Emerging applications of the Internet and World Wide Web are rapidly changing our lives and influencing the way we live, work, and play. People of all ages and from all walks of life go online daily (sometimes many times a day) to obtain information about topics of interests, to search for answers to their questions, to purchase goods and services they need, and to interact with family, friends and coworkers. Institutions of all types and with all missions have moved to the online environment to advertise their products and services and to provide training for their employees. It's only natural that education agencies at all levels would also move online to enhance access to their programs and to improve the quality of teaching and learning experiences.
Rural special educators have been among the first to recognize the power of the Internet and Web to advance teaching and learning. For over a decade, they have developed, implemented, and evaluated online applications for personnel preparation, staff development, and service delivery, reporting many of these innovations at ACRES conferences and ? RSEQ articles. Their efforts as well as their findings have served as an inspiration for all special educators, spurring increased interest in how the online environment can be utilized to solve the challenges faced by the field as a whole.
This issue features four articles that address different aspects of the use of online applications (as well as other new technologies) within rural special education. Sarah Rule and her colleagues at Utah State University describe how they have utilized videoconferencing to deliver consultation services to a special education classroom in a school located in a remote rural region of that state. A Polycom videoconferencing system was used to provide twoway audio and video interactions to develop and implement an individualized educational program for a preschool child with autism. Sue Steinweg and her colleagues at East Carolina University report on their use of the digital pen of a tablet PC to provide "hand-written" feedback on documents submitted as assignments by students in that institution's distance education program. They discuss the efficiency and effectiveness of this feedback system from both faculty and student perspectives. Teresa Rowlison of New Mexico State University describes a new online distance education program to make that university's personnel preparation program in generic special education more accessible to rural teachers. This program uses WebCT to deliver online and hybrid courses for alternative certification and/or a Masters degree. Lee Ann Jung and her colleagues at the University of Kentucky and West Virginia University outline how they use various online formats (as well as interactive television) to deliver practicum experiences in rural areas of those states as part of their distance education programs. They describe creative uses of discussion boards for individual reflective journals and group seminar discussions, and adaptations to the assignment drop box to for documentation of practice and artifacts in and electronic portfolio.
As one of the most widely used and swiftly adopted technology innovations in the history of humankind, the Internet (and Web) is now a permanent feature of society and an integral part of daily life. It is reasonable to expect that it will continue to impact the personal lives and professional careers of individuals as well as the productivity and viability of institutions far into the future. It is also reasonable to anticipate that rural special educators will remain in the vanguard of those experimenting with online applications for teaching and learning - and that future issues of RSEQwM feature more articles on these topics for many years to come.
[Author Affiliation]
Barbara Ludlow
Executive Editor
Rural Special Education Quarterly
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