This edition of IJET offers a new understanding of a number of educationaltechnology areas that are rapidly developing as we enter a new era.One of these areas involves the influence of educational technologies onK-12 teachers. This issue devotes two papers to this topic, "Teachers' Beliefs About Using Educational Technology In TheClassroom" and "An Analysis of Technology Use and Constructivist Behaviorsin K-12 Teachers."

One of the popular notions among educators who have embraced technologyduring the past few years is the notion that current educationaltechnologies can now provide access to educational instruction anytime,from anywhere, and to anyone, through distance education. Two papers in thisissue are devoted to this issue, "Experiences of Students,Teachers, and Administrators in a Distance Education Course" and"Predicting Dropout from Distance Education."

During the past few years, research groups from The National Center forSupercomputing Applications (NCSA) in the US have been world leaders in thedevelopment of advanced distributed learning environments. The paper inthis issue, "Alliance Prototype Distributed Learning Environment:Emerging Technologies for Science, Education, and Business," evaluates oneof NCSA's recent courses conducted in an advanced distributed learningenvironment. In another paper in this issue, "Literacy Developmentin Network-Based Classrooms: Innovation and Realizations," Bruce & Peytonpresent the results for case studies of network-based college classrooms.Through their research, they remind us that "the introduction of computertechnology to promote interaction and learning in educational settings is acomplex process that cannot be divorced from the users or the setting."

As in our July issue earlier this year, we invite you to contributeyour comments to our interactive feature article. This issue's feature article, "Dimensions of Network-based Learning," describes five dimensions that are important forthe success of educational network activities. The identification of thesedimensions may be a step toward a broader theory of network-based learning.

In the past few months since our last issue, the number of visitors to ourweb site has continued to increase along with the number of papers submittedfor publication. IJET currently has readers from forty-six countriesfrom around the world. We are very grateful to all our new andcontinuing readers for their support.

Dr. Roger Hacker, University of Western Australia
Dr. James A. Levin, University of Illinois