EDUCATION NEWS
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E-LEARNING TODAY: AS AN INDUSTRY SHAKES OUT, THE SURVIVORS OFFER NO-FRILLS EDUCATION FOR GROWN-UPS
Business is booming at the University of Phoenix Online. Enrollment in its baccalaureate completion and graduate-degree programs is nearing the 50,000 mark (a whopping 70 percent increase from last year) with no sign of slowing. With an M.B.A. priced at $23,230–a third of Harvard's tuition, but more than two times in-state rates at Georgia Tech–the for-profit company brought in $64 million last fiscal year, allowing it to hire 170 staff members a quarter and 300 to 400 faculty members a month. "Our goal is to grow as fast as necessary to meet demand but keep the student experience small, warm, and comfortable," says CEO Brian Mueller. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/elearning/articles/02phoenix.htm
 
WEARING FOUR PAIRS OF SHOES: THE ROLES OF E-LEARNING FACILITATORS
The emergence of e-learning comes at a time when education and training are undergoing important transformations. The teacher-centered model that has dominated instruction for centuries is slowly giving way to a learner-centered model with instructors in the roles of facilitators or "guides on the side." E-learning is no exception. But e-learning's use doesn't preclude facilitators' responsibilities for structuring learning experiences. The effectiveness and success of e-learning programs are dependent on facilitators' roles in delivering and managing instruction.
http://www.learningcircuits.org/2002/oct2002/elearn.html
 
SCORM IN A TEACUP? PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR IMPLEMENTING THE NEW E-LEARNING STANDARD
E-learning – it’s a jungle! So many different systems, so many different suppliers. You know you need to move forward – but how can you be sure that your hard-won investment won’t be leading you into an electronic dead end?
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/lib/media/scormarticle.pdf
 
THE BEST OF THE BEST—FROM A DISTANCE
Over a dozen expert panelists from higher education, industry, and government sectors shared their experiences at the MIT Conference on Distance Education and Training Strategies: Lessons From Best Practices conference held on September 24th at the Tang Center at MIT. This all-day conference attracted about 150 learning professionals from the Boston area and beyond, including a panelist who presented virtually from his office in Nairobi, Kenya. http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage/sub_page.cfm?article_pk=5802&page_number_nb=2&title=FEATURE%20STORY
 
DISTANCE LEARNING: UNIVERSAL DESIGN, UNIVERSAL ACCESS
Distance learning courses offer opportunities for education and career enhancement for those who have access to the technologies they employ. However, many people find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide that separates those with access to new technologies and those without. Even if they have access to these technologies, some people with disabilities find themselves on the wrong side of a second digital divide that is caused by the inaccessible design of coursework.
http://www.aace.org/pubs/etr/issue2/burgstahler.cfm
 
COMPARING LIBRARY AND USER RELATED COSTS OF PRINT AND ELECTRONIC JOURNAL COLLECTIONS
Drexel University's W. W. Hagerty Library received funding in the Fall of 2000 from the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to study the impact of a library's shift to electronic journals on staff and costs. The goals were to perform a comparative analysis for Drexel's library (a case study) and to develop a model for use by other libraries. The results suggest that, when all costs are considered, electronic journals are more cost effective on a per use basis.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october02/montgomery/10montgomery.html
 
SURVEY REVEALS COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE LIBRARY OR TUTORING FOR STUDENT SUCCESS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
An independent survey sponsored by McGraw-Hill Ryerson found that web-based technology is considered by higher education faculty to be the most effective institutional resource in encouraging student success, outweighing traditional resources such as the library and tutoring.
Following three years of data collection at U.S. and Canadian Colleges and Universities, the survey confirms that 83% of higher education faculty members are almost unanimous in their opinion that web-based technology is a key contributor to student success. The survey revealed
that presently 62% of faculty use web content for course preparation, 56% use the web to supplement textbooks and 51% use the web to ensure up-to-date course content. The use of the web in course preparation, "using up-to-date/current materials", jumped to first place in terms of
importance with 91% of faculty ranking it very or extremely important, reflecting the increasing amount of current web-based information available and students' expectations about it being used in their courses.
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?bw.101502/222882156&ticker=MHP
 
COLLEGE PROFESSOR GETS TOUGH ON MOBILES
A university professor has worked out a low-tech way of preventing students' mobiles from going off in class: he answers them himself.  Peter Telep, at the University of Central Florida, has taken calls from his students' boyfriends and girlfriends, telling them: "This is the English teacher, and we're busy right now."
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1136095
 
 
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
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SHARP UNVEILS 'COMPUTER-ON-GLASS' DISPLAY
Sharp Corp, Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), unveiled a screen with microprocessor circuitry applied directly onto the glass, enabling it to function like a computer. The company hopes to have products available by 2005 using the advanced circuitry, perhaps even a "display card" that could store data and be carried around for use with various gadgets from games machines to mobile phones to car navigation systems. "This could be something the size of a business card, perhaps with a wireless function and touch-screen input," Mikio Katayama, head of Sharp's mobile display division, told reporters after a news conference. "We still have to work out the specifics." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=581&ncid=581&e=1&u=/nm/20021022/tc_nm/tech_sharp_display_dc
 
