FCN News 17 Dec 97FCN News 17 Dec 97Don'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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Projection upgrade in Gilbert 138 and Allen 221. New high-lumen 800x600 LCD projectors are being installed in Gilbert 138 and Allen 221 during Christmas break. They are expected to provide much improved multimedia and computer-output display in those large classrooms.
IT Curriculum. The winter IT Curriculum is available at <http://libweb.uoregon.edu/it/>. Call your students' attention to the introductory classes offered, especially during the first 3 weeks of the term.
Tech FairWe've begun planning this year's instructional technology fair, "Techniques for Teaching with Technology." Tentative date for the festival is April 17, in the Knight Library. We need FCN members to talk about their use of technology on campus! 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.
NJCMC. If you are interested in computer mediated
communication, you should subscribe to the e-mail "Newsletter
of the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication". Issue 2 came out
this month, full of announcements of academic jobs, conferences,
special journal issues, new books, and more. To see the current
issue, visit
<http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~fay/jcmcn/>.
For the latest issue (Sept 97) of the Journal of Computer Mediated
Communication, see
<http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/>.
Higher Education Policies for the Digital Age. The Higher Education Alliance for Information Technology, a coalition of the major higher education associations that represent nearly 3,000 colleges and universities, has released a policy document on its position on a range of information technology and intellectual property issues affecting higher education and the nation. For more information on obtaining copies, see <http://www.nasulgc.nche.edu/>
Photo Library I -- AP wirephotos. AccuNet/AP Photo Archive is an extensive photo library now available on line for educational use. The resource from AccuWeather and the Associated Press will provide access to view and print out more than 400,000 AP photos. The photos were previously available only to commercial organizations and the media.<http://ap.accuweather.com>.
Photo Library II -- NASA public images. A federal agency whose existence depends on public image has given us a wonderful catalogue of planetary photographs, Planetary Photojournal Pick a planet or moon and a NASA mission and go for it. <http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/>
Internationalization I -- color on the web. Because most Web users tend to be North American, many Web designers are oblivious to the subtle cultural connotations that language, colors and design can take on in a foreign setting. Companies wishing to internationalize their sites should be particularly sensitive to language (no colloquialisms, such as using "wicked" to mean "good"), colors (white denotes purity in Western countries, but death in many Asian nations), and the gestures made by models (showing the palms, as in a wave, is considered an insult in some Mediterranean countries). "Color takes on enormously different overtones from one country to the next," says one corporate globalization consultant. "That doesn't mean you can't use those colors. It just means you want to rethink what the visuals look like on your pages and on your links." (CIO Web Business 1 Dec 97; from Edupage, 14 Dec 97).
Internationalization II -- online translation. Digital's AltaVista has branched out of the search engine business, and now offers the first industrial strength free translation service on the web. For the first time, non-English speaking Web surfers can translate information on the predominantly English speaking Web in real time -- and also translates web pages to English. The new service, provides translation between English and Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Italian. Users can instantly translate a search query, Web page or section of text, such as an email, by cutting and pasting the text. Users can also translate their own query and send the translation to the search engine. The technology works best when the text is grammatically correct and does not use too many idioms; however, users can usually understand the meaning of even a poorly written document. <http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/>.
Moore donates $1.5 million to OGI. Intel chairman emeritus Gordon Moore and his wife have given the Oregon Graduate Institute a $1.5-million challenge grant; the school has until the end of March 1998 to match it, and intends to solicit another $3 from local industry over the next three years. "Oregon is a major high-tech center. As such, it needs a world-class graduate institute. Education and high-tech are strongly interrelated; it is important not only to supply new students, but also to refresh the knowledge and skills of students who are already operating as employees in industry," says Moore. Intel employs around 10,000 people in the state, which is the site of the company's largest operation. OGI says the company has donated more than $2.5 million during the past four years. (EE Times 5 Dec 97; from Edupage, 7 Dec 97)
If you've ever assigned your students the task of finding information on the web, you've probably found that many of them lack critical skills in evaluating information they find. A real-world example:
The student at Davidson College, near Charlotte, N.C., innocently turned to the Internet for help researching a paper on the origins of the AIDS virus.
Most of what she had found, both in printed and Internet sources, listed the conventional and widely accepted theories that the disease began among primates in Africa or in an isolated human population. She cited them, offering arguments for and against the theories.
Then she found an obscure World Wide Web site, not affiliated with any research or governmental group, that outlined in elaborate, if sometimes confusing, detail how the virus was supposedly invented in secret U.S. military laboratories as part of a biological warfare research project. She accepted it at face value and made it the central argument of her paper.
(from a story by David Boraks in the Charlotte Observer, 7 Jan 1997).
If you plan to have students use the web in your courses, you need to put some effort into educating your students in the basics of information literacy. Remind them in particular to pay attention to the identity of the author and the currency of the information on the pages they view. Some resources available to help you include:
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:
An English Professor wrote the words, "woman without her man is a savage" on the blackboard and directed her students to punctuate it correctly.
The men wrote: "Woman, without her man, is a savage."
The women wrote: "Woman: Without her, man is a savage."
[N.B.: this appeared as a joke on the web. As is typical of the web, there was no citation, so one should treat the data with suspicion. I have not replicated the experiment.]
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/>.