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:
Local and online events of particular interest to FCN members (see also upcoming conferences and IT Curiculum below):
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See the schedule for this fall's IT Curriculum at <http://libweb.uoregon.edu/it/>. Refer your students to the introductory classes, rather than wasting time in your own classes introducing them to needed technology. For instructors, some of the most relevant presentations during October include:
Web Publishing with Claris Home Page Tue Oct 14 3:00 PM - 4:50 PM EC Johnson Mon Oct 20 2:00 PM - 3:50 PM ITC Cawthorne, Johnson Using Motet Fri Oct 17 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM EC Lynch Intermediate web publishing: More HTML Tue Oct 21 3:00 PM - 4:50 PM RSR Johnson Making Presentations with PowerPoint Mon Oct 27 2:00 PM - 3:50 PM EC Arkin Intermediate web publishing: Designing for the Web Tue Oct 28 3:00 PM - 4:50 PM RSR Bell Managing a Majordomo List Wed Oct 29 1:00 PM - 1:50 PM EC Lynch Introduction to Web Publishing Wed Oct 29 10:00 AM - 11:50 AM EC Benedicto, T. Smith
Student Evaluations. "The student evaluation form, which has become a powerful tool affecting decisions about faculty tenure, pay increases, and promotion, may need to be reassessed in light of findings showing that it is far from a bias-free indicator of instructor effectiveness." That's the conclusion of an article titled "'How'm I Doing?': Problems With Student Ratings of Instructors and Courses," by Wendy M. Williams and Stephen J. Ceci. Change: the magazine of higher learning 29(5), p. 12.
Do I HAVE To? In what may be a first, professors at Toronto's York University have negotiated a new contract that ensures that they will not be forced to use technology in the classroom. The contract stipulates that decisions to use technology "shall be consistent with the pedagogic and academic judgments and principles of the faculty member employee as to the appropriateness of the use of technology in the circumstances... Normally, a faculty member will not be required to convert a course without his or her agreement." The faculty union that spearheaded the negotiation says that the issue revolves around protecting the autonomy of professors: "When you put your course on a Web site, you are essentially giving up control of the course," says a professor who points out that redesigning a course to fit the constraints of a Web site constructed to someone else's specifications can interfere with a professor's plan for the course. (Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 Oct 97; from Edupage, 5 Oct 97)
New Metadata Specification. Educom recently introduced new methods that will make it easier to find educational materials on the Internet. The metadata is a specification on the Internet that is designed for materials used in higher education, corporate and government training, and K-12 schools. It provides a common vocabulary for searching and using the various components that make up individual lessons or whole courses of study. Publishers, educators, or anyone else putting learning material on the Web will be able to tag it with information such as the author's name, the learning objective, subject area, and licensing requirements. Educom also is making available a Java-based tool that will assist content developers in applying the metadata labels to their materials. <http://www.imsproject.org/metadata>. (Syllabus listserv, 29 Sept 97)
Ownership tagging for Internet. The Association of American Publishers, in cooperation with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, has developed a "digital object identifier" system that would make it easier for would-be users of electronic information to find out about the origin and ownership of the online material, and about copyright restrictions on its use. The voluntary system would enable users to "recognize intellectual property even on the fastest of highways," says a consultant who helped develop the system. The system is designed around a numeric tag that would be embedded in books, articles and even chapters. When users clicked on an icon, they would be transported to the information owner's home page, which would contain information for obtaining permission to use the work. The system would be maintained by a new, nonprofit D.O.I. Foundation, supported by fees from publishers. (Chronicle of Higher Education , 3 Oct 97)
Best of EUGENE. Best locally produced web site: EW by far, followed by a host of individual favorites, including the UO and the UO Bookstore (from the Eugene Weekly)
You've been maintaining a web page (let's say about a UO child care center, with URL <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/olum-center/>). You're interested in knowing what other web pages have links to it. One useful trick is to use the search engines to find out.
If you visit either the Alta Vista search engine at <http://altavista.digital.com> or the UO search engine at <http://search.uoregon.edu>, you can search that engine's database of web pages to find all pages that include a link to your page (in the case of the UO search engine, approximately 100,000 web pages at UO). In the search box, enter "link:" followed by the URL, e.g. "link:http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/olum-center/". You'll get a list of HTML documents that link to your page. Try it with your home page or a class web page; you might be surprised at who has a link to your pages.
Note that the list you get from a search engine is always incomplete. It contains only links found on pages currently indexed in the search engine, which typically does not include recently created or modified pages (since search engines often take days or weeks to find new pages). And, for a variety of reasons, search engines often miss large pieces of the web. Still, it's the best approach available.
If you're a darkwing user, it's also possible using "server side includes" (SSI) to record the page that a user came from in getting to your page. As people visit your page you can collect a list of all the pages they came from to get to you, and other information about them as well. If you have a page that is enabled for SSI (on darkwing, that would be either a page whose name ends in ".shtml" rather than ".html", or because you've enabled SSI for other file extensions in a .htaccess file), you can include code that writes to a file every visit to your page. Unfortunately, this requires that the log file be publicly writable, so it's a security risk! If you really want to do it, the idea is to create a file, say "referrers.log", in the same directory as the web page you're interested in., and give this file public write access:
% touch referrers.log % chmod 666 referrers.log
Then in the SSI-enabled web page include the following HTML:
<!--#exec cmd="echo $HTTP_REFERER" >>referrers.log"-->
For more information:
An idiosyncratic list of upcoming conferences relevant to educational tech., both "virtual" (online) and traditional. For conferences that require physical travel, my emphasis is on conferences in the Northwest and on those I find personally interesting. The Educom and CAUSE calendars, <http://educom.edu/web/calendar/calendarHome.html> and <http://cause-www.colorado.edu/information-resources/events.html>, contain a more extensive list of mainstream conferences. Virtual conferences and tutorials:
Traditional conferences and workshops:
A university creative writing class was asked to write a concise essay containing these four elements: religion; royalty; sex; mystery. The prize-winning essay read:
"My God," said the Queen. "I'm pregnant. I wonder who did it?"
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/>.