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Local and online events of particular interest to FCN members (see also On Campus below)
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SUMMER IT CURRICULUM. Tell your students about them, or attend a workshop yourself. See <http://libweb.uoregon.edu/it/>. Here's a partial list:
Power Web Searching
Wed Jul 14 1:00pm - 2:20pm EC
Tue Jul 27 12:00pm - 1:20pm EC
Managing a Majordomo List
Thu Jul 15 3:00pm - 3:50pm EC
Using MHonARc to Create a Web Archive for a Majordomo List
Thu Jul 22 3:00pm - 3:50pm EC
Web Publishing I
Thu Jul 22 12:00pm - 1:50pm EC
Web Publishing II
Fri Jul 9 12:00pm - 1:50pm EC
Tue Jul 13 1:00pm - 2:50pm ITC
Thu Jul 29 12:00pm - 1:50pm EC
Web Graphics I
Tue Jul 20 2:00pm - 3:50pm RSR
Web Graphics II
Tue Jul 27 2:00pm - 3:50pm RSR
Web Design Principles and Practices
Tue Aug 3 2:00pm - 3:50pm RSR
Web Site Planning and Promotion
Fri Jul 16 12:00pm - 1:50pm RSR
Web Programming I: Forms & CGI Scripts
Fri Jul 23 12:00pm - 1:50pm RSR
Web Programming II: Javascript
Fri Jul 30 12:00pm - 1:50pm RSR
MEDIA SERVICES HAS NEW DIRECTOR. Welcome Tom Matney, who joined UO Media Services as its new director today. Tom comes to us as former Director of Educational Technology at Lewis-Clark State College, serving also as codirector of their New Media Center. He has been an active practitioner of educational technology and media services -- both traditional and on-line -- for 18 years. You can contact Tom at <tmatney@darkwing.uoregon.edu>.
OREGON WEB SERVER CHANGES. If you have used oregon as your web server (not generally recommended), you should check the VMS notices for information on important changes to the web server there. In particular, a new Netscape FastTrack web server is available on the VMScluster at <http://web-vms.uoregon.edu>. That web server checks in a [.public_html] subdirectory, not the old default [.www] directory. The old web server is still available (with no changes) at <http://www-vms.uoregon.edu>. You should not use or link to http://oregon.uoregon.edu.
EMAIL ADDRESSES. cc:mail is dead. If you have addresses like Some_One@ccmail.uoregon.edu in your address book, they'll no longer work -- it's time to find out the person's new address. You could try the online phone book, but that data is somewhat out of date; better call and ask! The UO is also moving slowly towards maintaining email addresses for all students and employees as part of the Banner database and this database will eventually be used as the central database for UO email addresses. The current plan is to populate the Banner email address from the authorize system, if one exists in the authorize system, then allow users to change it if their actual preferred email address is different.
MORE EMAIL NEWS: OREGON. Many people at UO have email accounts on oregon.uoregon.edu. Recent changes to the POP server there are now enforcing an existing password expiration policy (passwords must be changed every 6 months). So if the only thing you use oregon.uoregon.edu for is Eudora, you may suddenly find that it no longer works; the solution is to change your password. Log into VMS via telnet and go through the password change dialogue, then tell Eudora to forget your saved password. To avoid problems in the future, get into the habit of changing your oregon and darkwing passwords regularly.
US COPYRIGHT OFFICE REPORT ON DISTANCE ED. In late May 1999, the U.S. Copyright Office released an important report on the complex copyright issues affecting distance education. That report examines the growth of distance education, the changing technologies, and the problems with applying existing law to the new environment for innovative education. The report also includes proposals for significant changes in the law, all of which are of great importance to educators throughout the country. For an excellent summary of the report, see Kenneth Crews, <http://www.iupui.edu/~copyinfo/distedsum.html>.
NEW ONLINE UNIVERSITIES. Harcourt General, the parent company of textbook publisher Harcourt Brace, is creating a for-profit distance learning university, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. The company has already hired a provost and several administrators, and is planning to apply for a license to grant degrees from the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education in September. Harcourt may become the first major publishing house to offer accredited college degrees, pending approval from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. (Chronicle of Higher Education 1 Jun 99; quoted from NewsScan Daily, 1 June 99). Meanwhile, yet another online university, the non-profit United States Open University, has a new chancellor and began enrolling students this spring. It draws on the expertise and courses of the 30-year-old British Open University. (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 July 99).
STUDENT EXPECTATIONS IN THE ONLINE CLASSROOM. Most students know what to expect in a traditional college classroom -- they'll show up at scheduled times, they'll be given homework and tests, they may raise their hands to ask questions. But what happens in an on-line classroom? Some universities are offering free (online) courses in how to take an online course. (Chronicle of Higher Ed, 4 June) <http://chronicle.com/free/99/06/99060401t.htm>.
SAT CONFLICT. The U.S. Department of Education proposed new guidelines that could prohibit the SAT from being a factor in college admissions. Such a policy would require universities nationwide to establish new admissions criteria. The move is in response to reviews of the SAT that show minorities and female students to score consistently lower than white males. Compare this with typical IQ tests, in which men and women do not score differently. The draft document makes a case to ban "the use of any education test which has a significant disparate impact on members of any particular race, national origin, or sex ... unless it is educationally necessary and there is no practicable alternative form of assessment.". The guidelines are extremely controversial, and the D of Ed has promised to revise them. (Chronicle of Higher Ed, 23 June 99) <http://chronicle.com/daily/99/06/99062301n.htm>.
NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE? Here's a web site dedicated to the premise that research finds "no significant difference" between traditional and distance education. It's a useful comparative research bibliography on technology for distance education. <http://teleeducation.nb.ca/nosignificantdifference/>.
AAUP TAKES STAND ON DISTANCE EDUCATION. No, not the "Association of American University Presses." The American Association of University Professors has adopted policies that insist on more of a faculty role in distance learning. The new policy, "Distance Education and Intellectual Property," was unanimously adopted at the association's annual meeting. The move seems to be a way to keep control of technology in education squarely in the hands of the faculty. The association voiced concern that with technology in the classroom, institutions need to ensure that teaching quality and faculty rights aren't compromised.<http://www.aaup.org/spcdistn.htm>.
CLIFF NOTES FOR THE MTV GENERATION? That's the way the Chronicle of Higher Ed describes a new set of videotaped study aids from Cerebellum, Inc. Is this the future of online education? <http://chronicle.com/free/99/06/99061801t.htm>
REAL-WORLD SCIENCE FROM INTERNET LABS. Many programs are lending Internet-based access to advanced technology to elementary-school and high-school students. These programs offer such educational tools as the opportunity to remotely operate a 24-inch optical telescope, a radio telescope, a magnetic resonance imager, and NASA-designed robotic devices. Using these programs, students have completed such feats as providing hours of testing for the Mars rover and obtaining real data about stars and Jupiter's atmosphere, all without ever leaving the classroom. Bugscope allows students to examine insects online through a $600,000 environmental scanning electron microscope at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Meanwhile, Red Rover will select 40 students from its 400 participating classrooms to control the Mars rover in 2002. Although Red Rover requires a subscription fee of $700, most programs are free or at a low cost, due to grants from NASA, additional government sources, and private businesses. Yet the programs do have costs, particularly to train teachers and provide adequate computer technology. (New York Times 06/17/99).
BORDERS TRIES ON-DEMAND PRINTING. In a deal aimed to deflate Web-based competitors Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, Borders Group is planning to offer on-demand printing of out-of-print or obscure titles that it otherwise would not carry. The deal includes an investment in Atlanta startup Sprout Inc., and eventually will enable Borders stores to print high-quality paperbacks in the store in about 15 minutes. "Making a book will be no more difficult than making a latte at Starbucks," says Sprout co-founder Henry Topping. Borders employees will be able to check Sprout's database of titles licensed from publishers and download a digital file of the book from Sprout's central server, then use in-store equipment to print and bind the book. Print-on-demand "is another way for a Borders or Barnes & Noble to take advantage of retail-store assets rather than let Amazon.com eviscerate them," says a Forrester Research analyst. (Wall Street Journal 1 Jun 99; quoted from NewsScan Daily, 1 June 99).
STUDY: 92M INTERNET USERS IN US. A new study from Nielsen Media Research and CommerceNet says that the number of American and Canadian Internet users aged 16 and older has increased to 92 million, up from 79 million in last year's study. "Nearly half of North America uses the Internet," says CommerceNet's Mark Resch. (Edupage, 18 June 99).
Sometimes data in a single spreadsheet cell would be more useful in multiple cells. For instance, a worksheet may have the city and state data combined in one column, making it impossible to sort by state. You can pull out this data using functions and formulas, but there's an easier way: Excel lets you convert delimited text into columns.
First, insert a blank column to the right of the data you want to split. You'll need to insert blank columns for each new column you'll create from the data (otherwise, your existing data will be overwritten). Next, select the text you want to convert and choose Data/Text To Columns. A wizard will assist you; you can split your data based on a delimiter (e.g., a comma between city and state or between last and first names), or based on fixed numbers of characters (e.g., the first 5 and last 4 digits of a social security number).
Before converting, the wizard will show you a Data Preview; scroll through to make sure your data is going to be converted to the appropriate format. Finally, click Finish. If you receive a warning asking if you want to replace existing cells with new data, select Cancel, insert another blank column, and try again.
This space highlights new conferences of particular interest to UO faculty interested in educational technology. For more meetings see <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/conferences.html>.
Online workshops:
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University of South Florida researchers, in an article in last month's Southern Medical Journal, cite case studies as evidence that fears of the Internet are replacing Communists, the CIA, and the controlling power of radio waves as a frequent delusion of new psychiatric patients. Author Glenn Catalano suggests that the frequency of Internet delusion will continue to increase. "We're going to have to start asking different kinds of questions to determine the source of patients' paranoia. You can't just ask if someone is following you."
In every case of Internet delusion documented by the researchers, the patient actually had little experience with computers. "That's not really surprising," says Catalano. "Things can seem especially threatening when you don't know much about them." One patient believed someone had created a link between his Web page and his extremities. When certain keys were struck, he said, his extremities would jump. He also believed that a friend had placed Internet bugs in his ears that could read his mind and control his thoughts. (AP 5 Jul 99) <http://tampabayonline.net/news/flor100x.htm>.
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