Friday, April 09, 2004

Educators Flocking to Finland, Land of Literate Children. If one trait sets Finland apart from many other countries, it is the quality and social standing of its teachers. By Lizette Alvarez. [New York Times: Education] 8:01:29 AM      Google It!.

Exotic Wood Computer Cases [Slashdot] - from utility to art - a slow progression --BL 8:00:23 AM      Google It!.

Insanely Destructive Devices. Defending against an attack of self-replicating weapons of mass destruction is probably impossible, so reducing the incentive to attack becomes paramount. By Lawrence Lessig from Wired magazine. [Wired News] 7:58:26 AM      Google It!.

Internet server for education - Ajeth Kumar J., the Hindu. The Department of Higher Education has introduced the Kerala e-campus as an on-line training programme located at "www.keralaecampus.com" and the Kerala Employability Enhancement Resources, as an on-line merit assessment programme at "www.kereer.com". [Online Learning Update] 7:53:19 AM      Google It!.

Officials warn against education diploma mills - Kara L. Motosicky, Army News Service. Expect to get promotion points for a college degree that requires no class work or tests? Think again, warn Department of Defense education specialists. A diploma mill is a college or university that operates primarily to make money, often offering co [Online Learning Update] 7:52:16 AM      Google It!.

Google partners with universities to mine invisible academic literature. Jeffrey R. Young, Google Teams Up with 17 Colleges to Test Searches of Scholarly Materials, Chronicle of Higher Education Daily Update, April 9, 2004. MIT and 16 other institutions are collaborating with Google, who, pending the success of the test project, will activate a feature that enables searching of online repositories such as DSpace. MacKenzie Smith of MIT is quoted. "A lot of times the richest scholarly literature is buried" in search-engine results, said Ms. Smith. "As more and more content is on the Web, it's harder and harder to find the high-quality stuff that you need." The universities extensive use of metadata and OCLC's involvement in developing a search configuration for the test promise a highly useful search tool across multiple collections. [Open Access News] 7:49:23 AM      Google It!.