Epler, Doris M.; Tuzinski, Jean H. (1991). A System for Statewide Sharing of Resources: A Case Study of ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA. School Library Media Quarterly, v20 n1 p19-23 Fall. ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA is a statewide database that combines resources of over 500 academic, public, special, and school libraries in Pennsylvania. This article discusses the program's background and stresses the commitment its members must make to serve the state's population through resource sharing. It focuses in particular on the incentive the program provides for school library media centers to automate. (Author/MAB)…

Anderson, Lorin W.; Hicks, Anna T. (1998). High School Renewal in South Carolina: An Angry Response to Abandonment. NASSP Bulletin, v82 n596 p66-73 Mar. Feeling angry and abandoned over losing a cooperative training center, South Carolina high school educators began a series of "what next?" conversations. Following two information-sharing conferences, 17 high schools and the University of South Carolina formed a school-university partnership called the South Carolina High School Renewal Network for Teacher and Administrator Renewal. Success hinges on partners' mutual respect. (MLH)…

Sanchez, Tony R. (2001). "Dangerous Indians": Evaluating the Depiction of Native Americans in Selected Trade Books. Urban Education, v36 n3 p400-25 May. Examined trade books regarding their accuracy in depicting Native Americans. Criteria embodied an authenticity guideline based on Five Great Values (e.g., generosity and sharing, coexisting with nature, and courage). Over half of the books had at least satisfactory depictions. Bias and stereotyping persisted enough to recommend using the guideline to help educators identify these problems in instructional materials. (SM)…

Dever, Martha T.; Hobbs, Deborah E.; Johnson, Francine F. (2000). A Qualitative Analysis of an Intensive Mentor-Apprentice Collaboration: MAC. Journal of Research and Development in Education, v33 n4 p241-56 Sum. Examined the evolution of a formal mentoring program, Mentor-Apprentice Collaboration, over 1 year, describing what the elementary-level beginning and mentor teachers learned from the experience. Participant interviews highlighted several productive mentoring strategies: sharing concerns and joys; building a sense of team; and establishing trust, dialogue, and affirmation. Both mentors and apprentices felt they benefitted from the experience. (SM)…

(2012). Race to the Top. District of Columbia. State-Reported APR: Year One. US Department of Education This paper describes the District of Columbia's progress in implementing a comprehensive and coherent approach to education reform from the time of application through June 30, 2011. In particular, this report highlights key accomplishments over the reporting period in the four reform areas: standards and assessments, data systems to support instruction, great teachers and leaders, and turning around lowest-achieving schools. Washington, DC has made significant progress in implementing a comprehensive approach to education in the four core reform areas since receiving the Race to the Top grant. Highlights of this report include: (1) Race to the Top has collaborated with the Division of Standards, Assessment and Accountability to create an aggressive Common Core Standards Roll-out Plan for the District. Each LEA (local educational agency) will implement the Common Core Standards beginning in school year 2011-12. During the spring and summer of 2011, OSSE (Office of the State… [PDF]

Bruckner, Martha (1997). Eavesdropping on Change: Listening to Teachers during the First Year of an Extended Block Schedule. NASSP Bulletin, v81 n593 p42-52 Dec. The discussion that transpired in Fremont, Nebraska, over one academic year depicted faculty's struggles and growth as they wrestled with their school's significant change to block scheduling. Conversations demonstrate a staff moving from block-implementation stresses in the first quarter to a focus on teaching and learning in the fourth quarter. Sharing sessions succeeded because teachers participated voluntarily, led discussions, and addressed important themes. (MLH)…

Hones, Kay Ellen (1998). Not Extinct! School Libraries for Learning and Leadership. Knowledge Quest, v26 n2 p42-47 Jan-Feb. Library Media Center 2000 (LMC2000) focuses on school library media services, technology, training, and advocacy–restructuring information and meeting linguistic, cultural, and multimedia learning needs. Over the last three years, San Francisco, California library media specialists have engaged in a process of professional development, networking and communication; they have supported each other while learning to use new technologies and sharing areas of expertise and resources. (Author)…

Yalniz, Ismet Zeki (2014). Efficient Representation and Matching of Texts and Images in Scanned Book Collections. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Millions of books from public libraries and private collections have been scanned by various organizations in the last decade. The motivation is to preserve the written human heritage in electronic format for durable storage and efficient access. The information buried in these large book collections has always been of major interest for scholars from various disciplines. Several interesting research problems can be defined over large collections of scanned books given their corresponding optical character recognition (OCR) outputs. At the highest level, one can view the entire collection as a whole and discover interesting contextual relationships or linkages between the books. A more traditional approach is to consider each scanned book separately and perform information search and mining at the book level. Here we also show that one can view each book as a whole composed of chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences, words or even characters positioned in a particular sequential… [Direct]

