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Local events of particular interest to FCN members (see also On
Campus below):![[New!]](newyahoo1.gif){kind=small}
CHANGES TO UO MODEM POOL. The Computing Center has consolidated all of its modems into a single large modem pool, at 541-346-6520 (288 modems). Starting Mar 9, 72 additional modems will be available at 346-5975. The old numbers 3565, 1586, and 2150 will be forwarded to the pool served by 6520 until Fall 2000; at that time those numbers will be removed from service and all modems will be consolidated into a single 6520.
GRANTS FOR DIGITAL MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT, SOFTWARE COLLABORATION, AND TECHNOLOGY DISSEMINATION. NWACC has allocated $200,000 for grants this year. All proposals are due via web form by 5:00pm, Wednesday, March 15th. In order to submit a proposal it must include an eligibility code,.which may be obtained from the UO institutional representative to NWACC, Joanne Hugi.. Grant guidelines and application materials can be found at the NWACC website at: <http://www.nwacc.org/grants/grantindex.html>
EDUCAUSE TEACHING & LEARNING AWARD. A new EDUCAUSE award program focuses on "Systemic Progress in Teaching & Learning" at the institutional level. Complete information, including a Web application form, at <http://www.educause.edu/awards/tl/tl.html>. Application deasline: March 15.
BLACKBOARD COURESINFO FOR SPRING. It's time to create your Blackboard coursesite for spring term. Do so at <http://blackboard.uoregon.edu/generate.html>.
ELECTRONIC THESES AND DISSERTATIONS. The Graduate Council is planning to allow (optional) submission of dissertations in electronic form. An implementation team (JQ Johnson, chair) is developing procedures that will allow a a pilot project -- accepting a small number of dissertations -- beginning in the 2000-2001 year. Current thinking is to accept dissertations in Adobe PDF format, and to focus on standards that would preserve the intellectual content of such dissertations even if at a later date they were printed and distributed only "the old fashioned way". If you are interested in the issues of electronic theses and dissertations, contact JQ Johnson, <jqj@darkwing>.
SOFTWARE UPGRADES. Many new versions of familiar software. Here are a few highlights:
IT CURRICULUM. The Winter IT Curriculum workshop series is listed on line at <http://libweb.uoregon.edu/it/>. The schedule for Spring term will be available soon. Here are a few remaining Winter workshops:
Web Programming II
Fri Mar 3 2:00 PM - 3:50 PM RSR Johnson
Cascading Style Sheets
Tue Mar 7 1:00 PM - 2:50 PM RSR Johnson
DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR ONLINE INSTRUCTION. A new on-line publication developed at Florida Gulf Coast University includes an extensive literature review, plus an excellent practical "best practices" for on-line instruction. <http://www.fgcu.edu/onlinedesign/>
ONLINE COURSES FOR ALUMNI. Princeton, Yale, and Stanford Universities will probably collaborate to offer online courses to their alumni, while Harvard University has opted out of talks with the other institutions, campus officials said Tuesday. (Chronicle of Higher Ed, 3/1/2000) <http://chronicle.com/free/2000/03/2000030101u.htm>.
INTERNET RAISES STICKY QUESTIONS ABOUT OWNERSHIP OF IP IN ACADEMIA. Debates over the ownership of intellectual property are mounting as the Internet creates opportunities to capitalize on writings, lecture notes, and inventions developed by university faculty members. One especially controversial issue relating to intellectual property is the online sale of professors' class notes. Professors can obtain copyright protection by scripting their lectures, and students can take notes without violating the copyright because of fair use laws, says Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, DePaul University College of Law professor of intellectual property. However, copyright issues arise if the notes are sold, Kwall says. The sale of class notes is part of the larger issue of whether professors or universities own the materials created by professors. Universities have traditionally given faculty members the intellectual property rights to their own work, but with the possibility of profiting from creations such as computer inventions, schools are now more likely to claim property rights, says New York University law professor Rochelle Dreyfuss. Federal copyright law says academic institutions own the copyrights on their professors' lectures, but the ownership of articles and books is more complicated, says Lewis and Clark College of Law professor Lydia Loren. Copyright law is rooted in the idea that employers have the right to control an employee's work--a notion that is contrary to the concept of academic freedom, Loren says. The American Association of University Professors has formed a special group to review intellectual property issues such as the sale of class notes and create policy proposals. (IP Law Weekly Online, 28 Jan 2000).
NEW PROFITS FOR PROFESSORS. A combined $576 million from patent royalties was earned in 1998 by 132 universities, according to an Association of University Technology Managers survey. Columbia University has plans to move beyond the typical nonprofit "dot-edu" models that offer courses and professors' research interests to aggressively market the expertise of its faculty on a new for-profit site. Columbia is establishing its for-profit "knowledge site" so that other sites do not begin marketing and profiting from the expertise of its own faculty. (Newsweek, 28 Feb 2000; from Edupage, 25 Feb 00)
HOOKED ON I-SEX. Psychologists from Stanford and Duquesne universities have published an article in the journal Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity claiming that at least 100,000 users are cybersex compulsives who spend more than 11 hours a week visiting X-rated Web sites and chat rooms. The study concludes: "This is a hidden public health hazard exploding, in part, because very few are recognizing it as such or taking it seriously." The researchers believe that cybersex compulsives have difficulty maintaining normal relationships with others. (AP/New York Times 1 Mar 2000) <http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Online-Sex.html>.
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. "MIT Spinoff Preps Brooch Net Communicator" InfoCharms, an MIT spinoff company, will reveal later this month its plans to develop by 2001 the Charm Communicator, a wearable computer utilizing a Nanux operating system. <http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/0218f.html#item9>
As you probably know, the first slide in your PowerPoint presentation is usually special. It's the "title slide," and typically contains the name of the presentation and optionally a subtitle. This information is used when you export a PowerPoint presentation to the web, in preview icons, and in various other contexts. The format of the title slide is usually controlled not by the regular Slide Master, but by the Title Master, accessible from the View/Master/Title Master menu item.
If you create a presentation in PowerPoint using one of the wizards, you'll automatically get a title slide, but if you create your presentation starting from scratch (without using one of PowerPoint's built-in presentation designs) you'll need to add your own title slide. The "new slide" menu item offers a choice of slide autolayouts, with the very first option being a "title slide" containing a box for your title and a box for subtitle information. Use it.
But that's not quite enough. If you start with a blank presentation, you'll find that you can't access the Title Master by choosing View/Master. You must also insert a Title Master before you can actually access it. To do so, first choose View/Master and select Slide Master from the cascading menu. When the Slide Master appears, choose Insert/New Title Master. This opens the Title Master slide and also activates the Title Master option on the view menu. Customize the Title Master as you wish.
This space highlights new listings of conferences of possible interest to UO faculty interested in educational technology. For more meetings see <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/conferences.html>.
The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the U S. railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for its legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? The initial ruts, which every one else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The U.S. standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.
Now the twist to the story . . .
There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over 2000 years ago by the width of a Horse's Ass!
Scott Tanner, Daniel Measurement Services
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