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Many of today's teachers are receiving training to perfect their technology skills. One place to begin technology integration during preservice education is at the instructional design level, focusing on student performance assessments and alignment of school curricula with state standards. The Teachers' Internet Use Guide emphasizes alignment of standards and lessons. The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, with which the Use Guide is aligned, focus on authentic student performance. Technology also offers promise for student projects. Students can use technology to complete authentic projects. However, if they use the Internet to get information, teachers must be concerned about originality and plagiarism. An alternative involves combining student products and performances, to be assessed as a portfolio item. With feedback from teachers, students progressively revise and refine their own products. This teaches them to create and edit professional material. When they complete the product, they can communicate their findings to others using presentation software. This method is important because students learn with peers in a global context rather than in isolation, producing original products and performances that are valuable to themselves and others and that lend themselves to authentic assessment. (SM)

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