Shakespear, Eileen (2008). Good Teaching Is a Conversation. Horace, v24 n1 Spr. Teaching is a messy profession, the details of teachers' work are tightly woven into the myriad ways of humans. Even with uncertainty, teachers do improve their practice. In this article, the author describes how she moved her thinking forward over 35 years as an increasingly experienced teacher. Like many CES teachers, the ways that she has increased her knowledge, or learned new things, have come through a wide array of sources, some of which have been book- or research-based, and some of which have been through formal professional development. At the same time, a lot of her growth, especially once she settled in at Fenway High School, came through conversations with others, watching their head of school or another teacher taking risks and analyzing with them afterward. All of them trying to make really good, informed guesses. They are watching for good results, and then figuring out and sharing with others through talk why their efforts did or didn't work. The author contends that… [PDF] [Direct]

Orthner, Dennis K. (1975). Toward a Theory of Leisure and Marital Interaction: A Test and Reformulation. This paper examines the relationship between the extent of shared participation of husbands and wives in leisure activities and the extent of communication and task sharing in the marriage. Because marriage is an interactional system and leisure activities vary in their interactional requirements, a theory is proposed linking leisure activity patterns to marital interaction. The hypotheses generated by the theory were tested on a random sample of 223 husbands and 228 wives. The results indicate that interaction in leisure activities is related to interaction in marriage but that this relationship varies over the marital career. Also, it was found that the hypothesized relationship was greater when openness of communication was used as the marital interaction indicator compared to household task sharing. The theory is then reformulated in light of the data analysis. (Author)… [PDF]

Whitehead, Jack L. (1972). Effects of Noise on Small Group Interaction. This study reports an analysis of the effects of moderate levels of noise on task performance of an interacting group. Groups of students first interacted in information-sharing discussions under varying conditions of noise and then responded to an objective test over the shared information and to a series of semantic differential scales designed to measure their subjective responses to noise. Four groups of five subjects each were assigned to each of three experimental conditions and one control condition. Measures were obtained of group task performance and of subjective perceptions of noise under conditions that included 50, 60, and 70 dBC levels. Results showed that performance on information-sharing tasks by small groups was unaffected by moderate levels of outside noise, although there were differences in the subjects' perceptions of the noise. (Author/RN)… [PDF]

Bieberich, Andrea A.; Morgan, Sam B. (2004). Self-Regulation and Affective Expression during Play in Children with Autism or Down Syndrome: A Short-Term Longitudinal Study. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, v34 n4 p439-448 Aug. Our study examined stability of self-regulation and affective expression in children with autism or Down syndrome over a 2 year period. A behaviorally anchored rating scale was used to assess a self-regulation factor (attention, adaptability, object orientation, and persistence), negative affect factor (hostility, irritability, and compliance), and positive affect factor (positive affect, affective sharing, and dull affect) from videotapes of play sessions involving each child and his or her mother. The patterns of ratings within each group were similar from time 1 to time 2, with the autism group showing more deviant ratings on measures of self regulation and affective sharing. From time 1 to time 2, children with autism showed relatively high stability for the self-regulation factor, but less stability than children with Down syndrome for all three factors…. [Direct]

Mateycik, Frances Ann (2010). Facilitating Case Reuse during Problem Solving in Algebra-Based Physics. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Kansas State University. This research project investigates students' development of problem solving schemata while using strategies that facilitate the process of using solved examples to assist with a new problem (case reuse). Focus group learning interviews were used to explore students' perceptions and understanding of several problem solving strategies. Individual clinical interviews were conducted and quantitative examination data were collected to assess students' conceptual understanding, knowledge organization, and problem solving performance on a variety of problem tasks. The study began with a short one-time treatment of two independent, research-based strategies chosen to facilitate case reuse. Exploration of students' perceptions and use of the strategies lead investigators to select one of the two strategies to be implemented over a full semester of focus group interviews. The strategy chosen was structure mapping. Structure maps are defined as visual representations of quantities and… [Direct]

Grumdahl, Constance Rae (2010). How Schools Can Effectively Plan to Meet the Goal of Improving Student Learning. ProQuest LLC, D.Ed. Dissertation, University of Minnesota. Purpose. The purpose of the study was to identify the impact on achievement when schools implement a continuous improvement model using Total Quality Management (TQM) principles aligned to strategic planning and the culture of the school. Data collection and analysis. The study combined qualitative and quantitative methods and was conducted in two phases. Three elementary schools within a suburban school district were the units of analysis in this case study. The district was chosen because of the stable commitment to training in TQM and because the researcher had access to data about the district, the schools and the initiative. The sampling intentionally selected schools representing varying levels of socioeconomic and cultural diversity. Phase I involved the administration of the \University of Minnesota School Culture Survey\. The questionnaire addressed the implementation of TQM principles and was administered to a total of 65 teachers in three schools. The surveys were analyzed… [Direct]

