The race is on to survive the competitive educational market which nearly everyone can now access with the click of a mouse. Many institutions are turning to DETs to tap into this market. The difficulty is evaluating the effectiveness of these tools and the education that is provided by them. Implementing a new DET is neither a simple matter nor a light decision-making burden. There is a great deal of hype surrounding DETs, and making an informed decision is not an easy task. Caution must be exercised, especially when contracting with a relatively new “.com” company.

SUMMARY As computer and networking technology has improved, computer-mediated communication and distance learning (DL) have become more prevalent. Software is used in a DL environment to replace traditional laboratory exercises. Software simulation provides wide-scale access to laboratory exercises at a low cost. However, simulations do not adequately replace all aspects of the real laboratory environment. This paper reviews DL alternatives to real laboratories and discusses whether the present alternatives successfully give students the experience of real laboratory experiments without physically attending a laboratory. The review found that present alternatives to real laboratories use software simulation, which do not accomplish the desired exposure to real lab environments in some disciplines, such as engineering. The paper presents an alternative to simulation, presently under development by the authors, in which real laboratory facilities can be accessed remotely via the Internet. These real physical laboratories provide the one dimension that simulation cannot: real response of real physical elements to real inputs.

Do your students seem uninterested in learning about computing? Do they complain that the subject matter has no relevant application to the "real world"? Do they appear baffled, bored, and inattentive? Your mission as a creative facilitator is not to assign a grade; your mission is to educate students to think, learn, and make new connections they never thought possible. A teacher's guidance, constructive feedback, and facilitated instruction should pave the way for students to meaningfully bridge prior knowledge with new knowledge. In this article, the authors suggest eight essential tactics on how teachers might teach creatively, particularly with respect to computing curricula, while they enjoy the teaching and learning processes and reap the pleasures of getting students to think creatively and productively in a complex information world.

More than any period in recorded history, today's heterogeneity of emergent technology has transformed daily life, particularly the lives of the many fascinated by it. The American educational system and its sense of direction have not been spared from the chaos and distress that accompanies this unprecedented era. Many educators await the promise of technology's power to improve the educational system. The purpose of this paper is not to validate the pros or cons of technology, but to explore current issues facing the American educational system and to better use technologies in a productive and a creative manner. This article explores contemporary issues of technology in education, investigating its impact upon the American educational system, and examining the nature of its unprecedented relationship to the posthaste changes of the information age. This article also suggests systematic procedures that may be used to assess the needs of an institution's educational information system (EIS), and the dimension of building creative educational climate to better meet instructional goals and to sustain the continual needs of a quality educational system.