FCN News 04 Nov 1998

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:

Upcoming Events On Campus Seen on and about the Net How To -- assigning online articles The Lighter Side Administrativa
	Do you have UO colleagues who would find this newsletter useful? Call their attention to the html version, or they can subscribe by sending email to jqj@darkwing.uoregon.edu.

Upcoming Events

Local and online events of particular interest to FCN members (see also IT Curriculum below):

• Developing Courses for Web-based Delivery, Nov 5, 11:30am-1pm, Media Services (IMC) Studio C. A live video workshop--from the theoretical to the practical, an experienced panel of distance educators will present models that actually work, tips on working with a team, suggestions for designing Web pages, and examples of Web sites to explore. <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/misc/video98/>. Sponsored by FCN.
• Show Me the Money!, Nov 12, 10am-noon, Media Services (IMC) Studio A. A live video workshop-- Funding for Distance Learning and Educational Technology, a review of the latest information and options for faculty and administrators. <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/misc/video98/>. Sponsored by FCN.
• 1000 Words: The Power of Visual Communication, Nov 19, 4pm-8pm. Jane Maitland-Gholson and Bob Wenger will once again offer their very popular workshop exploring teaching strategies that focus on visual communication. For more details or to register, contact Georgeanne Cooper, <mailto:gcooper@oregon>.
• Interdisciplinary Lunch, Dec 2, noon, 178 Straub Hall. James Hanley (Political Science) "The Evolutionary Ecology of Property Rights". <http://duende.uoregon.edu/~hsu/forum/proposal.html>
• New Media Technologies Across the Curriculum, Dec 4, 10-11:30am, Media Services (IMC) Studio B. A live video workshop--Explore how using new tools and creative techniques invigorate familiar material and can transform the learning process. <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/misc/video98/>. Sponsored by the New Media Center and FCN.

On Campus

Fall IT Curriculum. It's available on line at <http://libweb.uoregon.edu/it/>. Among the workshops in the next few weeks of particular interest to FCN faculty are:

Database Concepts: Search Like A Pro! 
    Thu  Nov 5   3:00 PM - 4:20 PM  EC  Frantz
Images on Web Pages
    Mon  Nov 9   3:00 PM - 4:50 PM  RSR Holman
Cascading Style Sheets
    Tue  Nov 10  1:00 PM - 2:20 PM  RSR Johnson,Bell
Power Web Searching
    Thu  Nov 11  2:00 PM - 3:20 PM  EC  Jenkins
Forms & CGI Scripts
    Fri  Nov 13  1:00 PM - 2:20 PM  RSR Johnson
Imagemaps and Access Counters
    Mon  Nov 16  3:00 PM - 4:50 PM  RSR Holman
Beginning Photoshop for Web Publishers
    Wed  Nov 18  1:00 PM - 2:20 PM  ITC Kim
Javascript
    Fri  Nov 20  1:00 PM - 2:20 PM  RSR Johnson
HTML Tools and Tricks
    Mon  Nov 23  3:00 PM - 4:50 PM  RSR Johnson
Organizing Your Web Site
    Mon  Nov 30  3:00 PM - 4:50 PM  RSR Smith

Professional Partners Mentoring Groups. The Classified Staff Training and Development Advisory Committee is once again this year sponsoring a series of ongoing groups designed to help staff and faculty learn from each other about technologies they need. For a discussion of the PPMG program, see <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~cstdac/new.html>. One group that may be of interest to many FCN members is the Advanced HTML group, which meets semimonthly to discuss topics in web publishing. See <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/ppmg/>.

Training Opportunities from Human Resources. The 1998-99 HR "Training & Development Opportunities for Faculty and Staff" is now on line. <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~humanres/train98.htm>.

Web Publishing in PDF. Adobe Acrobat 3.0 is now available on darkwing and gladstone. If you want to publish web pages in PDF format, using a copy of Acrobat (commercial; not just Acrobat Reader, which is free) on your PC or Mac is generally the best approach. However, if you want to convert Unix postscript files to PDF you can do it on darkwing using a Unix command such as "distill inputfile.ps ~/public_html". For help using Acrobat on darkwing, email <consult@darkwing>.

Seen on and about the Net

HACKERS BREAK INTO STANFORD EMAIL. About 4,500 students and staff at Stanford University had their e-mail passwords stolen last month when hackers broke into the school's network and then managed to avoid detection for three weeks. (Reuters, 3 Nov 1998) <http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2556920150-471>.

WEB BROWSING PRIVACY? NOT! You've heard about "cookies" and the way they invade your privacy by allowing web site maintainers to track your surfing. Now another threat to privacy in Netscape 4.06 and later -- the new Netscape "Smart Browsing" feature, a service that recommends sites that are related to the document the user is currently viewing. For a discussion of the issues, see <http://www.interhack.net/pubs/whatsrelated/>.

NEW CHALK. Check out the latest issue of New Chalk, from the University of North Carolina. This issue features Web projects developed by UNC-CH faculty which engage students in a variety of problem-solving activities. <http://www.unc.edu/courses/newchalk>.

CAMPUS COMPUTING SURVEY. The annual survey from Casey Green provides some of the best data and insights available about trends higher ed information technology usage. This year, Green observes, "the percentage of all college courses using e-mail jumped to 44.4 percent, up from 32.8 percent in 1997, 25.0 percent in 1996, and just 8.0 percent in 1994. One-third (33.1 percent) of all classes are tapping into Internet resources as part of the syllabus, compared to one-fourth (24.8 percent) last year and just 15.3 percent in 1996. And almost one-fourth (22.5 percent) of all college courses are using 'WWW pages for class materials and resources,' compared just 8.4 percent in 1996 and 4.0 percent in 1994.". For more, see <http://www.campuscomputing.net/>.

