Peter Adamy, Steve Bronack, and Joanne Mitchell have been at work with the continuing Web Tools project, which involves development of tools that will facilitate use of the World Wide Web by Curry School faculty and staff. The first of these tools was the development of a Web-based permissions management tool which, in the words of Steve Bronack, will allow users to "simply create the directory, open the (file key), and enter the Curry IDs of each person to whom you would like to grant (permissions) to the selected directory. This way, profs don't have to know cryptic UNIX commands to create group directories."

Meanwhile, Shelby Cantly, Mike Roy, Lisa Heaton, and Mike Reese have been working with the Faculty Development Lab database. As Mike Reese explains it "(This) database will be a compilation of all educational content software available at Curry and participating organizations. Users will be able to search various information, reviews, and submit information to remotely interact with the database via the World Wide Web."

The Institute for Public History is a new University initiative whose programs will foster interaction among faculty, public history professionals, and students in such fields as History, Archaeology, Anthropology, American Studies, Art History, Architecture, Engineering, and Education. Wyatt Ewell, Judy Jordan and Lisa Black have been involved in the planning stages of the Website for this interesting university-wide project.

Lisa Black, Anna Love, and Mark Smith have produced an interactive video and accompanying workbook that serve as a self guided tutorial for UVA's Outdoor Recreation staff. Learning Modalities for the University of Virginia's Outdoor Recreation Program focuses on teaching the staff how to address three learning modalities (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic) in their customer training. Anna: "By learning how to incorporate teaching methods that address the different learning modalities into their program instruction, the staff will become better instructors and the customers will gain much more from the program." Lisa: "We have learned about real world instructional design issues while producing a product that will actually be used by the clients upon completion."

Smoking cessation is the focus of the project developed by Wyatt Ewell, Mike Reese, and Katie Reynolds. They have been working with clients from University of Virginia Medical Center to develop a workshop for resident physicians at the medical school. The residents learn about the degree of their influence on patients and how this can be used to convince them to begin smoking cessation programs.

A Fall project for Malek Karim and Aileen Nonis was the design of an informational website for the International Studies Office, whose purpose is to provide facts and descriptions for overseas academic study and to facilitate entrance into the University community of international students enrolled at UVA.

Teacher Education provides the focus for much of the work carried on by IT students. In addition to teaching several preservice and inservice technology courses for teachers and administrators, IT students also hone their design and development skills creating informational resources and applications for classroom instruction.

Although many technology courses for K-12 teachers emphasize the use of software applications, evidence has shown that they often are not used in the K-12 classroom unless the teachers have learned to incorporate them into their curriculum. Natalie Milman andMark Smith have been working on the Technology across the Curriculum (TAC) project together with eight teachers and four Curry School faculty to design an in-service educational technology course for teachers which looks at integrating technology training within curriculum content areas. Mark invites people to check out the TAC website for details:
http://curry.edschool.Virginia.EDU/go/tac/
As an adjunct to the TAC project, Natalie, joined by design teammates Lisa Heaton, and Judy Jordan have developed an instructional design which provides pre-service teachers with models and the opportunity to develop instructional databases for their subject areas.

For second-year students in the Teacher Education program's EDIS 388 field experience, James Brown and Mike Roy have developed an instructional design that helps pre-service teachers use their observation journals to conduct qualitative analysis. Most of the pre-service teachers have had little or no experience conducting qualitative analysis and, as a result, need to learn how to differentiate between observed and inferential data.

An important component in the training of Special Education teachers is learning the procedures by which special needs children are identified. Based on a analysis of compiled test data, interviews of teachers and parents, and recorded observations, this identification process requires the reviewer to have the ability to separate relevant data and cluster similar needs. Steve Bronack, Shelby Cantley, and Dave Lewis have developed an interactive Web-based workshop to provide pre-service Special Education teachers with modeling and practice in the process of identifying target behaviors for special needs students. "...(an) interactive case where the pre-service special education students interact with an IEP 'team' to evaluate an actual eligibility packet and identify salient target behaviors within the academic and social domains for remediation.(Steve)"

Moving farther afield from the halls of Ruffner, IT students have also developed ways to disseminate educational resources and materials at the national and international level. The Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education (SITE) Web Server is ongoing project. Aileen Nonis, Kara Dawson, and Katie Reynolds have worked to create a new look for the homepage for InSITE , the SITE Website which serves as a repository of information for teacher education programs nationally. In addition Steve Bronack is teaming with Aileen and Kara to create an informational database of Notable Citations in IT and Teacher Education which will serve as a resource for anyone interested in the integration of technology and teacher education.

