EDUCATION NEWS
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FACULTY ATTITUDES TOWARD ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
The proliferation of electronic resources has had a significant impact on the way the academic community uses, stores, and preserves information. In an effort to more fully understand how this technology is affecting the behaviors and attitudes of academic professionals, JSTOR conducted an anonymous survey of faculty at higher education institutions in the United States in late 2000. [Educause]
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0248.pdf
 
LIBRARY WEBSITES INTEGRAL PART OF COLLEGE STUDIES
An OCLC survey of US college kids finds that 70% use their campus libraries' website for some of their assignments, and only 29% say the websites do not have what they need.
http://www.emarketer.com/news/article.php?1001391
 
START MEASURING YOUR ELEARNING PROGRAMS NOW
eLearning is a powerful and revolutionary tool. It allows you to reach thousands of people across the world—at a fraction of the cost of traditional training—and can transform your company. Only a year ago, elearning initiatives were exploding everywhere. Now, however, executives are starting to ask the tough questions. "What are we really getting for all this money spent on elearning?" "Now that we’ve bought all this content and software, how do we know that our elearning programs are really effective?"
http://www.linezine.com/7.2/articles/jbsmyelpn.htm
 
E-LEARNER COMPETENCIES
Training managers and online courseware designers agree that e-learning isn't appropriate for every topic.  But e-learning also may not be the right fit for all types of learners. Here are some of the behaviors of a successful e-learner. Do you have them?
http://www.learningcircuits.org/2002/jul2002/birch.html
 
A SCORM ODYSSEY
Not too long ago, an e-learning project manager I know jokingly referred to SCORM as “a happy place in the future.” In the minds of many e-learning developers, standards are a bitter pill--providing little in return for the effort. But that view is turning around. Standards is a hot topic. Even though there’s much work ahead in defining universal standards, a solid foundation is in place upon which to build your e-learning strategy. For e-learning project managers, that points to certain considerations for every project.
http://www.astd.org/CMS/templates/index.html?template_id=1&articleid=27753
 
PROGRAM HELPS TEACHERS SHARE LESSON PLANS
In two years as a Somerville High School teacher, Alicia Kersten has had few opportunities to observe her colleagues in action. A ninth-grade social studies instructor, Kersten says she is often too busy leading five classes a day to learn tricks of teaching from someone else. But Kersten and 23 other teachers from the Greater Boston area are chipping away at the walls and workload that separate them. Their tool is VideoPaper Builder, software that allows teachers to produce their own CD library of best teaching practices using text, digital video, still photographs, and links to Web pages.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/209/learning/Program_helps_teachers_share_lesson_plans+.shtml
 
SCORM: CLARITY OR CALAMITY?
"The SCORM spec is going to be successful almost by default, but unless all e-learning specifications turn the focus from infrastructure to pedagogical soundness, they are in danger of becoming instructionally irrelevant." So says Thor Anderson, director of developer support at the Instructional Management System Global Learning Consortium (IMS) in Burlington, Mass., and technical editor of two major specifications that went into SCORM, which stands for the Sharable Content Object Reference Model. SCORM—an ironically dry name for something that evokes extremes of passion and frustration within e-learning circles—is already beginning to change vendors' product and service offerings, but will it clarify and strengthen the industry or lead it into disaster?
http://www.onlinelearningmag.com/onlinelearning/magazine/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1526769
 
IBM RAISES ITS E-LEARNING PROFILE
IBM is attempting to boost its presence in E-learning with a new product from its Mindspan division and a partnership with E-learning content developer the Thomson Corp. Thomson and IBM will jointly sell content from Thomson's library of about 3,000 IT and professional-development courses. IBM's Global Services unit will provide consulting services on how to build training libraries based on off-the-shelf and customized courses.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020726S0002
 
MICROSOFT SENDS ITS SOFTWARE BACK TO SCHOOL
Microsoft is enrolling a team of academic researchers to boost its security efforts and develop new technologies based on its .Net technology. The company announced the formation of the Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board, which will bring together academics from 12 to 15 colleges and universities to study and contribute to Microsoft's recent effort to improve the security and reliability of its products. Microsoft calls that effort the Trustworthy Computing Initiative.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,103442,00.asp
 
PEOPLESOFT ACQUIRES TEAMSCAPE
Business software maker PeopleSoft has acquired Burlingame, Calif.-based Teamscape Corp. for an undisclosed amount. Privately owned Teamscape makes a Web-based JavaBeans-enabled learning platform that helps companies train their workforce on new products and services. The company claims Teamscape's assets make it the "first major enterprise vendor to deliver a fully integrated enterprise learning management solution."
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/1437061
 
