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:
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Local and online events of particular interest to FCN members (see also On Campus below):
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TECH
FAIR -- "NEW IN 99". The annual UO educational technology fair
will be held this year on Friday, May 21. This is the major Faculty Consultants
Network event of the year, and we need YOUR help to make it happen. We
need FCN members to talk about their use of technology on campus, particularly
new projects that you have started or completed in the last year! If you have
ideas for sessions, or are interested in assisting with the fair, in making
a presentation, or in doing a demonstration or "poster session," contact JQ
Johnson, <mailto:jqj@darkwing>.
If you know of any vendors of instructional technology products who might be
interested in participating, we'd be most interested in contacting them too.
WEB USE GRANT OPPORTUNITY. UO is a member of the Northwest Academic Computer Consortum, a six-state consortium focused on issues of research and education dealing with information technology. NWACC offers two grant programs of potential interest to UO faculty, including "Faculty Incentive Awards for Web Use" (deadline April 15, 1999) and grants for "Collaborative Program Development". There is $150,000 available for grants during 1999-2000. For details please see: <http://www.nwacc.org/>.
EXTENDED STUDIES PROPOSALS. The Process for Change "extended studies implementation group" has identified as one of its priorities supporting academic departments in offering their existing degree programs at times of day and in formats that allow citizens of this state who want to complete a degree while continuing regular employment access to a degree completion opportunity. They are calling for proposals from departments for "Degrees After Dark" -- modifications to existing degree programs to allow prospective students with all but major requirements behind them to complete a degree by attending college part-time during off hours. For information, contact Carol White, <mailto:cwhite@oregon.uoregon.edu>.
DESIGNING YOUR COURSE WEBSITE. Teaching Effectiveness Program is still accepting participants for its 2 day website workshop, to be held Saturday, April 10 and Saturday, April 24 from 8:30am to 4:30pm. To register, contact Georgeanne Cooper, <mailto:gcooper@oregon> or or 6-2177.
FREE ALTERNATIVES TO MS OFFICE. The price is certainly right, and in some cases the features are better as well. If you're unhappy with MS Office, check out StarOffice PE (free for noncommercial use, and essentially a complete MS Office workalike for Windows, Linux, and Sun Solaris) <http://www.stardivision.com>. Or take a look at Nisus Compact (a free Macintosh word processor, a "lite" version of the popular Nisus 5.1.3) <http://www.nisus.com/nisusdl>. Or play with the free "trial" version of Corel Wordperfect suite 8 (Windows or Macintosh) <http://www.corel.com/freebies/trialoffers.htm>.
TEACHING TOOLS. The Chronicle of Higher Ed calls our attention to a data base created by the Node, a web site dedicated to on-line learning, that offers essays, articles, and product reviews to help instructors decide what technologies to use in their courses. <http://cirrus.node.on.ca/tfl/>
PEARSON EDUCATION NETWORK. Consolidation in the textbook and online textbook industry is happening fast. One of the biggest players is the merger of Prentice Hall, Allyn & Bacon, Simon & Schuster Education, and Addison-Wesley Longman. Pearson (the result) calls our attention to several web sites that highlight their products, including over 500 companion websites that complement their texts. If you use one of their texts, you definitely should consider also using the web site! Check out <http://www.prenhall.com/demo>, <http://www.abacon.com/techsolutions>, <http://www.awlonline.com>, and <http://www.ssdl.com> .
HALF OF U.S. CLASSROOMS ARE NOW WIRED. The Department of Education says that, largely thanks to government subsidies, 51% of classrooms, school computer and science labs, and school libraries had Internet connections in the Fall of 1998 (compared to 27% in 1997 and only 3% in 1994). Smaller and poorer schools are now just as likely to have Internet connections as larger and wealthier schools. (Reuters/San Jose Mercury News 1 Mar 99; from Edupage, 2 Mar 99).
BUT MOST COLLEGES DON'T TEACH TEACHERS HOW TO USE TECHNOLOGY. That's the conclusion of a report -- titled "Will New Teachers Be Prepared to Teach in a Digital Age?" -- released by UO's own ISTE at the annual conference of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. <http://www.milkenexchange.org/research/iste_results.html>. For a background story from the Chronicle of Higher Ed see <http://chronicle.com/daily/99/02/99022601t.htm>.
NEW ONLINE JOURNAL. 'Educational Technology & Society' (ISSN 1436-4522) is a peer-reviewed freely accessible online journal aimed to help educators and educational system developers better understand each other's role in the overall process of education and how they may support each other. The journal invites articles, case studies, review papers and other items of interest to educators and educational system developers (author guidelines are available at journal website). <http://ifets.gmd.de/periodical/>.
WORLD ASSOCIATION FOR ONLINE EDUCATION. WAOE is a new educators' organization dedicated to turning online education into a professional discipline. Currently WAOE offers free trial memberships through to June 1999. <http://www.waoe.org>.
