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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Need help preparing a PowerPoint presentation for your class? Would you like to put some great photos or video clips on your web site? Perhaps you need to use equipment or software you don't have in your office...or maybe you just want to learn new ways to apply technology to your course?
Whatever your teaching technology needs, the new Faculty Instructional Technology Training Center (FITT Center) in the UO Library's Media Services department can help. The Center supports and encourages faculty to understand, explore, and design ways of integrating effective technology into teaching, and provides individual consulting and training to any UO faculty member or GTF free of charge.
The new training center's initial services include assistance with multimedia, online communication and collaborative learning tools, and useful software and hardware, such as
The FITT Center is located in Room 18 in Media Services, on the ground floor of the Knight Library. It has two current-generation multimedia workstations (Windows and Macintosh) and a range of related software and additional hardware (including cameras, flatbed scanner, slide scanner, projector, CD-ROM recorder, and color printer). The staff gives technical support and offers one-on-one tutoring in the use and appropriate application of these instructional technologies. The Center also has small lounge and conference areas.
The FITT Center is open this summer starting June 1, Monday - Friday 11am - 6pm for drop-in visits, and also offers by-appointment and referral services.
To find out more about the Faculty Instructional Technology Training Center, call 346-1942 or check out their website <http://libweb.uoregon.edu/fittc/>.
ORBIS BORROWING NOW INCLUDES OSU. You can now request items from Oregon State University through Orbis Borrowing, and have them delivered to the UO for pickup within a couple of days. For information, <http://libweb.uoregon.edu/orbis/OSU_live,newsrelease.html>
DISTANCE LEARNING COURSE. During the fall, 1999 term, Dr. Beverly Jones of the Arts & Administration Program will offer a course called "Orientation to Distance Learning." The course is limited to 20 faculty or student participants, and several seats are still open. It is designed to assist participants in designing and executing a project of their choice that facilitates distance learning using the internet and other suitable media. Considerations for instructional design will include pedagogical style and philosophy, audience factors, content selection, presentation and evaluation questions, and selection of technology, techniques, appropriate hardware and software. This class will particularly assist faculty in making the choice of whether distance learning is appropriate to their pedagogical purpose. For further information, please contact the Arts & Administration Office at 346-3639, or Dr. Jones at 346-1453.
CCMAIL IS GOING AWAY. Network Services is phasing out the gateway it maintains connecting cc:Mail to the rest of the e-mail world, with a target of July 1. Most cc:Mail users already have accounts on oregon or darkwing, and it's time to use them as primary mailboxes. If you manage a mailing list or have cc:Mail addresses in your personal address book, finish converting to the new addresses!
CYBERSISTERS. The WISTEC Cybersisters Mentor Program has been awarded a prestigious Community Action Grant from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) to expand the Cybersisters telementoring program to middle schools in Corvallis, Oregon in partnership with Oregon State University. The program began in Eugene/Springfield in partnership with college women students from the University of Oregon serving as one-one-one mentors. <http://www.efn.org/~wistec/cybersis/>
WORLD ASSOCIATION FOR ONLINE EDUCATION. WAOE is a new educators' organization dedicated to turning online education into a professional discipline. Looks like this might become a major organization in the field. For information, see <http://www.waoe.org/>.
GOV'T PROVIDES FREE WEB SEARCH. After launching a new search service for government Web sites Monday and then pulling the service hours later due to concerns about the fees involved, the Commerce Department says the service is now online again, although it is not charging for the service. The site (www.usgovsearch.com) initially charged a fee of $15 for one day or $30 for monthly access, but the charge was temporarily cancelled because it may conflict with the federal policy that all government information be unrestricted to the public. Renee Edwards, a spokeswoman for the National Technical Information Service, which jointly developed the site with Northern Light Technology, says the search engine will be available for free while the government reviews its policy of unrestricted information. (Associated Press 05/19/99; from EduPage, 19 May 99).
WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS. 3Com Corporation's new Palm Pilot VII handheld computer will provide wireless access to the Internet through BellSouth's nationwide data network; the device, which carries a list price of just under $600, uses "Web clipping" technology that reformats Web pages to fit the Palm Pilot's screen. Content providers for the Palm Pilot VII will include ESPN.com (sports), Moviefone.com (film schedules and reservations); UPS.com (package tracking); and E-Trade (stock quotes). A full complement of services would cost $24.99 a month or higher; the basic package will cost $9.99 a month. (New York Times 20 May 99; from NewsScan Daily 20 May 99)
A COMPUTER IN EVERY ROOM. Ohio University plans to furnish each dorm room with one computer and one printer starting in the fall at a cost of about $1,000 per room. The university is doing this in conjunction with a new requirement that every student has access to a computer. The new technology will be paid for with money allocated to residence hall improvements. Although the student-housing department will replace the computers when they become obsolete, the school's IT department will provide their upkeep, a cost that is a subject of concern for some administrators. To discourage the wear potentially imposed by student experiments, the university plans to standardize the configurations to some degree, while still allowing the students to customize the computers somewhat. (Chronicle of Higher Education Online 05/21/99; from Edupage, 21 May 99)
CAMPUS PIPELINE CONTROVERSY. Edupage (24 May 99) contains an article critical of Campus Pipeline, a product that UO is currently testing. "Using Salt Lake City-based Campus Pipeline's intranet technology, universities nationwide can give students online access to numerous services such as email, online course registration, financial-aid guidance, and classroom chat sessions. The company supplies its services free of charge to universities, with one rather significant catch. In exchange, Campus Pipeline gains access to the complete records of every student for resell to advertisers." CP has responded by pointing out the various ways it honors student privacy requests. Stay tuned on this one.
