JITE v32n2 - From the Editor - Riding the Information Highway

Riding the Information Highway

I am pleased to announce that the Journal of Industrial Teacher Education (JITE) has embarked on a new venture into the electronic age. Following the lead of the Journal of Technology Education (JTE), we are now making the full text of each issue of JITE available electronically. The electronic publication of JITE is a cooperative venture between NAITTE and the Scholarly Communications Project housed at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Established in the fall of 1989, the goal of the Scholarly Communications Project was to become a pioneer in the electronic communication of scholarly materials. The Project has expanded that initial goal to include helping educators become involved in electronic publishing; addressing technical issues related to the presentation and dissemination of information; and helping end users, including libraries, use the electronically available information. The major priorities of the Scholarly Communications Project are to provide free and open access to scholarly information and to experiment with new technologies. It is worth noting that JITE is the first publication of the Scholarly Communications Project that is edited by a faculty member who is not affiliated with Virginia Tech. Gail McMillan, current director of the Scholarly Communications Project, has been very helpful in assisting with both the technical and the operational details.

The decision to publish JITE electronically was not made hastily. Considerable thought and investigation occurred prior to making this decision to ensure that electronic publication would not result in financial strain for NAITTE and would not lead to decreased subscriptions for the printed version of the Journal. Our major source of input regarding electronic publication was Dr. Mark Sanders at Virginia Tech, who is a pioneer in electronic publishing with the Journal of Technology Education . Our primary concern was the potential impact of electronic publication on the number of paid subscriptions for the printed version of the Journal . While there is little information available regarding this topic, we were comforted by the fact that regular subscriptions for JTE have actually increased every year since they started publishing it electronically.

Electronic publishing has the potential to significantly change the way we disseminate the results of our scholarly work. I was shocked by the number of people who currently access JTE electronically. According to Mark Sanders, more than 13,000 people downloaded articles from JTE in 1993, and most of these people were from outside our field. Based on Mark's experiences with JTE , we felt that the electronic publication of JITE would not have a negative impact on our current level of paid subscriptions and could serve as a vehicle for promoting both JITE and NAITTE.

At this time, JITE is available through the World Wide Web. For those of you who use a World Wide Web browser such as NCSA's Mosaic, you can easily access the electronic version of JITE by entering the appropriate URL address (http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/). Although JITE is not yet available in other formats, we hope to have it available through FTP, Gopher, and WAIS in the near future.

I am also pleased to announce that NAITTE has signed an agreement with the H. W. Wilson Company to list all JITE articles in Wilson's extensive electronic version of the Education Index . When users of the Education Index locate an article of interest, they will now be able to obtain the full text of the article by purchasing it directly through the Wilson Company. NAITTE will receive royalties for any articles purchased through the H. W. Wilson company.

In This Issue

Four featured articles are included in this issue. The first article, by Kenneth Gray, Wen-Jyh Wang, and Sharon Malizia, examines the effectiveness of the college prep program by identifying the percentage of graduates who are ready for college-level academic work. Their findings have important implications for both vocational and academic education. In the second article, Ronald Hansen discusses several views on curriculum theory and presents five guiding principles that he believes will improve curriculum development in technology education. The third article, by David Pucel, presents the results of a study that examined mathematics requirements and the contexts in which mathematics is applied in two very different occupations. The final article, by Chris Chinien, Merrill Oaks, and France Boutin, discusses the results of a study that examined the transition from industrial arts to technology education in Canada.

The At Issue and Comments sections contain two essays. The first, by Richard Satchwell, describes a new project entitled "Technology for All Americans" that will attempt to develop national standards for technology education. In the Comments section, Sarah Smith Duncan synthesizes the presentations made in a session at the recent conference of the American Vocational Association. The Editorial Board of JITE, in a session entitled "Writing for the Journal of Industrial Teacher Education, " offered a set of guidelines that should help prospective authors improve their manuscripts so they receive favorable reviews by the referees of scholarly journals. Under Review includes a review by Dennis Herschbach of John Naisbitt's recent book entitled Global Paradox . In addition to the usual items related to submitting manuscripts to the Journal , becoming a NAITTE member, and ordering various NAITTE publications, Bits and Pieces contains a complete index to Volume 31 of the Journal of Industrial Teacher Education .

SDJ

Reference Citation: Johnson, S. D. (1995). Riding the information highway. Journal of Industrial Teacher Education , 32(2), 3-5.