IS ONLINE LEARNING REALLY STUDENT FRIENDLY?
Lisa’s note reminds me of the strong need for us to develop methods both for retaining and for integrating content from longer-duration online learning experiences. To that end, LMS developers might want to start thinking about how they could construct a learner’s content briefcase that builds from course to course.
http://www.train-net.co.uk/magazine/full_columnist.cfm?ID=3623
 
CLASSROOM DISCUSSIONS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
We had a hunch. We had used a moderated discussion forum with a few middle school classes last year and saw a rise in student writing productivity. So with a little bit of action research planning, we devised an experiment to test our thesis: that a moderated discussion forum would impact student writing. Our findings supported our initial belief--a moderated discussion forum does have a positive effect on student writing abilities. This article will explain what we did and what we discovered.
http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/WCE/archives/bethtom.htm
 
WEBLOGS IN EDUCATION--EDUBLOGS?
For people at groundlevel in education, the Weblog is becoming the Web-presence of choice; educators and students alike are taken by the blog's advantages over the traditional Website--without being radically different, the date-stamped blog structure lends itself to regularly updated personal records and comments on current Web-based resources, with quick and visible responses from other bloggers; this easy interaction facilitates the development of learning communities.
http://webtools.cityu.edu.hk/news/newslett/edublogs.htm
 
DISTANCE ED: NOT SO DISTANT
Have you looked at your institution's "mediamix" lately? How's your progress on transforming educational content to platform-neutral, XML-tagged electronic files that permit rapid publication in a variety of forms? Are you looking seriously at replacing the course model with online "learning spaces" students can enter again and again for true lifelong learning? No? It's no surprise. We all know that issues of this sort are potentially important for higher education but, at the moment, they're not high on the agenda at virtually any traditional college or university.
http://www.universitybusiness.com/story.asp?txtFilename=features/viewpoint.htm
 
COLLEGE ARCHIVES 'DIG' DEEPER
A scholar wants to present a groundbreaking working paper on teleportation to his colleagues around the world. Instead of submitting the paper to a print commercial journal and waiting months for results to be published, the researcher can simply pull up MIT's Center of Teleportation Research Web page and instantly submit the paper and data sets online, for all his cohorts to review. This virtual intellectual asset sharing is part of DSpace, a joint project between MIT and Hewlett-Packard to create a long-term, sustainable digital repository. This fall, MIT plans to open the DSpace archive to all its professors. The project will also release a set of free software tools so that any college or university can create its own online repository.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54229,00.html
 
 
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
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LIBRARIANS AT THE GATE
E-books are killing the happy marriage of libraries and publishers. Libraries can now lend the same book to thousands of readers simultaneously. Publishers say it’s not fair. What’s the answer?
http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=714141
 
GATES OUTLINES .NET STRATEGY'S WINS, LOSSES
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates Wednesday admitted the company's .Net strategy was behind schedule in some ways but that Microsoft remains committed to it. "In some respects, we've gotten further ahead than we expected, and in other respects we haven't made as much progress as expected," Gates told analysts and reporters at a daylong review of .Net—the bold new course outlined for the world's largest software maker two years ago.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techreviews/products/software/2002-07-24-microsoft_gates_initiative_x.htm
 
A GADGET FOR THE NAME FORGETFUL
For anyone who tends to forget names, getting acquainted with a crowd of strangers need no longer provoke angst. Credit a new gadget that remembers names. All it requires is that you say, "Nice to meet you."
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20020722/D7KU60G80.html
 
HOW TO PRESERVE DIGITAL ART
Digital technology is so ephemeral that an artwork created using a G4 Mac, Flash 4.0 software and C++ coding today may no longer be viewable 10, 20 or even 200 years from now. Film canisters are collecting dust after 75 years of nonuse, video formats from the 1980s are becoming unreadable and Web projects created just minutes ago are already becoming stale. As the half-life of these media becomes shorter and shorter, variable media art is in a race against technological obsolescence. That's why it's critical that these artworks are documented and preserved now, before they are lost indefinitely, observers say.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53712,00.html
 
U.S. MOBILE WORKFORCE TO GROW TWICE AS FAST AS GENERAL WORKFORCE, STUDY FINDS
According to IDC, the number of mobile workers in the U.S. will increase by 12.7 million between 2001 and 2006, from 92 million to 105 million. In contrast, the number of workers who are not mobile will actually decline by two million through 2006, down to 53.8 million. This means that by the end of 2006, roughly two-thirds of U.S. workers will be mobile workers, IDC said.
http://www.mobileinfo.com/News_2002/Issue28/mobileworkforce.htm
 
