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The purpose of this study was to develop a body of labor market information to support the development of regional information technology instructional programs by a consortium of California Community Colleges located in the San Francisco Bay Region. This collection of summaries of six occupations begins with a guide that explains the components of each summary. Included are a job description; job titles; career ladder; hours worked; compensation (wages, benefits); employer requirements (education and vocational training, experience); supply and demand; growth; openings filled; location of jobs; and estimates of employment in each industry presented in the job location section. These occupations are included in the guide: computer-aided design technicians; computer and software support technicians; computer network technicians; computer support specialists; graphic designers; and Internet web site designers and developers (webmasters). Appendixes include the questionnaire; alternate job titles; and industries represented. (YLB)

An interactive training model called SAVR (Safety in Construction Using Virtual Reality) was developed to train construction students, novice engineers, and construction workers to prevent falls from scaffolding. The model was implemented in a graphics supercomputer, the ONYX Reality Engine2. The SAVR model provides trainees with an immersive, interactive virtual environment to perform "on-the-job" safety training without physically being at a real construction site. The model includes two major training environments: erection, which teaches trainees the correct procedure to erect a commonly used metal bracket form scaffolding; and inspection, which introduces several hazardous conditions in an existing platform and requires trainees to identify them visually. The development of SAVR involved four major tasks: knowledge acquisition, model development, model validation, and preparation of reports and manuals. Several common potential causes of falls from scaffolding platforms were chosen for the SAVR model, including component problems and connection problems. The second task, model development, included the construction of the three-dimensional graphical objects of the scaffolding components, the construction of the texture images for SAVR's interface panels, and the construction of the SAVR program. Construction used a developmental approach that included six steps: (1) defining the problem, (2) designing the solution, (3) refining the solution, (4) considering a testing strategy, (5) coding, testing, and debugging the program, and (6) documenting the program. SAVR demonstrates the potential of virtual reality technology in safety training using a safe environment. (Contains 45 references.) (KC)

Previous studies indicate that only 6 percent of the nation's population possess the minimum level of understanding of science and technology needed to function minimally as citizens and consumers. Many educators speculate that scientific illiteracy originates in elementary school classrooms, not from intellectual inferiority, but rather from specific teacher attitudes. Under the assumption that analytical ability and spatial ability are measurements of the same cognitive skills, a pilot study examined those skills as measured by the Learning Style Profile, with pre- and post-test scores for three treatment groups and one control group from a total of 24 undergraduates with an elementary education major. The first treatment group was exposed to an animated video activity; the second treatment group participated in a cube comparison test (flexibility of closure) developed from the Educational Testing Service's Kit of Factor Referenced Cognitive Tests; the third treatment group was involved in both of these activities; and the control group was not exposed to either activity. No significant differences were found across or within the groups on the pre- and post-test scores. It is hypothesized that a larger study population, a longer test of spatial ability, and a longer treatment will detect improvement in spatial ability. (JJK)

Requested by the U.S. House of Representative's Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, this Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) paper identifies and examines: (1) the primary problems or issues that face prehistoric and historic landscape preservation; (2) the technologies for addressing these issues; and (3) policy options for putting the technologies to work. The OTA assessment proposes: (1) more consistent terminology and preservation standards' guidelines; (2) an increase in public awareness of the landscapes' value to U.S. history; (3) a federally funded research and development center; and (4) systematic, long-term maintenance of landscapes. Technologies for the identification and documentation of landscapes range from basic techniques, such as volunteers wielding pencil and paper, to sophisticated computer systems that can assimilate, manipulate, and store geographic information and generate complicated maps of a region. OTA suggests that the National Park Service (NPS), the U.S. government's leader in preservation matters, initiate greater efforts to preserve and create awareness of these landscapes. A 49-item bibliography is included, as well as black and white photographs, tables, and drawings. (DJC)

One of the objectives of Project TACT is to determine the potential of a gamut of educational media. The working papers in this set have a basis in pictorial information produced through computer graphics. These papers are intended to serve as a basis for sharpening questions, delineating the context within which the answers might be significant, and determining whether or not interesting experiments are feasible and rewarding. (Author/MK)

