FCN
News 29 May 1998FCN
News 29 May 1998Don'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 upcoming conferences below):
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Instructional Materials for Science Education. IMSEnet, from NCSU, provides a very complete science education web site, with huge range of resources useful to K-12 and college-level instruction. Check out their list of listservs, and their "Evaluating Science WWW Resources" pages. <http://www.ncsu.edu/imse/>.
Education on the World Wide Web. An excellent resource site containing an annotated list of nearly 600 high-quality educational web sites. <http://www.newadapt.org.uk/edonweb.htm>.
Netsurfer Science. If you use the web to motivate instruction in the sciences, you might take a look at a new e-zine (electronic magazine) from the people who produce Netsurfer Digest. Netsurfer Science will call your attention to some of the more interesting (or at least the newest) scientific web sites. If you use a mail reader that understands HTML you can subscribe to an email version. Or take a look at the current issue at <http://www.netsurf.com/nss/>.
New Chalk. Another e-zine to check out is a product of the instructional technology group at UNC Chapel Hill. The latest issue of New Chalk looks at mental and physical distractions related to Web-based learning. "Unlike the kind of learning that takes place in isolated library cubicles,learning on the Web is prone to interruption by links and resources that entice students to veer from the learning task. When designing Web pages and assignments, instructors should keep in mind how easily students may be distracted on the Web and may want to employ strategies to direct and structure student learning. ..." <http://www.unc.edu/courses/newchalk>
Computerized Surveys. Surveys on potentially embarrassing subjects, such as adolescent homosexual experiences, may be substantially more accurate when the survey is conducted on a computer rather than with a traditional paper questionnaire, researchers report in the May 8 issue of "Science." <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol280/issue5365/>.
Better Searching. A team of researchers at Cornell University and IBM's Almaden Research Center have developed a way to narrow down the responses to a Web search inquiry, based on hotlinks rather than just words in a text. Links embedded in a Web page provide "precisely the type of human judgment we need to identify authority," says Cornell's Jon Kleinberg. His software program conducts a standard search based on text only, which is then expanded to include all the pages to which those documents are linked. Then, ignoring the text, the program looks at the links and ranks each page based on the number of links to and from it. After several iterations, the compilation is boiled down to an essential list of information sources on the topic. IBM has applied for a patent on the underlying algorithm. (Science News 2 May 98; quoted from Edupage, 10 May 98)
Web Pages for Every Course? After a year of requiring that every course have a web page, results from UCLA are mixed. A story from the May 15 Chronicle of Higher Education tells more. <http://chronicle.com/free/v44/i36/36a02901.htm>.
Corporations target academic market. High-tech firms, including Cisco Systems, 3Com, Oracle, IBM and others, are boosting their efforts to teach teachers the latest technologies, hoping to reap the benefits of a highly skilled labor force of new college graduates. "You're seeing the beginning of computer vendors going after the academic market," says the VP for business development at Digital Education Systems. Rather than selling products and services to schools -- the old route to growing market share -- companies are now developing curricula for schools and giving them the equipment to aid the learning process. And while most four-year colleges are reluctant to offer credit for vendor-developed courses, that may be changing -- students at the University of San Francisco can take a Cisco course in networking and a database course from Oracle, both for credit. "Our goal isn't to buy our way into schools," says 3Com's director of global education markets, "but to help create a generation of the work force with networking skills." (Investor's Business Daily 12 May 98)
If you do web publishing, it's often helpful to have tools that perform the tasks of a good copy editor, and find syntax errors or style problems in your HTML. Even when errors don't produce problems with the current version of Netscape, they might in some future browser.
One of the most popular tools for finding problems with your web pages is a program called "weblint". Weblint is a free program you can install on your PC, or can be run via the web. To make access to weblint easier, we've recently installed a local copy of a web-based weblint (available to UO only) at <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/cgi-bin/weblint.cgi>. Try it out:
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:
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WASHINGTON, D.C.--The Institute for the Investigation of Irregular Internet Phenomena announced today that many Internet users are becoming infected by a new virus that causes them to believe without question every groundless story, legend, and dire warning that shows up in their inbox or on their browser. The Gullibility Virus, as it is called, apparently makes people believe and forward copies of silly hoaxes relating to cookie recipes, email viruses, taxes on modems, and get-rich-quick schemes. ...
For further details, see <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/misc/gullibility-virus.html>
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/>.