Early Childhood Special Education: A Few Select Electronic Information Resources

Education Databases

There are two great databases you can use to find out what the education community, broadly defined, is writing about a topic.

To use these databases and access online subscriptions journals from off-campus, you will need to have a current ACCESS card and be in the library's database. Check to see if you are currently "IN" by looking yourself up on Oscar's View Your Circulation Information. The number you need to enter is the number UNDER THE BARCODE ON THE BACK OF YOUR ACCESS CARD.

Education Fulltext is a database of citations, abstracts and some fulltext to about 500 professional and scholarly journal articles, as well as some books and a few other types of material, all in English, and mostly published in the U.S. For about 250 of those periodicals, you will get the fulltext of the articles for issues back to about 1994, at the most. Citations and abstracts go back to 1983. Take a look at the Short Guide to Searching Education Fulltext before searching for some very helpful tips!

ERIC, the massive education database, formerly from the Department of Education, casts a wide international net over the education literature and goes back to 1966. It indexes and abstracts hundreds of education periodicals and provides lengthy abstracts or fulltext hotlinks to hundreds of thousands of unpublished ERIC Documents. It changed radically in the late 1990s, and is now mostly useful for historical searching of the education literature and accessing unpublished information in the ERIC Documents.

For more on choosing a database to search, see our online Education guide, Which Database Should I Use?

Websites

Special Education Resources on the Internet (SERI), created at Hood College, is a directory of internet resources on special education. Resources are arranged in 22 categories, including Physical & Health Disorders, Inclusion Resources, Parents & Educator's Resources, Gifted & Talented, ADD, Associations & National Organizations, and so on.

Wrightslaw, the website maintained by the author's of the highly acclaimed book of the same name, now in its 2nd edition, will keep you up-to-date on what's happening in terms of law and legislation in the area of special education and advocacy for children with disabilities.

CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through the use of innovative multimedia computer technology. Their website is intended to be an example of the kind of learning environment they believe should be available to students worldwide. The site is divided into sections that cover everything from the philosophical and psychological underpinnings of their work, a description of universal design features, and practical information about how to develop, find, and use universally designed curriculum materials to information about CAST's research and development projects.

JSET (Journal of Special Education Technology) is a scholarly and professional open-access electronic journal sponsored by the Technology and Media Division of the Council for Exceptional Children that covers all topics related to the use of technology in the field of special education.

NICHCY (National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities) is a cooperative effort between the Academy for Educational Development (AED) and the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), U.S. Department of Education. NICHCY is an information and referral center for families, students, and teachers,who need information on disability-related issues regarding children and youth, defined as birth through 21.

Early Childhood Guided Tour: Special Educationis a tour for teachers of two model classrooms that demonstrate the successful integration of educational technology in special education classrooms from preschool to grade 2. It is part of a site created by the National Center to Improve Practice (NCIP), a federally funded program of the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs to promote the effective use of technology to enhance educational outcomes for students with sensory, cognitive, physical and social/emotional disabilities. The program ended in 1998, so the site is not updated. However, this segment is still of real value.

This page created and maintained by Gail Gradowski.

Last updated September 1, 2007.