TABLET PC COMPETITION LINES UP
A start-up formed by a group of Dell Computer visionaries has high-end aspirations for tablet PCs. On Nov. 7, Austin, Texas-based Motion Computing plans to unveil its tablet-style computer that will offer more deluxe features than competing machines, according to CEO Scott Eckert. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-963131.html
 
MICROSOFT UNLEASHES OFFICE 11 ON BETA TESTERS
Microsoft will deliver to selected beta testers on an early version of its long-awaited Office 11 desktop suite that will feature versions of Word, Excel, and Access that fully support XML. To be made available to only a "few thousand" testers, Microsoft officials will be heavily emphasizing the new suite's ability to better connect people with each other in order to better collaborate and share data more seamlessly, but also to connect business processes both inside and outside the firewall.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/10/22/021022hnoffice11beta.xml
 
DAN GILLMOR: SOFTWARE IDEA MAY BE JUST CRAZY ENOUGH TO WORK
Mitch Kapor smiles at the half-serious question: "Are you crazy to try something like this?" Kapor, a pioneering developer of personal-computer software, is definitely not nuts. And it's no surprise to see the founder of Lotus Development now leading an unorthodox project that could have an outsized impact. For more than a year, Kapor and his small team have been working on what they're calling an open-source "Interpersonal Information Manager." The software is being designed to securely handle personal e-mail, calendars, contacts and other such data in new ways, and to make it simple to collaborate and share information with others without having to run powerful, expensive server computers. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/4327025.htm
 
BEING WIRELESS
Nicholas Negroponte explains why Wi-Fi "lily pads and frogs" will transform the future of telecom. EVERYTHING you assumed about telecommunications is about to change. Large wired and wireless telephone companies will be replaced by micro-operators, millions of which can be woven into a global fabric of broadband connectivity. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/wireless.html
 
STANFORD GIVES "A" TO DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING
Scientists at Stanford University have demonstrated tangible proof that scientific experiments can be conducted using thousands of low-end PCs wrangled together into loosely linked networks. A group of chemists--including Stanford assistant professor Vijay Pande--said they successfully predicted the folding rate of a protein using calculations worked out on a so-called distributed computing network. Their research, conducted last year, was published this week in the science journal Nature. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-963024.html
 
LETTER: FREE SOFTWARE HURTS U.S.
An attack on the software license behind the Linux operating system has stirred up a free software controversy in Washington. Earlier this week, three members of the House of Representatives, Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Ron Kind (D-Wis.) and Jim Davis (D-Fla.), sent a note to 74 Democrats in Congress attacking Linux's GNU General Public License (GPL) as a threat to America's "innovation and security."
http://www.wired.com/news/linux/0,1411,55989,00.html
 
THE OTHER WIRELESS
After years of empty promises, Bluetooth finally delivers. Kiss those ugly computer cables goodbye.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/823395.asp
 
AUGMENTED REALITY BRINGS DINOSAURS INTO THE 21ST CENTURY
Paleontologists and computer scientists have joined forces to paint fossils with digital flesh and create dynamic models that reveal how dinosaurs may have looked, walked and attacked prey. Called "augmented reality" (AR), researchers have used the new techniques to fit muscles onto a predator's jawbone and to interpret a mysterious feature in dinosaur footprints. http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/02/tip021022.htm#first
 
IT'S EXERCISE IN UTILITIES
Tech visionaries have long imagined a future in which companies buy information technology services as they would electricity. Their idea: Ditch the server racks and replace them with a wall jack connected to unlimited, on-demand computing horsepower. Until recently, however, most big companies didn't have a good economic reason for considering so-called "utility" computing services. Now, given the slender IT budgets and cost-cutting at many of those same companies, proponents say the concept is getting renewed attention.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-962663.html
 
THE KEYBOARD THAT ISN'T THERE
The problem with pocket technology, such as PDAs and mobile phones, is that they are too small to incorporate a full keyboard. This leads to alternative, and often clumsy, forms of data input such as hand-writing recognition or typing text messages on a numeric keypad. Now there's a
solution--a light-projected keyboard. Suddenly, an uncluttered desk, kitchen table, or pull-down tray on a train or plane can be converted into a keyboard.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/dot_life/2326077.stm
 
STANDARDS PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENT
While IT organizations are streamlining and containing costs, IT managers and CIOs must also be concerned with protecting the investment in IT. One way to protect your investments is through industry standards.
http://www.comdex.com/newsletter/issue82/index.php?file=1
 
