The inaugural issue of Innovate, a peer-reviewed bimonthly e-journal featuring cutting-edge research and practice in using information technology to enhance education is now available at http://innovateonline.info.

We invite you to do more than simply read. Use our one-button features to comment on articles, share material with colleagues and friends, and participate in webcasts with authors in our Innovate-Live forums. Join us in exploring the best uses of this technology to improve the ways we think, learn, and live.

Chris Dede starts us on that journey with expert commentary on the ever-expanding field of learning technology tools. Multi-user virtual environments and ubiquitous computing promise to do away with limits on how and where students learn; Dede translates this vision into concrete terms. Joel Foreman joins him with a focus on video game studies as both a growing academic field of study and as an open arena for pedagogical reform. Donald Norris, Jon Mason, and Paul Lefrere consider how new technologies change not only on the way we access knowledge, but also the way in which we experience it.

These articles are followed by four descriptions of how information technology tools are being used now to enhance educational processes. Gilbert Valdez, Kathleen Fulton, Robert Blomeyer, Allen Glenn, and Nicole Wimmer share the results from a study that compared six different teacher education programs, focusing on how each school used technology to prepare trainees for work in high-poverty districts. Robert Wood explains how a coordinated effort in his department to offer students a variety of rich technological resources resulted in greater cohesion within the curriculum itself. Jonathan Maybaum describes a Web-authoring system that gives users the ultimate control over their sites, yet remains elegantly utile. Diane Harley, Jonathan Henke, and Michael Maher describe the benefits of online technology for large lecture courses.

When you access your first article, we will ask for your name and e-mail address. You will not have to provide this information again to access additional articles as long as Innovate remains a free journal. We are actively searching for sponsors, but we need your help to secure their support. To that end, we also ask for demographic questions designed to establish a professional profile of Innovate readers. This information will be used only to compile data for potential sponsors; it will not be sold or otherwise disseminated. If you prefer not to receive promotions and announcements from potential sponsors, please check the designated box.

Once again, welcome to the Innovate community. Read, learn, share. Help us define the future of education.

Please forward this announcement to appropriate mailing lists and to colleagues who want to use IT tools to advance their work.

Many thanks.

Jim

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James L. Morrison
Editor-in-Chief, Innovate
http://www.innovateonline.info
Professor Emeritus of Educational Leadership
UNC-Chapel Hill
http://horizon.unc.edu