Teacher educators are not the only audience for the work of Curry IT students. Working with educational administrators in both K-12 and higher education is also an important focus. Doctoral student L.B. Berg has recently completed work on The Educational Administration Forum. "I have designed this Website to be an electronic institute for the advancement of technology in educational administration. It includes links to six basic areas; The Open Forum, Publications & Organizations, School & Community Relations, The EAF Newsletter, Policy & Legal Issues, and Software (administrative and instructional)." L.B. begins publishing monthly editorials for the EAF Newsletter in April. 1997.

Math Education Software Development team members David Picard, Dave Lewis, Tim Wilkinson, and Nina Tisch are working with a math education professor, Joe Garofalo (co-director of the Curry School teacher education program) to develop educational software. Nina: "(We) are developing a computerized math game for children ages 5-7 that will help them understand the concept of fractions....We are using Oracle Media Objects to design this project and learning many of the advantages and disadvantages of this software as a development tool."

On another project, Nina Tisch has joined forces with Josie Pipkin to develop an interactive workshop in music education for sixth grade students at A.G. Richardson Elementary School in Culpepper, Virginia. Using examples from musical theater repertoire, this workshop focuses "on giving the students an appreciation for the ways in which the mood of a song is created or enhanced through such elements as the music's tempo, beat, dynamics, and instrumentation. "..As someone who has been involved in writing musical theater songs for many years, it is exciting for me to be able to introduce these students to musical theater and expand their understanding of the choices composers make when writing a theater song" (Nina).

Pete Adamy and Paul Madden have been developing an instructional design for sixth grade students that introduces them to the events in history covered by the book "Number the Stars." The students compare the concepts of occupation, resistance, and sacrifice of WWII Denmark to the Underground Railroad of the American 19th Century from a child's point of view through a combination of instruction, group work, and problem solving activities. The McGuffey Reading Center intends to use this design as well, as an example of methods for incorporating literature with history and social studies.

Advanced Interactive Technology students Aileen Nonisand Ann Kovalchick are currently designing and creating a set of multimedia instructional activities for CD ROM that will engage younger students in learning archaeology. Malek Karim is developing interactive math materials for CD-ROM in the Malay language under the title Matematik Ekspress. "While there are lots of computer based educational software in English, there are very few in Malay, although it is the language of instruction in all schools from kindergarten onward...The software will have a child-friendly interface that will put the control in the child's hand."

The use of case studies as an instructional methodology has a long history in law, business, and medicine. More recently, the use of cases in education is becoming increasingly popular. An adaptation of that model is the use of case studies in Instructional Design. Marti Julian, Ann Kovalchick, and Betsy Hrabe have been working with Mable Kinzie to develop multimedia instructional design case studies which will be distributed to universities across the country via the World Wide Web. For the second year, the Curry School of Education's Instructional Technology Program is sponsoring the Instructional Design Case Team Event. In addition to the formal case competition which involves teams of ID students from five universities, a discussion case has been posted to permit teams to compare and discuss their cases analyses across university sites. The URL for the Instructional Design Case Team Event is http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/Itcases/ .Ann Kovalchick was the principal author of the Discussion Case, "Harvesting Cooperation," while Betsy Hrabe served as first author for the Competition Case, "Prescription: Instructional Design." Currently Marti Julian is working with Betsy to adapt the instructional design case study text-only version of "Electronics Town," as a multimedia interactive case for CD-ROM.

And these are only some of the current IT projects.

A lot of work, a lot of late nights. But worth it. As Natalie Milman puts it " What has made it interesting is that we are continually being challenged in ways that I did not imagine."