Mahabir, Indramati Kumar (2010). Exploring Educational Material Needs and Resources for Children Living in Poverty. Online Submission, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Denver, CO, Apr 30-May 4, 2010). The purpose of this study was two-fold. It was first to find out what the educational materials needs were for children living in poverty, and second, to learn of the challenges, obstacles, and strengths by the programs already in place that were supplying educational materials to these children. This study used interviews and surveys as data gathering methods. Of the 244 electronic surveys sent to educators around the U.S., 17 survey responses were returned from participants in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In addition, 15 key informants were chosen because of their personal and professional knowledge about the specific needs for educational materials when dealing with children living in poverty. Results from the 32 educators in this study showed that books were the most needed item in both classrooms and in homes. All of the participants stated that any books or reading materials would be of help to the… [PDF]

Abd-El-Khalick, Fouad; Waight, Noemi (2007). The Impact of Technology on the Enactment of \Inquiry\ in a Technology Enthusiast's Sixth Grade Science Classroom. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, v44 n1 p154-182 Jan. This study investigated the impact of the use of computer technology on the enactment of \inquiry\ in a sixth grade science classroom. Participants were 42 students (38% female) enrolled in two sections of the classroom and taught by a technology-enthusiast instructor. Data were collected over the course of 4 months during which several \inquiry\ activities were completed, some of which were supported with the use of technology. Non-participant observation, classroom videotaping, and semi-structured and critical-incident interviews were used to collect data. The results indicated that the technology in use worked to restrict rather than promote \inquiry\ in the participant classroom. In the presence of computers, group activities became more structured with a focus on sharing tasks and accounting for individual responsibility, and less time was dedicated to group discourse with a marked decrease in critical, meaning-making discourse. The views and beliefs of teachers and students in… [Direct]

Oye, Karen (2007). Zooming In on Copyright with Integrated Library Software Services. Computers in Libraries, v27 n6 p16-18, 20-22 Jun. Over the last decade, many of Kelvin Smith Library's (KSL) content delivery services have gone digital, and some, such as enhanced course reserves products, are new to the market. The best digital library services have given KSL options and integrated solutions that allow it to do more than it thought possible just a few years ago. As with many digital solutions, life becomes easy when downloading photos and sharing them. However, when downloading proprietary content, copyright issues arise. In this article, the author, as head of customer services at KSL, the main library at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, discusses the university's copyright compliance policy for its integrated library software services. Overall, its library copyright compliance statement aims to teach that copyright is not a fear-based concept meant to keep a person from doing something, but a balance scale of protection and use. Letting people access copyright data (public domain versus permission… [Direct]

Blumenthal, Rachel; Lewis, Catharine; Loomis, Kathleen (2007). Children Learn to Think and Create through Art. Young Children, v62 n5 p79-83 Sep. In Kathleen Loomis's preschool classroom at the Bennington College Early Childhood Center, the goal for children is not to produce beautiful and expressive artworks or to learn specific methods of working with art media–although those things do happen. Here, the curriculum is built around the philosophy that learning to think and create with art materials and forms (like painting, drawing, sculpture, or dance) carries over to all subjects. Art is a discipline that is accessible to all ages and abilities. Kathleen, the teacher, places art at the center of the curriculum. In her classroom, art is not primarily about creating a product, nor is it about craft or technique. It is about thinking and sharing thoughts in a calm, respectful, and productive environment. It is not enough for the children to create art; it is also important that their art be shared in a meaningful way. In this article, the authors describe the process in Kathleen's multiage classroom, from finger paints to… [Direct]

Jones, Adrian (1989). Resource Sharing in an Electronic Age: Past, Present, and Future. Librarians' work has become more challenging and complex over the past 15 years. Fifteen years ago, the telephone was a librarian's most used and most effective instrument, and librarians mostly relied on the resources within their own walls. In that era, resource sharing placed substantial burdens on larger libraries, and the resources of smaller libraries were not adequately realized or utilized. Now, the growing coverage of machine-readable files has meant that resource sharing has the potential to be a more evenhanded burden, since librarians have a better grasp of the multiple locations of materials that would have remained unknown in the past. In the near future, technologies–e.g., electrocopying–will create new conceptions of resources and methods of information accession, and librarians must master those techniques to best serve their patrons. In the meantime, the success of resource sharing pivots on academic, public, school, and special librarians' willingness to work…

