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This study combines quantitative and ethnographic methods to analyze middle-school students' uses and understandings of microcomputers and videotex. As an experiment in teaching library research skills, 27 eighth graders were assigned to search an online encyclopedia in preparation for writing a science theme. The students' operational practices and associated conceptual understandings were interpreted as a multimodal case study of videotex use. Analysis of data from hard copies of the students' disk records (an unobtrusive measure), participant observation during naturalistic computer use, and a direct, hands-on test of computer competence at the project's end supported five tentative conclusions; the students typically: (1) mastered only the simplest videotex commands without improving their rate of error over time; (2) had difficulty understanding the concepts and vocabulary, but not the structure of electronic menus; (3) accessed only a small quantity of electronic text compared to available printed materials; (4) exhibited the ability to search by keyword but found the videotex service inadequately cross-referenced; and (5) required constant adult assistance to log on to the videotex service, to learn command operations, and to store text on disk files. The study indicated that, as of 1984, commercial electronic text services lacked internal motivations to achieve operational efficiency and were unsuited to the educational objective of learning the cognitive skills of information processing. (Author/JB)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert