Don't read this by e-mail! Instead, read the hypertext version of this newsletter: <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/news/current.html>. Contents:
|
|
|
Do you have UO colleagues who would find this newsletter useful? Call their attention to the html version, or they can subscribe by sending email to jqj@darkwing.uoregon.edu. |
|
Local and online events of particular interest to FCN members (see also On Campus below):
![[new!]](newyahoo1.gif){kind=small}
CALL FOR PROPOSALS -- Williams Fund for Teaching Innovation. Every year the Tom and Carol Williams fund provides medium-sized (typically $5000-$20,000) grants to UO faculty or academic units for the development of innovative programs or activities that would improve the undergraduate experience at UO. Deadline for 1999-00 preliminary proposals is Feb 1, 1999. If you have an idea for improving the UO, here's your chance to fund it! For more information contact Dave Hubin, <mailto:hubin@oregon>.
FACULTY OWNERSHIP OF EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS. You may have seen a message from Dave Hubin earlier this month setting out UO Policy for Distribution of Licensing Income. Cursory reading of that policy might suggest that the UO was claiming "50% of net royalty income from [all faculty-authored] educational and professional materials." <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~committees/policies/ch3h1.html>. In fact, the scope of the policy is quite limited, as spelled out in Oregon State Board of Higher Education policies. To see what we really claim that you thought was yours, see <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/publishing/IMDs.html>.
CLASSROOM PLANNING. There's lots of activity going on at UO these days in planning for new technology in classrooms. Among the loci for discussion are the Grayson Hall Users Group and a new Straub 146 Users Group. Grayson will be rennovated, including several new high-tech classrooms, with expected occupancy in early 2000. Straub 146 is to be rennovated with completion fall 1999. There's also a small "classroom committee" exploring these issues on a campus-wide basis (Jack Rice [chair;<mailto:jrice@darkwing>], Greg Bothun, Herb Chereck, Alan Chung, Georgeanne Cooper, Dave Duseau, Stan Hall, George Hecht, and Shirien Stevens). If you're interested in the issues surrounding classrooms, contact one of the members of the committee.
TECHNOLOGY STEP BY STEP. TEP is again offering ALS 609: Technology Step-by-Step this Winter. Step-by-Step is a course for faculty and GTFs (up to one-credit, pass/no-pass) that explores the pedagogical and technological basics of teaching with technology. Currently one section is being offered Wednesdays from 12:00-1:20, beginning, January 13. For more information contact Michael Sweet <mailto:mssweet@oregon>. Topics include:
SEMINAR ON COLLEGE TEACHING. Also call your grad students' attention to ALS 609: Seminar on College Teaching. Rebecca Ambers will teach this 2-credit course on teaching at the college level. For details, Rebecca Ambers <mailto:rambers@darkwing>.
TRAINING EVENTS FROM HUMAN RESOURCES. December training sessions include: Preventing and Dealing with Sexual Harassment on Campus, Class Issues in the Workplace and the Academy, Food for Thought Series, The Art of Difficult Communications. For detailed information and schedules, see <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~humanres/train98.htm>.
VIDEOTAPES. The fall videoconference series in educational technology has been very informative and successful. Tapes of programs shown to date are available for loan from JQ Johnson, <mailto:jqj@darkwing>:
COURT STRIKES DOWN LIBRARY INTERNET FILTERING. (Reuters, 11/24/98). A U.S. District Court struck down a Virginia county's library policy requiring filtering software to block pornography on all its computers connected to the Internet. Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled Monday that the Loudoun County policy violated the First Amendment because the software also blocked adults from using library computers to access a wide array of mainstream, constitutionally-protected materials. A group of adults in the county filed the lawsuit late last year, joined by People for the American Way and the American Civil Liberties Union, after the Loudoun County Library Board adopted the filtering policy in October, 1997.
MULTIMEDIA SEARCH. (Reuters, 11/24/98). Search engine Excite, Inc. and RealNetworks, Inc. unveiled Monday an integrated audio and visual search that will allow consumers access to multimedia Web pages. The agreement enables consumers to use Excite's new Audio/Video search to search the Web for audio, video and multimedia content directly from the RealPlayer G2 where they are listening to or watching multimedia clips.
NEW FROM WGU. Western Governors University (WGU) and The Open University of the United States (OU-US) are joining forces to create Governors Open University System. <http://www.wgu.edu/wgu/about/release19.html>.
COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION. A new web site allows students to explore theories on what caused the fall of great civilizations like Mesopotamia and Teotihuacan. Sponsored by the Annenberg/CPB Multimedia Collection.<http://www.learner.org/exhibits/>
DIVERSITY: NEWSGROUPS MATTER MOST TO THE MARGINALIZED. Two psychologists at New York University recently monitored participation in 12 Internet newsgroups over a 3-week period. They selected four groups that focus on mainstream interests (such as politics), four that concern "culturally undesirable but conspicuous conditions" (such as obesity), and four that focus on culturally "marginalized but concealable" behavior (homosexuality, illicit drug use, sexual bondage and sexual spanking). Judges who rated the messages posted found that online communities mattered the most to participants in the "marginalized but concealable" groups. Members of these groups posted far more frequently, often after receiving positive feedback, than did members of the other groups. "This is the sort of work that needs to be done, examining different types of Internet users and different effects of computer use," says a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University. Many participants of the marginalized groups said that participation in the newsgroup had enabled them to reveal their secrets to friends or family members. (Edupage 22 Oct 1998; from, Science News 17 Oct 98) <http://cc.uoregon.edu/docs/news_policy.html>
Many of us produce course handouts and overheads using a word processor, usually MS Word. If you do so, it's very easy to publish those handouts as web pages on your course web site.
The first step is to use Word to save a copy of your document as HTML. You'll want the latest version of Word. On a Mac that's Word 98 (part of Office 98). On a PC that's Word 97 service release 2 (if you have Word 97, you can upgrade for free to SR2 at the Microsoft web site <http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/updates/updword.htm>). Older versions of Word and some other word processors such as WordPerfect also allow you to save as HTML, but generally give much poorer results (though depending on what features of your word processor you use your mileage may vary). If you've unsuccessfully tried publishing from Word using an older version, try it again using the latest Word 97. [or wait for Office 2000, expected to be released next year]
Using Word, open your document (it could be a Word .doc file, or a WordPerfect .wpd file, or anything Word can read). Then use the "Save as HTML" item on the file menu. Bingo, you now have a file on your hard disk in HTML format. You can check it by opening the resulting HTML file in your web browser. Since HTML is a much more limited formatting language than word's native file format, not all of the information in the original will be maintained. And Word will have to make lots of guesses about how to translate your formatting into HTML. Try it on a typical document and see if you can live with the effects it generates.
Once you have an HTML file on your hard disk, transfer it to your web server (typically darkwing) using ftp. On a Mac you'll typically use "Fetch", and on a PC typically WS_FTP.
Finally, edit your class home page to add a hyperlink to your just-published document.
Word is very easy to use for this purpose, but generates rather poor HTML code. It's ideal for "quick and dirty" publishing jobs like getting notes on line for your class, but not nearly as good for publishing professional-quality web pages, or web pages that will be updated by other people later. For these latter purposes, you'll probably want to clean up your HTML document using an HTML editor like Home Page or Dreamweaver (if you do so, plan on a lot of work getting the document "right").
There are several books that discuss using Word or WordPerfect for web publishing, e.g.:
The conference list now has its own web page, at <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/conferences.html>. We'll continue to use this space to highlight new conferences of particular interest to UO faculty interested in educational technology:
![[new!]](newyahoo.gif){kind=small}
Martin Walker: The purpose of my remarks is to try and persuade you that the balance of power between politics and the media is shifting in a very, very dramatic way. And if we can begin from what the traditional relationship was, there is no better summary I know than the front pages of the French newspaper, Le Moniteur, for the month of March of 1815, when another Comeback Kid, Napoleon Bonaparte, escaped from the exile in the island of Elba to launch his extraordinary 100-day adventure that ended in defeat at the Battlefield of Waterloo. But, first, he had to recapture France. So here we have the front pages of Le Moniteur:
March 10th, Dateline: Elba. "The beast has escaped its lair!"
March 12th: "The fiend lands on the shores of the country he defiled!"
March 14th: "The rascal pillages the town of Frejus!"
March 16th: "Bonaparte evades arrest by loyal troops, heads north."
March 20th: "Napoleon advances on the capital."
March 22nd: "The Emperor is at the gates of Paris."
March 23rd: "His Imperial Majesty is to enter the city today."There you have it, the intimate relationship between press, power and proximity, a relationship that can often be indistinguishable from that of the courtier to the monarch.
--From the ABC Radio National Media Report.
The UO Faculty Consultants Network Newsletter is published (approximately)
twice a month. If you have materials for inclusion in the newsletter you can
send them to <mailto:jqj@darkwing>.
This newsletter (as well as other FCN-related material) is available on line
in <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/news/>.