| Summer 02 |
| University of Oregon - Eugene |
2002 EDITION OF ELECTRONIC LIBRARY ADDS TWENTY-FIVE NEW PUBLICATIONS
The Clearinghouse's newest CD-ROM is also redesigned for easier navigation
It’s lighter than a textbook, shinier than a gleaming mirror, faster than a speeding librarian, able to leap tall orders for information in a single bound. Even mild-mannered Clark Kent might grin with delight at the possibilities contained in the 2002 edition of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management’s Electronic Library. Twenty-two books and scores of other publications are a keystroke away on a single, easy-to-navigate CD-ROM.
Here is a resource for the newly elected school-board member seeking guidance on formulating controversial dress-code policies, or the longtime principal struggling to get a grip on nationwide thinking about ways to assess and reward teacher competency.
It’s designed for the professor who needs to talk to future educators with sensitivity and conviction about sexual misconduct, and for the newest member of a state committee on schools. And it’s for the middle-school teacher in the suburbs who sees a chance to add wisdom and perspective to ongoing discussions of how to make her own school safer.
Whether you are doing academic research or seeking the best ideas to deal with a gritty ongoing situation, you can use the ERIC/CEM Electronic Library to get on top of the mountain of information about educational management. This updated version offers a cost-effective opportunity to learn about the big issues in education today. It’s the full-service climbing guide, the resource for gaining the mental altitude that lets you stand at the top of the peak and see the country around you.
Just insert the disk. It starts itself and delivers you to the home page. The Readme document tells you about system requirements and leads you to the directions for installing Java and Acrobat software, if you don’t already have them.
Once ready, the user leaps to any section from a left-column menu on screen. So let’s go for a fieldtrip. From the home page we head out, clicking on one section after another, beginning with opening the books file.
Books Inform Today’s School Leaders
Twenty-two books are here
in their entirety, along with the simple-to-install Adobe Acrobat software to
read them, in case you skipped installing it earlier. These texts, proven popular
and authoritative, were published by ERIC/CEM from 1989 to present. Many are
short, such as W.W. Charters Jr.’s classic manual On Understanding Variables
and Hypotheses in Scientific Research (51pp).
But you’ll also find all 450 pages of School Leadership: Handbook for Excellence
and the 591-page Roadmap to Restructuring by David T. Conley. Take notes from
Edwin Bridges’ Managing the Incompetent Teacher or read Lawrence O. Picus’s
In Search of More Productive Schools.
Once you install the Acrobat program, the software is automatically called up
any time you choose to read one of the books. Simply click on the book’s
icon, maximize the page size, and the whole book is yours in a legible format.
You can zip right to any section of the text, or return later and find your
place quickly, with page numbers flipping past as fast as your mouse can scrolldown
a sidebar.
No, you can’t take this e-book to bed with you, unless you snuggle up with
your laptop. But unlike a paper text, you can zip over to the web to follow
up on any point that stirs curiosity, or copy and paste something into another
document you’re putting together. Or send an item out as an email to someone
you know who can use the data now.
And to make the CD even more attractive, the total purchase cost of these books
alone would be over $300.
Turn to ERIC Digests for a Quick Overview
A parent wants to know
what you think about metal detectors in your school. On this and other salient
issues such as zero-tolerance policies, student profiling, and student dress
codes, school leaders and policymakers often need to get a timely sense of the
landscape in which the issues reside so they can speak intelligently about them.
With the ERIC/CEM Electronic Library in your computer’s CD drive, you needn’t
worry about lacking necessary information on today’s hot topics. The disk’s
eighty-one ERIC Digests are just what you need to stay informed and up to date.
Each ERIC Digest offers a two-page synthesis, in Q and A format, with ideas
drawn from authors in the field. These overviews enable you to quickly familiarize
yourself with important questions and answers.
All Digests are clearly written and concise. Most recent Digests are also available
in Spanish, professionally translated by a native speaker.
A sampling of the topics of Digests included in this edition: Principal Mentoring,
Student Truancy, School Vouchers, Student Dress Codes, School Size, Teacher
Morale, Ethical Leadership, Home Schooling, Poverty and Learning, Integrative
Education.