Michaels, Sarah (1980). Sharing Time: An Oral Preparation for Literacy. This paper attempts to identify key, recurring discourse activities and to develop hypotheses about ethnic or subgroup differences in discourse style that could lead to adverse educational outcomes. Data are drawn from ethnographic observation of 50 sharing time ("show and tell") sessions held in a first grade classroom. Different intonations and discourse styles used by white and black children during sharing time are described, as is the teacher's role in structuring discourse and providing an example of discourse she considered appropriate. The tendency of the teacher (a white middle class woman) to misunderstand or misinterpret black childrens' topic chaining discourse style is attributed to a culturally based mismatch between teacher's and child's prosodic signalling system and narrative schema. Such mismatches are said to have, over time, resulted in differential amounts of practice doing literate style accounting for black and white children in the class. It is…

Hrones, John A. (1969). Feasibility Study and Recommended Plan for Establishing an Institute for Information Systems in Higher Education. This is a report of a study of national needs for computer based information systems in higher education. The study was limited to 5 problem areas that might best be solved through more central and cooperative efforts among institutions–administration, resource sharing, instruction, information science research, and libraries. Part I describes the study, termed Project ISE, and the actions recommended. It was conducted through the production of working papers covering the 5 areas, and subsequent meetings on over 80 campuses to discuss the papers with institutional officials. The results showed that 2 areas–administration and resource sharing–are in critical need of nation-wide, computer based information systems. The major recommendation calls for immediate establishment of a non-profit Institute for Information Systems in Higher Education to undertake programs in these 2 areas. Recommendations are also made for further study in the other areas. Part II contains the final… [PDF]

(1974). Facilities Sharing Questionnaire Survey. In order to determine the extent to which the California community colleges share and borrow facilities, a questionnaire was sent to each California community college in January 1974. Sixty-six (96 percent) of the 69 districts responded. Analysis of the data revealed that the typical campus shared 7.5 facilities and borrowed 5.6. More than 37 kinds of facilities were shared. The facilities most commonly shared were physical education facilities (gymnasiums, athletic fields, swimming pools, and stadiums); general purpose classrooms; and general use facilities (theaters, cafeterias, and libraries). The most commonly borrowed facility was the general purpose classroom; classrooms were borrowed from other school districts, public agencies, and private parties by half of the districts. Libraries, extension centers, specialized and class laboratories, and physical education facilities are also frequently borrowed. For shared facilities, the range of participation includes from 47 percent… [PDF]

Brown, Elinor L. (2006). Knowing, Valuing, and Shaping One's Culture: A Precursor to Acknowledging, Accepting, and Respecting the Culture of Others. Multicultural Education, v14 n1 p15-19 Fall. The purpose of this article is to share a unique strategy (the cultural puzzle) used in graduate, undergraduate, and secondary education to assist students in examining and sharing their cultural heritage to: (1) raise their level of self-awareness, (2) increase cross-cultural communication, (3) improve authentic cross-cultural knowledge, and (4) create a cohesive classroom community. Over the past six years, university students' reflective journals, on-line and in-class discussions, and course evaluations indicate that the knowledge gained from the cultural puzzle activity is instrumental in establishing a sense of community that supports them as they strengthen bridges across cultural borders and develop techniques toward becoming equitable multicultural decision-makers. (Contains 3 figures.)… [PDF] [Direct]

Griffiths, Jose-Marie; King, Donald W. (1991). Massachusetts Libraries: An Alliance for the Future. [Final Report and Executive Summary] for the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. A comprehensive study of the current state of library services and library cooperative activities in Massachusetts found that the state's 2,796 public, academic, school, institutional and special libraries make a significant contribution to lifelong learning, to the economy, and to the quality of life. The libraries have a combined collection of over 72 million volumes, and they are visited about once a month per resident. Because of funding cuts, however, library services are eroding, and libraries are increasingly unable to comply with standards set by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. The outlook is particularly bleak for public libraries, publicly-funded academic libraries, and school libraries. The five types of resource sharing currently in use in Massachusetts are not well coordinated, many services are redundant, and many libraries are excluded by virtue of their size or community served. Improved resource sharing could be accomplished by replacing the… [PDF]

Misek, Marla (2003). TheBrain Technologies Corporation: Collapsing the Time to Knowledge. EContent, v26 n6 p44-45 Jun. TheBrain was created to take advantage of the most powerful information processor in existence – the human mind. Explains products of TheBrain Technologies Corporation,, which has developed computer interfaces to help individual users and corporations organize information in ways that make sense to them in the proper context. Describes a searchable technology that organizes over 2.5 million Web sites, and a Web-based solution for sharing information in collaborative workplaces. (LRW)…