MIT SCHOLARS PREDICT SHIFT IN TELECOM MODEL
Keeping the Internet an open entity will depend largely on users' abilities to set up ad hoc networks among themselves, instead of large telecommunications companies controlling the infrastructure and therefore the bits that travel across it, according to some members of the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/07/24/020724hntelecommit.xml
 
RAISING THE ACCESSIBILITY BAR
Stanford University's Archimedes Project is working to make information accessible to everyone--not just individuals with disabilities, but also the elderly, those who can't read and just about anyone else who uses computers and information appliances. The Archimedes Project is building accessible technology that outperforms other commercial products so "non-disabled people will want it," said project leader and co-founder Neil Scott.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,53930,00.html
 
PENTAGON TO ISSUE WIRELESS DISCONNECT ORDER
The inherent insecurity of wireless devices is now a matter of national security. John Stenbit, the Pentagon's CIO, said he plans to issue new policy guidelines that will ban most if not all wireless devices within military installations. The change in policy comes only months after Computerworld first reported the results of wireless security audits at major U.S. airlines and the facility housing the U.S. Defense Department's global network operations center.
http://computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,73150,00.html
 
WIRELESS LAN USE GROWING FAST
Wireless LANs based on the IEEE 802.11 standard are on a strong growth spurt, according to two research reports. The number of wireless LAN implementations in the U.S. has doubled over the past 12 months, according to a report released Thursday by Yankee Group, in Boston.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/08/01/020801hnwlangrowth.xml
 
NOTEBOOK GROWTH SOARS
Shipments of mobile PCs grew at a 6.1 percent clip in the second quarter, in the face of a decline in the overall PC market, according to a study by Dataquest.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/08/01/020801hnnotebook.xml
 
CUSTOMERS SHUN MS LICENSING PLAN
The majority of Microsoft's customers won't be signing up for a controversial licensing plan, according to analysts' estimates. Signing onto the plan, which would commit business customers to a two- or three-year annually paid contract guaranteeing the right to upgrade, will be the only way to continue buying Microsoft software at deep discounts.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-947168.html
 
SUN AND APPLE NOT WORKING ON STAROFFICE FOR MAC
Sun Microsystems and Apple Computer have no concrete plans to codevelop a version of Sun's StarOffice productivity suite for the Mac OS X operating system, two open-source developers and a Sun official said. StarOffice is currently available for Windows, Sun's Solaris and the Linux operating systems. Sun and Apple have talked about creating a version for the Mac OS X, but there are no concrete plans to do so, said Tony Siress, Sun's senior director of desktop marketing.
http://www.idg.net/ic_899509_1794_9-10000.html
 
ACER SUB WINS $299 DELL PDA ORDER
The Taiwanese press is reporting that Wistron, an Acer subsidiary spun off as a manufacturing arm, has won the deal to supply Dell with PDAs. The report, on the Economic News, claims that Dell will buy around 1.5 million PDAs from Wistron. The piece says Dell will sell its Pocket PC based PDA for $299, which will certainly hit HP's Ipaq badly.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4685
 
 
INTERNET RELATED NEWS
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A FLASHY WEB COMMUNICATION TOOL
Flash is software for creating multimedia content and applications. In the past, it was not a strong tool for real-time Web communication–-but now that's changed. With the Flash Communication Server, developers like Reinhardt are creating Flash MX applications that let users talk and stream video of themselves, collaborate on documents in real time, chat and send multimedia instant messages.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53983,00.html
 
HOLLYWOOD WANTS HACKING LICENSE TO STAMP OUT ILLICIT DOWNLOADS
Hollywood escalated its fight against Internet trading of movies and music, successfully urging key lawmakers to consider letting the industry use hacker tactics to stop Americans' exchange of songs and films they didn't buy. The broad new legal powers proposed by a congressman--and endorsed quickly by several others--would let record and movie studios hack into Americans' personal computers to find illegally shared music and movies. They could also try to disable or interfere with file-swapping programs.
http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/478524p-3821756c.html
 
LAWYERS COMPETE FOR EVIDENCE IN EBAY AUCTIONS
After a heated bidding war on eBay, Mark Lanier recently paid $2,125 to win a 1941 Naval Machinery manual. It sounds like a peculiar collecting hobby, but to Lanier it was serious business. The Houston lawyer, who sues companies on behalf of asbestos exposure victims, was bidding against a defense lawyer to get his hands on an evidentiary trophy filled with details on where and how asbestos was used aboard ships.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3710149.htm
 
CLOSING IN ON 3D WEB STANDARDS
A group pushing for industry standards for 3D on the Web released its final working draft of a key specification, bringing the technology one step closer to international standardization.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-946038.html
 
OPEN SOURCE PLAY FOR REAL?
I can understand why RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser, tired of fighting the unfair fight with Microsoft, has joined forces with the open source community. After all, he spent 10 years at Microsoft and knows how the company thinks and operates. He learned a great deal about business strategy from his former boss, Bill Gates. He also knows that his company has a big target on its back and that Microsoft is zeroing in on it, gaining share in key markets they cohabit. Now, he’s suddenly Robin Hood with a merry band of open sourcers who will save the shire from the omnivorous Microsoft. Well, not quite. Glaser is trying to outflank Microsoft by hooking up with the open source community, but it’s not clear to me that the open source community is fully prepared to join forces with RealNetworks yet.
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2875370,00.html
 
ON TRIAL: DIGITAL COPYRIGHT LAW
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in an attempt to overturn key portions of a controversial 1998 copyright law. The suit asks a federal judge to rule that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is so sweeping that it unconstitutionally interferes with researchers' ability to evaluate the effectiveness of Internet filtering software.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-946266.html
 
HOTMAIL CLEAN-OUT CATCHES MEMBERS OUT
As part of a series of new storage policies aimed at driving more people toward its paid services, Microsoft has instituted a plan to delete sent Hotmail messages that are more than 30 days old. On Tuesday, it began erasing all messages in subscribers' Sent file transmitted before June 16.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-946430.html
 
ONLINE CONTENT: IT’S NOT ABOUT THE COST
Americans are more warming up to paying for content on the Web, according to a study. The study, conducted by the Online Publisher's Association (OPA) and Web measurement company ComScore, showed that U.S. consumers spent $300 million to access Web content in the first quarter of 2002. That's a 155 percent increase from the same period last year. During that period, 12.4 million U.S. consumers opened their wallets for content, up from 5.3 million last year. On a yearly basis, spending for online content in 2001 increased 92 percent to $675 million from 2000.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-947617.html
 
AMERICANS PICK E-WORK OVER MORE MONEY
Instead of a raise, one third of Americans would prefer to work from home, claims a new report. The poll was contained in a report entitled "Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere: The Changing Face of Work," which was sponsored by the Positively Broadband Campaign, an industry body that promotes the use of broadband.
http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=8235387
 
WORKERS' DOWNLOADING PUTS EMPLOYERS AT RISK
Workers using company computers to download music and movies are exposing employers to lawsuits and computer viruses. Worried employers are disciplining workers and barring them from downloading copyrighted entertainment. Experts say bootlegged music and movies are also a drain on corporate tech resources.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2002-07-29-download_x.htm
 
READ ALL ABOUT IT
A company called ProQuest has digitized every back issue of the Times, from cover to cover. Every news article, editorial, photograph, cartoon and advertisement is included, and using a fully searchable file, readers can see articles as they originally appeared in print. From the attack on Fort Sumter to Nixon's resignation, readers can trace watershed historical events from 1851 to 1999.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54030,00.html
 
CYBERSECURITY CZAR URGES BETTER STANDARDS
Software vendors, Internet service providers (ISPs), wireless network vendors and the federal government all need to improve the security of their IT products and networks to help ensure that the U.S.' cyberspace is secure, said Richard Clarke, presidential advisor on cybersecurity, in his keynote here that opened the Black Hat security conference.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/07/31/020731hnclarke.xml
 
 
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[NOTE: The selections above are from the Academic ADL Co-Lab News Report, a limited-distribution, weekly executive summary of trends, strategies, and innovations influencing the future of learning and technology in higher education. It is prepared by the University of Wisconsin System Office of Learning and Information Technology (OLIT) in coordination with the Co-Lab. Collegebuys.org is using these selections with permission. The selections from the weekly summaries were selected and edited by David Stuart of collegebuys.org.]
 
[NOTE: This information is provided for information purposes only. Mention or discussion of a product, company, or person does not represent any official endorsement or criticism of the same. All authors and organizations retain complete copyright.]
 
[SOURCE MATERIAL: The reference as specific as possible is provided to a source for each summary. When using an online link, ensure the URL has not been broken with a carriage return.]
 
[ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Judy Brown is the Emerging Technology Analyst for the University of Wisconsin System, OLIT. Brown conducts research and consults for the 15-institution UW System. She is Director of the Academic ADL Co-Laboratory at The Pyle Center in Madison, WI. Until recently she coordinated the WTCS Hardware and Software Purchasing Consortium and other statewide technology initiatives for 16 technical college districts comprised of 47 campuses. Brown was named one of the Top 100 women in computing by McGraw Hill's Open Computing magazine (December 1994). She writes a business technology column for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and is the coordinator of eWEEK's Corporate Partner Program.]
 
[COMMENTS & CONTRIBUTIONS: If you want to offer material, or if you want to comment on the contents, contact Judy Brown at judy@academiccolab.org