EMAIL VIRUS HOAXES. Have you received email that begins "If you receive an email titled 'WIN A HOLIDAY' DO NOT open it. It will erase everything on your hard drive."? If so, you've experienced yet another Internet hoax. For an excellent review of such hoaxes and how to avoid them see the CIAC(Computer Incident Advisory Capability, sponsored by the US Department of Energy) "Internet Hoaxes" page at <http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html>.

SCHOLARS VS PUBLISHERS. Librarians have long suspected that commercial publishers charge too much for scholarly journals. A newsletter published by the Association of Research Libraries offers evidence to support those suspicions. <http://www.arl.org/newsltr/200/200toc.html>

CNRI PROPOSES NSF DIGITAL LIBRARY. Check out this proposal to build a digital library for science education. <http://www.dlib.org/smete/public/report.html>.

ONLINE MENTORING. After a successful pilot program last spring, Stanford University will make the MentorNet program a permanent resource for female students who are pursuing science and engineering degrees. MentorNet pairs up professionals in science and technology fields with female students (204 last spring) at participating universities. MentorNet organizers have found that there are plenty of students who want to participate in the program, but there is a shortage of mentors. <http://www.mentornet.net>.

DISTANCE ED GETS BOOST FROM FEDERAL GOVERMENT. New legislation that was signed last week, the Higher Education Amendments Act, changes the rules for financial aid so that students participating in selected distance education programs will now be eligible to receive federal student aid. Previously, students were restricted from receiving financial aid if over half of their course credits were earned remotely, or if they attended institutions where more than half of the courses are taught via distance learning. (New York Times, 10/21/98, <http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/10/cyber/education/21education.html>)

.DISTANCE DEGREES. The 1999 edition of the book Distance Degrees features all fully accredited degrees available via distance education in the U.S. -- more than 750 degree fields from Bachelor's through Doctorates. <http://www.collegeathome.com/>

How To -- assigning online articles

Many courses use courspacks containing reprints of journal articles. That's very convenient for the students, but it's expensive -- the student must pay not just for the cost of printing but for royalties (often $1 to $5 per article per student). Many of these articles are available to the students for free in the Library (in journals that the Library subscribes to in hardcopy), or electronically.

Of particular interest are the many "e-journals" available for free on the web or that the Library now licenses in full text from the publisher. Many of these journals can be found at the Library's "electronic journals" page, <http://libweb.uoregon.edu/network/uoejrls.html>. Others are listed in discipline-specific library web pages (e.g. Many journals, though (more than 800, in fact), are not listed on that page but are available in full text online through Expanded Academic Index <http://www.infotrac-custom.com/itcustom/oregonc_uoeai>.

In some cases you may find that it's worth your time to find online the articles you want your students to read, and to record the URLs on your course web page. If you do so, a couple of notes:

• as with the rest of the web, online journal articles are more ephermeral than paper. The provider might decide to remove the online text or to change the URL the day before your reading assignment is due. At a minimum check your links at the start of the quarter rather than depending on the checking you did last time you taught the course!
• some subscription based services record the "session number" in the URL of the page as you surf. In those cases, the URL will no longer be valid after you "log out", so your students won't be able to use it to get to the text you found. Currently neither EAI nor most of the e-journals mentioned above suffers this problem.
• reading journals on line is less convenient than reading them in hardcopy. Online versions of hardcopy journal articles often lack some figures and pagination (though if the article is published in PDF format it will be more likely to retain most of the characteristics of the print version). You should not instruct your students to print the article; that would likely be a copyright violation (a student might legitimately under §108 of the copyright law decide for himself to make a copy for "private study, scholarship, or research").

If you're interested in online journal articles for your students, one excellent way to proceed is to try it for yourself. Maybe you find that reading articles from the Physics preprint archive at Los Alamos, or the web-based version of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, is useful to you in your own research. If so, then assigning one of those articles to your students is likely to inspire them with a taste of what the field is really like!

Conferences and Workshops, Real and Virtual

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:

• The Nature of Literacy, Jan 28-30, University of Oregon, <http://babel.uoregon.edu/complit/literary.html>
• NLII - National Learning Infrastructure Initiative, Jan 31-Feb 2, 1999, New Orleans, LA. <http://www.educause.edu/nlii/>
• CUMREC '99, May 9-12, 1999, San Antonio, TX. The annual conference of the College and University Computer Users Association. <http://www.cumrec.com/cumrec99/cumrec99.html>.
• Syllabus 99, July 24-28, 1999, San Jose, CA. <http://www.syllabus.com/CFP_Syll9908_01_98.html>.
• Syllabus Institute, July 29-Aug 1, 1999, Sonoma, CA.<http://www.syllabus.com/CFP_Syll9908_01_98.html>.
• EDUCAUSE '99, Oct 26-29, 1999, Long Beach, CA. The first EDUCAUSE annual conference, "Celebrating New Beginnings." <http://www.educause.edu/conference/conf.html>.

The Lighter Side

It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humour.
-- Montesquieu (1689-1755) about Leibniz (1646-1716).

Administrativa

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/>.