INTEL: DIGITAL MEDIA ADAPTERS TO HIT MARKET IN 2003
Digital media adapters, which will allow users to share music, images and video files stored on their PCs with consumer-electronic devices such as TVs and stereos, are set to hit the market from several leading hardware vendors in 2003, said Louis Burns, vice president and co-general manager of Intel's Desktop Platforms Group, speaking to hardware makers at the Intel Developer Forum here. Companies that are set to launch digital media adapters next year include Dell Computer, Legend Group, Mitac International and Gateway, Burns said. The adapters
will use Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology to connect PCs with consumer-electronic devices.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/10/15/021015hnmediaadapt.xml
 
SPAM MASQUERADES AS ADMIN ALERTS
A new breed of pop-up ads is appearing mysteriously on Microsoft Windows users' computers. The so-called "Messenger spams" have security experts and system administrators scratching their heads--and recipients fuming. Some of the ads, which hit Windows systems through backdoor networking ports and not by e-mail or Web browsing, appear to have been generated by Direct Advertiser, a $700 software program developed by Florida-based DirectAdvertiser.com.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,55795,00.html
 
 
INTERNET RELATED NEWS
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JUDGE: DISABILITIES ACT DOESN'T COVER WEB
A federal judge ruled Friday that Southwest Airlines does not have to revamp its Web site to make it more accessible to the blind. In the first case of its kind, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz said the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies only to physical spaces, such as restaurants and movie theaters, and not to the Internet.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962761.html
 
BRINGING SOCIETY TO CYBERSPACE
Creating new communities in cyberspace can help kids learn history in their own, real-world community. That was the message from Amy Bruckman at the annual PopTech conference this weekend. Bruckman, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, created an online project that pairs kids with seniors who participated in the Civil Rights movement. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,55765,00.html
 
GOOGLE EXCLUDING CONTROVERSIAL SITES
Google, the world's most popular search engine, has quietly deleted more than 100 controversial sites from some search result listings. Absent from Google's French and German listings are Web sites that are anti- Semitic, pro-Nazi or related to white supremacy, according to a new report from Harvard University's Berkman Center. Also banned is Jesus-is-lord.com, a fundamentalist Christian site that is adamantly opposed to abortion.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963132.html
 
COPYRIGHT LAW AND ROASTED PIG: LAWRENCE LESSIG ON ELDRED V. ASCROFT
In 1930, 10,027 books were published. Today, 174 of those books are still in print. What would it take to put the remaining 9,853 out-of-print books onto the Internet? http://www.redherring.com/insider/2002/10/roast-pig-copyright-102202.html
 
FBI ON THE TRAIL OF GLOBAL INTERNET SERVERS' ATTACKERS
The White House sought to allay concerns about an unusual attack against the 13 computer servers that manage global Internet traffic, stressing that disruption was minimal and the FBI is working to trace the attackers. Most Internet users didn't notice any effects because it lasted only one hour and because the Internet's architecture was designed to tolerate such short-term disruptions, experts said.
http://www.detnews.com/2002/technology/0210/24/b04-620780.htm
 
UNIVERSITIES MOVE TO RESTRICT FILE SHARING
Sharing music and movies through programs like Kazaa and LimeWire has always been illegal, but until recently there were rarely any consequences. To protect their bandwidth and their endowments, universities are restricting and even banning students from networks for file sharing.
http://www.browndailyherald.com/stories.cfm?S=3&ID=7636
 
SPAM GROWS--A BIGGER WORRY THAN WORMS
Spam continues to gunk up the Internet's arteries. In September, more than 17 percent of all e-mail traveling across the Internet could be classified as spam, according to data collected by U.K. e-mail service provider MessageLabs. The company's figures are presented in its latest monthly report. "In speaking with our customers six to eight months ago, (the concerns) were virus, virus, virus. Now, spam is priority No. 1," said John Harrington, director of U.S. marketing for MessageLabs.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-962300.html
 
FEDS PLANNING EARLY-WARNING SYSTEM FOR INTERNET
The U.S. National Communications System (NCS) plans to develop a Global Early Warning Information System (GEWIS) to monitor the performance of the Internet and provide warnings to government and industry users of threats that could degrade service, such as denial-of- service attacks against the Domain Name Servers that control Internet traffic.
http://computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/hacking/story/0,10801,75248,00.html
 
THE NEXT WEB
Burst bubble and a few thousand failed business plans aside, it's clear that the World Wide Web really has changed the way we do business. But there's something missing from the equation. We've got more data than ever, with everything from sales records to engineering specs available
online, but finding the needle we need in the haystack of the Web isn't getting easier.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021010S0016
 
MORE AMERICANS GO ONLINE
Americans are using and enjoying the Internet more, a private research firm said Wednesday, even though they're still not entirely sure their personal information is secure.
http://money.cnn.com/2002/10/16/news/internet_barometer/index.htm
 
 
 
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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