INTERACTIVE PAPER. A new interactive system for publishing scholarly papers, created by a professor and a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, offers instant gratification for critics and precise feedback for authors.(Academe Today, 25 May 99) <http://chronicle.com/free/99/05/99052501t.htm>
STUDENTS WANT COURSE WEB PAGES. Some students say the best professors are the ones who bother to make Web pages for their courses. And a growing number of students use the quality of course Web pages as a deciding factor when picking classes (Academe Today, 27 May 99) <http://chronicle.com/free/99/05/99052701t.htm>.
COPYRIGHT LAWS ENTER DIGITAL AGE. A recently released report from the U.S. Copyright Office urges that public schools and universities be given exemptions and fair-use policies for their use of copyrighted intellectual property in digital distance learning projects. (from Edupage, 28 May 99). For more information, see the U.S. Copyright Office site, <http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/>
You have a class listserv, and it's out of control -- students or crashers are sending completely inappropriate postings. The flames are rising fast. Your own gentle intervention only made things worse. You're worried that a riot is about to start.
This won't happen to you, but it's nice to know that you have a quick way to deal with it.if it ever did. One safety net that you the listowner always have is to change your list to "moderated", so that all postings to the list will come to you for approval.
The easiest way to change your list to "moderated" is to use MajorCool, at <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~majordom/cgi-bin/owners.cgi>. Visit that page, enter the list name and your list password, select "Modify: Configuration Options" and click "Modify". In the resulting page of list options, scroll down and change the "moderate (resend)" option from no to yes. Click "Apply Changes".
MajorCool doesn't directly make the changes. Instead, it sends you an email message with further instructions. So now switch to your email and check your mail. You should find a message from majordomo@lists.uoregon.edu with subject "List Configuration Update". Read it, and follow the instructions it contains. Assuming you use Eudora, that means using the "Send Again" command, changing the To: line to majordomo@lists.uoregon.edu, and deleting the first 18 or so lines of the message.
After the flames have died down, you can change your list back to unmoderated. Meanwhile, you'll have to approve all messages posted to the list; they'll come to you instead of going directly to the list. You have a variety of techniques for doing this, but the easiest is probably to use that same "send again" command to resend messages to the list. At the beginning of the message you want to approve, include 3 header lines -- Approved:, From: and Subject: copied from the actual headers of the message, followed by a blank line. For example:
Approved: listpassword From: jdoe@gladstone.uoregon.edu Subject: Let's stop dumping on Joe till we examine our own behavior
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.WebCT Conference,
June 16-18, Vancouver, British Columbia. "WebCT is an innovative, enabling
technology that allows the non-technical user to create and maintain sophisticated,
interactive, internet-based educational environments." <http://web1.webct.com/public/conference/>.![[new!]](newyahoo1.gif){kind=small}
Spook Etymology on the Internet
Richard LedererRecently, all around the Internet has been sparking an item called "Life in the 1500s." The color and romance of the word and phrase explanations in the message are as beguiling as can be. But as soon as I opened the messages (sent to me by more than 50 people because I'm on everybody's list), I knew that most of the so-called historical revelations therein were false.
Take (please!) this electronic explanation of a common meterological phrase: "Houses had thatched roofs. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the pets -- dogs, cats, mice, rats and bugs -- lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, 'It's raining cats and dogs.'"
Dubious. The literal explanation is that during heavy rains in not so Merry Olde England some city streets became raging rivers of filth carrying many dead cats and dogs. But there is also strong evidence that the phrase "it's raining cats and dogs" may not be literal.
In the dark Ages, people believed that animals, including cats and dogs, had magical powers. Cats were associated with storms, especially the black cats of witches, while dogs were frequently associated with winds. The Norse storm god Odin was frequently shown surrounded by dogs and wolves. So when a particularly violent storm came along, people would say "It's raining cats and dogs," with the cats symbolizing the rain and the dogs representing the wind and storm. This folkloric explanation is supported by such expressions as "it's raining dogs and polecats" and "it's raining pitchforks." ...
For more of Lederer's analysis, and an amusing tour of the abuse of language on the web, see <http://pw1.netcom.com/~rlederer/>
The UO Faculty Consultants Network Newsletter is published (approximately)
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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/>.