The Open University from its inception in 1969 has been a technologically based university. It uses technology to deliver high quality, specially designed teaching materials to large numbers of adult students throughout Britain, and increasingly abroad, who study at home. The Open University's teaching system has remained basically unchanged since 1969; however, practical experience with three more recent technologies (interactive videodiscs, audio-graphic teleconferencing, and computer conferencing) has demonstrated the increased instructional power and the increased flexibility of some of the newer technologies. The instructional power comes from improved feedback and interaction for learners, and the increased flexibility comes from the ability of some of the new technologies to exploit fully the range and power of the teacher at a distance, while providing individually adapted courses for individual learners. However, while such technologies are already available, it is likely to be a number of years before they are used on a large scale in higher education, not so much because of resistance from teachers and students, but because of the inability of large organizations to make the structural changes necessary for the successful implementation of such technologies on a large scale. (DJR)

Mathematics educators often despair at math's austere, "abstract" reputation. This paper describes recent work in developing an application named "HyperGami," which is designed to integrate both the abstract and"real-world" aspects of mathematics by allowing children to design and construct polyhedral models and sculptures. Children use formal reasoning for computation and for creating real mathematical objects in paper. HyperGami allows students to design not only standard polyhedra, but also customized variants of those shapes. They can decorate the shapes, have the program convert three-dimensional shapes into two-dimensional shapes, and then print the decorated shape for folding into a three-dimensional paper sculpture. The paper describes the construction of a sample HyperGami sculpture, a penguin, and presents observations during a year of pilot studies with 11 volunteer elementary and middle school students. Related, current, and future work on this topic is also discussed. (Contains 12 references.) (Author/SWC)

A concept map is a graphical representation of a person's (student's) knowledge of a domain. Concept maps have been used in educational settings for some time and many computer-based implementations of interactive concept map building tools exist. These concept mapping tools often provide for a solely prepositional, primarily textual, knowledge representation scheme and do not fully capitalize on the functionality offered by the computational medium. This paper offers psychological and pedagogical design rationales for inclusion of multimedia in computer-based concept maps. It also describes a concept mapping application named Webster whose goals include more comprehensively representing students' knowledge of a domain, providing facilities that make concept maps more pedagogically effective for students using them to learn new concepts, and in doing both, capitalizing more fully on the capabilities of the computational medium. There are a number of characteristics of Webster that attempt to achieve these desiderata but this paper focuses in particular on Webster's use of multimedia to realize these goals. (Contains 19 references.) (Author/AEF)

The year of 2020 has been a transformative year to play the roles of teachers. Everything has changed, including the way kids and university students go to school. During the pandemic, most of the world instated social distancing rules, 20-second hand-washing practices, and preventive mask-wearing in public. To say this affected the way educators and students interact is an understatement. In March 2020, millions of children transitioned from face-to-face classrooms to some kind of virtual education set up at home. During the first months of the pandemic, teachers had to scramble and find the best ways to set up a virtual classroom that would keep their students engaged. In these months, educators at every level tested tools and programs until they found their favorites. The goal of the present paper is to make a review about some tools of virtual teaching with the aim of identifying and analyzing the tools which potentiate the learning process. Digital learning is increasingly influencing both classroom/campus-based teaching but more important is leading to new models or designs for teaching and learning. Digital learning is an instructional practice that ultimately helps students. It makes use of a broad range of technology-enhanced educational strategies. It includes blended learning, flipped learning, personalized learning, and other strategies that rely on digital tools to a small or large degree. [This chapter was published in: R. Udhaya Mohan Babu (Ed.), "Technology Learning in Contemporary World" ISBN- 978-81-949205-7-1 (pp. 56-6). Krishna Publication House, 2020.]

This paper describes a methodology for approaching the problem of migrating a course from the classroom to the World Wide Web. It proposes that there are four main learning modes in the classroom--traditional oral and visual (passive) presentation, student involvement in demonstration of the theory, student led practical exercises, and reference to written source notes or supplementary reference material--and that each of these can be successfully moved to a Web-based course. By way of illustration, this paper describes the "MPI On-Line" Web-based distance learning course developed at EPCC (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland). Students were provided with four different modes of access to the material in the MPI On-line course to correspond to each of the four identified learning modes: a multimedia slide show with animated slides and a spoken sound track; interactive demonstrations provided by browser applets to clarify the material presented in the slide show; student led exercises support by the EPIC (EPCC Interactive Courseware) environment; and supporting notes and reference material hyperlinked in to the rest of the material. When MPI On-line was run as a supported course for the first time in September 1997 it proved very successful and a great deal of positive feedback was received. (AEF)