All Digests include a list of resources to consult for additional information.
Many of the references come with links that let you jump to the full text of
the source materials on the web.
Research Roundups Provide Timely Summaries Another source of the
best current thinking on vital topics in educational management are Research
Roundups, written specifically for principals of elementary and middle schools.
Clearinghouse information analysts write Research Roundups for publication by
the National Association of Elementary School Principals.
ERIC/CEM develops four such reports each year. How do these differ from ERIC
Digests? Research Roundups look at what authors of five key resources have to
say on the same topic, summarizing central ideas from each publication.
Click on a topic such as Principal Mentoring, School Size, Grade Span, or Commercialism
in Schools. You open a four-page publication that you can read on screen or
print for reading later.
As with ERIC Digests, links in the bibliographic citations connect you to the
full text of the sources whenever possible.
Policy Reports Let You Examine Policy Issues and Options If you
are a school-board member, state legislator, or policy analyst, you’ll
glean much useful information from the Electronic Library’s two Policy
Reports, one on Business Partnerships with Schools and the other on Class Size.
Policy Reports give voice to a wide range of viewpoints and sometimes conflicting
policy recommendations. The scope is broad, embracing policy issues at the school,
district, state, and national levels.
Each report has an extensive bibliography with links to resources available
on this CD or, via hot links, on the web. In addition, each Policy Report has
a separate list of website resources to let you further explore the topic.
Search Your Own Collection of ERIC Abstracts on Educational Management
Since January 1994, the ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management has indexed
and written abstracts of more than 15,000 journal articles and documents (research
reports, books, papers, and so forth). These abstracts, on topics related to
the leadership and administration of K-12 schools, are loaded on the CD for
your ease in searching for information specific to educational management. (The
CD includes a few abstracts contributed to the ERIC database by the other fifteen
clearinghouses in the national ERIC network because they are cited in the CD’s
publications.)
You could, if you so chose, browse through these thousands of abstracts, checking
out titles one by one. The real value comes when, using the CD’s stand-alone
search application, you type in keywords to search for what you want and snag
out of this deep pool the treasures you can use to make your case.
By initiating a search you find that the database provides a vast library of
abstracts, from publications all over the globe. Search to call up a list that
fits your criteria, then zero in on articles you want to read in full. Many
of those filed here are also accessed by links from other sections of the CD.
When you open the Search option, you start on the journey to harvesting from
this vast database. Using the usual sort of keywords, call up lists of relevant
abstracts and go right to them.
Light as it is to heft, the ERIC/CEM Electronic Library is a collection of years
of ongoing synthesis of the most difficult and controversial questions in the
field. What an advantage to speak to your colleagues with the authority only
current, reliable information can provide.
The CD is available now from the Clearinghouse in both Windows and Macintosh
formats for $59.00 plus $4.00 shipping and handling.
The CD’s 22 Book Titles
The New Standards and Accountability
In Search of More Productive Schools
Safe School Design
Measuring Leadership
Student Motivation
The Complete Toolkit for Building High-Performance Work Teams
Leading with Vision
Roadmap to Restructuring
School Leadership: Handbook for Excellence
Learning Experiences in School Renewal
Implementing Problem-Based Learning in Leadership Development
Transforming School Culture
Children at the Center
Planning for Effective Staff Development
At Risk Families and Schools
Graying Teachers
On Understanding Variables & Hypotheses in Scientific Research
Problem-Based Learning for Administrators
Principals
Managing The Incompetent Teacher
Working Together
Voices from the Classroom
Electronic Library
· 22 books published since 1989
· 81 ERIC Digests published between December 1992 and May 2002
· 19 Research Roundups, the Winter 1996-97 issue through the Summer 2002
issue
· 2 Policy Reports on Class Size and Business Partnerships with Schools
· Abstracts of all journal articles and documents entered into the ERIC
database by ERIC/CEM from January 1994 through March 2002 (topics covered include administration, leadership, policy, law, and organization)
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