FIRST ONLINE UNIVERSITY ACCREDITED TO GRANT DEGREES. Jones International University, which specializes in selling online courses for profit, is the first Internet-only school to be accredited to grant college degrees. The school was accredited last week by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. Jones International, which features courses designed by professors from schools like Columbia and Stanford and taught by part-time professors free-lancing for extra cash, offers bachelor's and master's degrees in business communications. "In the U.S. there are 100 million people who need some kind of additional education, and there are only 15 million seats in universities," says founder Glenn Jones. The school started offering Internet courses in business communications four years ago. (Wall Street Journal 9 Mar 99; from Edupage, 9 Mar 99)
PITAC. The final version of the report of the Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) is now available. This is an important document that is getting serious attention in Washington; for example,it was one of the primary motivators for the recent administraton proposal for some $336 million in additional funding to support information technology research. Read it at <http://www.hppc.gov>.
You can use Word's menus and toolbars for a variety of formatting tasks, but for character formatting it's often much faster to use keyboard shortcuts. Here are some of the more popular keyboard commands for characters:
| Windows | Macintosh | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Ctrl+] | Command+] | Increases font size by 1 point |
| Ctrl+[ | Command+[ | Decreases font size by 1 point |
| Ctrl+D | Command+D | Displays the font dialog box |
| Ctrl+B | Command+B | Toggles boldface |
| Ctrl+I | Command+I | Toggles italic |
| Ctrl+U | Command+U | Toggles continuous underlining |
| Ctrl+Shift+A | Command+Shift+A | Toggles all capitals |
| Ctrl+Shift+K | Command+Shift+K | Toggles small capitals |
| Ctrl-space | Command+Shift+Z | Remove character formatting and revert to style |
Want more MS Word shortcuts and tips? Sign up for occasional e-mail tips at <http://www.zdtips.com/>. Or use the Word "Help" command and see the entry for "shortcut keys".
Most of us use a word processor more than any other program, and most of us use only a tiny fraction of the features of the software. There are huge opportunities for productivity gains -- if you find ways to learn tricks without taking too much time learning them. If you don't like reading manuals, try some other strategy for learning just a bit more about your software.
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.
One day while walking downtown, a historian was hit by a bus and was tragically killed. Her soul arrived up in heaven where she was met at the Pearly Gates by St. Peter himself.
"Welcome to Heaven," said St. Peter. "Before you get settled in though, it seems we have a problem. You see, strangely enough, we've never once had a historian make it this far and we're not really sure what to do with you."
"No problem, just let me in" said the woman.
"Well, I'd like to, but I have higher orders. What we're going to do is let you have a day in Hell and a day in Heaven and then you can choose where you want to spend eternity" the Saint replied.
"Actually, I think I've made up my mind.....I prefer to stay in Heaven".
"Sorry, we have rules....." And with that St. Peter put the scholar in an elevator and it went down-down-down to Hell. The doors opened and the historian found herself stepping out into a beautiful seminar room. Down the hall was a lavishly appointed lounge, complete with a small but useful reference library. Standing in front of her were all her former colleagues, a veritable Who's Who of her discipline, all cheering for her. They ran up and kissed her on both cheeks and they talked about old times. They had marvelous historical discussions trashing post-modernism, and then retired to the faculty club for an excellent steak and lobster dinner. She met the Devil, who was actually a really nice guy. And although he was a theorist, he showed a real interest in her work. They talked and joked into the wee hours of the morning.
The historian was having such a good time that before she knew it, it was time to leave. Everybody shook her hand and waved good-bye as she got on the elevator. The elevator went up-up-up and opened back up at the Pearly Gates where St. Peter was waiting for her.
"Now it's time to spend a day in Heaven" he said. So the historian spent the next 24 hours lounging around on the clouds and playing the harp and singing. She had a great time and before she knew it her 24 hours were up and St. Peter came and got her. "So, you've spent a day in Hell and you've spent a day in Heaven. Now you must choose your eternity" he said. The historian paused for a second and then replied, "well, I never thought I'd say this. I mean, Heaven has been really great and all, but I think I had a better time in Hell."
So St. Peter escorted her to the elevator and again the scholar went down-down-down back to Hell. When the doors of the elevator opened she found herself standing in a desolate wasteland covered in garbage and filth. She saw that her colleagues were dressed in rags and were picking up garbage and putting it in sacks for the evening meal. They barely paused in their work long enough to grumble and tell her that they thought her research was second rate. The Devil came up to her and put his arm around her and laughed at her. "I don't understand," stammered the historian, "yesterday I was here and there was a library and a faculty club and we ate lobster and we talked about my research and had a great time. Now all there is a wasteland of garbage and all my colleagues look miserable and hate me."
The Devil looked at her and grinned, "that's because yesterday we were interviewing you, but today you're faculty."
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/>.