Jenkins, Jill (2009). Influences on the Decision-Making, Beliefs, Pedagogy, and Practices of a Primary Grade 3 Literacy Teacher in Uganda. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, George Mason University. This study investigated how the context of a Primary 3 (P3) teacher of Luganda in Uganda influenced the teacher's literacy instructional decision-making, beliefs, pedagogy, and practices before and after she was provided with supplies and literacy instructional procedures that helped produce reading materials for her students. The contextual problems that were addressed were the poverty context that included the lack of opportunities for P3 students to read in their native language due to having few or no books in Luganda (a minor language), and instructional practices that focused on rote learning which put students in a passive learning environment. The study was conducted for eight months in a rural/urban, public primary school P3 classroom with over 100 students. There were few teacher and student resources and 18 different mother tongues represented in the classroom. For six weeks the teacher taught the researcher about her beliefs, pedagogy, and practices through interviews,… [Direct]

Daro, Deborah; English, Brianna; Huang, Lee Ann (2009). The Duke Endowment Child Abuse Prevention Initiative: Durham Family Initiative Implementation Report. Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago The Durham Family Initiative (DFI) is one of two community-based child abuse prevention efforts that comprise The Duke Endowment's Child Abuse Prevention Initiative. Beginning in 2002, the Endowment provided support to the Durham Family Initiative (DFI) in North Carolina and Strong Communities in South Carolina to develop a comprehensive approach to address four core outcomes: (1) a reduction in child abuse rates; (2) an improvement in parenting practices and behavior; (3) strengthening community service systems; and (4) an improvement in a community's capacity to protect children and support parents. Although sharing a set of common objectives with Strong Communities, DFI theorizes that child abuse can be prevented by addressing the risk factors and barriers that affect the healthy development of parent-child relationships. Adopting an ecological perspective, DFI staff formulated a work plan to strengthen and expand the pool of available evidence-based direct services, to identify… [Direct]

Farmer, Kylie (2009). Taking an Investigative Stance in Using the Professional Standards in the Languages Classroom. Babel, v44 n1 p9-11 Nov. The Professional Standards Project (PSP) is a nationally coordinated professional learning program for languages teachers, to improve the quality of languages teaching and, thereby, improve student learning. It is based on the use of the "Professional standards for accomplished teaching of languages and cultures" (hereafter, "the Standards") as a framework. The project was delivered in 2008 and consisted of 2 streams: (1) Stream A: two x three hour modules to familiarise teachers with "the Standards"; and (2) Stream B: eight x three hour modules focusing in depth on educational theory and practice, language and culture, and language pedagogy. Participants also undertook ongoing classroom investigations as part of this project. A key element of the PSP project for those teachers involved in Stream B was the classroom investigation. This was an opportunity for teachers to apply the learning and knowledge gained through the project to their own contexts. It… [Direct]

Tyagi, Himanshu (2013). Common Randomness Principles of Secrecy. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park. This dissertation concerns the secure processing of distributed data by multiple terminals, using interactive public communication among themselves, in order to accomplish a given computational task. In the setting of a probabilistic multiterminal source model in which several terminals observe correlated random signals, we analyze secure distributed data processing protocols that harness the correlation in the data. The specific tasks considered are: computing functions of the data under secrecy requirements; generating secretly shared bits with minimal rate of public communication; and securely sharing bits in presence of a querying eavesdropper. In studying these various secure distributed processing tasks, we adopt a unified approach that entails examining the form of underlying common randomness (CR) that is generated at the terminals during distributed processing. We make the case that the exact form of established CR is linked inherently to the data processing task at hand,… [Direct]

Chen, Yixing (2013). Development of an Integrated Process, Modeling and Simulation Platform for Performance-Based Design of Low-Energy and High IEQ Buildings. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Syracuse University. The objective of this study was to develop a "Virtual Design Studio (VDS)": a software platform for integrated, coordinated and optimized design of green building systems with low energy consumption, high indoor environmental quality (IEQ), and high level of sustainability. The VDS is intended to assist collaborating architects, engineers and project management team members throughout from the early phases to the detailed building design stages. It can be used to plan design tasks and workflow, and evaluate the potential impacts of various green building strategies on the building performance by using the state of the art simulation tools as well as industrial/professional standards and guidelines for green building system design. Based on the review and analysis of existing professional practices in building system design, particularly those used in U.S., Germany and UK, a generic process for performance-based building design, construction and operation was proposed. It… [Direct]