultural coalitions and their abilities to effect social change. Four principles or suggestions for advancing the agenda of hearing-impaired Americans are presented: (1) the need to define the issues that will continue to confront hearing-impaired Americans through the year 2000, (2) the need to enlarge the membership and participation of existing coalitions, (3) the need to address local, vocational, technical, and educational issues, and (4) the need to facilitate hearing-impaired networking groups within religious, social, business, and cultural organizations.     

THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION OF HIGHLY ABLE YOUNG CHILDREN

Because the very early development of abilities is vitally affected by personal relationships, research emphasis has shifted away from the quasi‐experimental situation to the more natural home context. This has resulted in the rejection of some limiting ideas of very early potential, and particulary appropriate for the highly able, concern with young children's own awareness of what they do. The educational conclusions are that infants who develop and learn with speed and ease need a wide variety of activities, with parents who are aware and responsive, especially in play and verbal interaction. They also need both the appropriate material provision and facilities for practice to develop specific skills.     

Visualization and Representation of Physical Systems: Wavemaker as an Aid to Conceptualizing Wave Phenomena

An understanding of wave mechanics is essential to making the leap from classical to quantum systems. Wavemaker is a simulation environment developed to reveal graphically the behavior of periodic systems using a series of increasingly sophisticated visualization tools. Individual particles in a many-particle system can be instrumented for study of kinematic behavior. Parametric representations reveal time-independent behaviors. Problems dealing with propagation, reflection, and Fourier synthesis are easily studied. Use with students has revealed that many students have preconceptions about the behavior of waves and that use of this software is helpful in connecting real to simulated systems, separating holistic behaviors from those of individual elements, identifying critical parameters, and making connections between variables that are used to describe and measure periodic systems.     

Video Conferencing: a Solution to the Multi-campus Large Classes Problem?

Whether due to amalgamation or export education strategies, many universities now face a problem of delivering subjects, programs and courses across more than one campus. There are significant costs to students, staff and faculty of this teaching and administrative duplication. Information and communication technologies offer potential to achieve economies of scale but the effects on other things like student learning are not so clear. The objective of this paper is to report the outcomes of a video conferencing trial in an undergraduate mass lecture context. The effects on students and staff, and support issues are highlighted through a formative and summative evaluation. Surveys, focus groups, interviews, video recordings, exam results and reflective diaries provided data for the evaluations. The results will be useful both for decision-makers considering a video conferencing solution to duplication, as well as for staff potentially involved in using the video conferencing in a mass lecture context.     

Investigative interviewing with children: evaluation of the effectiveness of a training program for child protective service workers.

OBJECTIVE: Previous research suggests that training workshops on investigative interviewing conducted with front-line workers, such as police officers or child protective service (CPS) workers, may result in improved knowledge about appropriate strategies to use. Limited research has addressed whether such training programs result in improvements in actual interviewing skills. The present investigation assessed the impact of a training workshop on CPS workers' knowledge about conducting and behavior during investigative interviews. METHOD: Twelve CPS workers participated. To evaluate the impact of the training, a quasi-experimental design was used. Participants completed outcome measures prior to, immediately following, and 3 months following the training. Outcome measures included (a) a questionnaire to assess knowledge about interviewing practices, (b) simulated interviews with a confederate to assess participant behavior during an investigative interview, and (c) questionnaires to gather information related to the simulated interviews (e.g., materials requested for use during interview, abuse status of confederate). All participants completed 6 hours of training during 3 weekly 2-hour sessions. RESULTS: Participants' knowledge on the topic, as well as several interviewing skills during simulated interviews, improved following the training. However, the training failed to impact several key interviewing skills such as the types of questions asked or the length of the interview. CONCLUSIONS: Knowledge-based workshop training programs may not adequately prepare CPS workers to conduct appropriate investigative interviews with children who were allegedly abused. Further, knowledge about how to conduct such interviews may not be the best indicator of whether someone is prepared for this aspect of the job.