Monday, September 19, 2005

Students Receive Fewer A's, and Princeton Calls It Progress. Princeton University significantly reduced the number of A's it gave out last year, according to a report released by the university, but it still wants to do more. By KAREN W. ARENSON. [NYT > Education] 11:36:40 PM      Google It!.

Accelerating Change 2005. After the PDC last week I went up to Palo Alto to give a talk at the Accelerating Change conference. This year's theme was Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Amplification. The first speaker was Vernor Vinge1, a mathematician, computer scientist, and science fiction author. His 1993 essay, The Coming Technological Singularity, is widely cited as the first use of the term singularity -- the notion that superhuman intelligence will arise from our computer networks, or from our network-assisted shared consciousnesses, or from some Moore's-law-driven combination of these factors. ... [Jon's Radio] "While we're waiting around for the singularity, learning how to collaborate at planetary scale -- as Doug Engelbart saw long ago, and as I believe we are now starting to get the hang of -- seems like a really good idea." -- a good idea indeed. -- BL 10:48:50 PM      Google It!.

Classcaster Goes Live. Mentioned earlier on this blog, Classcaster is a blogging service with podcast facilities built in. Using a cell phone as a microphone, instructors can call in a lecture and it’s automatically posted to their blog and an enclosure is generated in the appropriate RSS feed. A white paper describing the application characterizes the sound quality as “good enough.” According to the white paper, the developers are planning to make the entire application available for free download for those who want to host it themselves. As of yet, there’s no word as to native support for tracking information about downloads, subscriptions, etc. [Syndication for Higher Ed] 2:47:28 PM      Google It!.

Open Access Webliograpy. This excellent webliography was compiled by Adrian Ho and Charles Bailey for the References Services Review (2005, 33, no. 3). There are some significant omissions: the compilation does not include opencourseware sites such as MIT nor learning object repositories such as GEM. However, search engines devoted to academic searches such as Scirus and OAIster are included as is repository software such as DSPace and Fedora. ____JH _____________ " This webliography presents a wide range of electronic resources related to the open access movement that are freely available on the Internet as of April 2005." "In basic terms, the goal of the open access movement is to make scholarly articles freely available in digital form worldwide with minimal restrictions on their use (e.g., proper attribution of authorship). In reality, it's more complex than this because of differences of opinion about what open access should or shouldn't try to achieve. Some advocates say free access to scholarly articles is enough, minimal restrictions are not needed. Others say that the basic goal is correct, but permanent archiving is also required. Still others say why stop at scholarly articles, make all types of scholarly literature freely available in digital form. Such doctrinal differences are normal and healthy in such an important and dynamic movement." [EduResources Weblog--Higher Education Resources Online] 9:24:53 AM      Google It!.

FilmLoop is "free software that gives you the power to create new loops or join existing ones. Loops are strings of images that move across your desktop." [Scripting News] similar to a new aggrigator except for images and as such it could be helpful for reviewing instructional materials -- BL 8:25:07 AM      Google It!.

Camera Phone As High-precision Scanner. [Slashdot] could be a big step for accessibility to have a cellphone that "sees" text documents 8:18:09 AM      Google It!.

Google Takes On Copyright Laws. The search giant's project to scan millions of books in order to make their text searchable is on hold at the moment. Fans of the effort say it'll help readers find obscure titles; critics worry it will hurt the book industry. [Wired News] 8:13:12 AM      Google It!.

Cash in on Your Social Network. Traditional job hunting is all about who you know. A new recruitment service uses the internet social-networking phenomenon to capitalize on friends of friends. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News] 8:12:10 AM      Google It!.

Professors bring podcasting to campus - BRETT ZONGKER, Associated Press. When Suzan Harkness, a political science professor at the University of the District of Columbia, noticed she was repeatedly asking her young pupils to take off their iPod headphones in class, it seemed almost obvious. Why shouldn't they be listening to h [Online Learning Update] 8:11:07 AM      Google It!.

Senate committee revamps higher-ed law - Corey Murray, eSchool News. A Senate committee last week passed a major update to the law governing the nation's higher-education institutions, providing funding for--and putting the onus on--colleges and universities to better prepare students for success in the global economy.... [Online Learning Update] 8:09:01 AM      Google It!.