[Offtopic] fwd: INFOBITS

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Hi all,

Perhaps people might like to subscribe to UNC INFOBITS.
Its free, with a edu-net-research focus, and very good. 

At 12:40 AM 2/06/2007, Carolyn Kotlas <kotlas at email.unc.edu> wrote:

TL INFOBITS 2007 No. 11  ISSN: 1931-3144

About INFOBITS

INFOBITS is an electronic service of The University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill ITS Teaching and Learning division. Each month the
ITS-TL's Information Resources Consultant monitors and selects from a
number of information and instructional technology sources that come to
her attention and provides brief notes for electronic dissemination to
educators.

NOTE: You can read the Web version of this issue at 
http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/bitmay07.php.

You can read all back issues of Infobits at
http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/.

.....................................................................

Teaching the "Net Generation"
Technology and Change in Educational Practice
Email: Too Much or Not a Bother?
Help Digitize Books from Your Desktop
Recommended Reading


.....................................................................


TEACHING THE "NET GENERATION"


The April/May 2007 issue of INNOVATE explores and explains the learning
styles and preferences of Net Generation learners. "Net Generation
learners are information seekers, comfortable using technology to seek
out information, frequently multitasking and using multiple forms of
media simultaneously. As a result, they desire independence and
autonomy in their learning processes."


Articles include: 


"Identifying the Generation Gap in Higher Education: Where Do the
        Differences Really Lie?" by Paula Garcia and Jingjing Qin,
        Northern Arizona University


"MyLiteracies: Understanding the Net Generation through LiveJournals
        and Literacy Practices" by Dana J. Wilber, Montclair State
        University


"Is Education 1.0 Ready for Web 2.0 Students?" by John Thompson,
        Buffalo State College


The issue is available at http://innovateonline.info/index.php.
Registration is required to access articles; registration is free.


Innovate: Journal of Online Education [ISSN 1552-3233], an open-access,
peer-reviewed online journal, is published bimonthly by the Fischler
School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University.
The journal focuses on the creative use of information technology (IT)
to enhance educational processes in academic, commercial, and
governmental settings. For more information, contact James L. Morrison,
Editor-in-Chief; email: innovate at nova.edu; Web:
http://innovateonline.info/.


The journal also sponsors Innovate-Live webcasts and discussion forums
that add an interactive component to the journal articles. To register
for these free events, go to
http://www.uliveandlearn.com/PortalInnovate/.


See also:


"Motivating Today's College Students"
By Ian Crone
PEER REVIEW, vol. 9, no. 1, Winter 2007
http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/pr-wi07/pr-wi07_practice.cfm


Peer Review, published quarterly by the Association of American
Colleges and Universities (AACU), provides briefings on "emerging
trends and key debates in undergraduate liberal education. Each issue
is focused on a specific topic, provides comprehensive analysis, and
highlights changing practice on diverse campuses." For more
information, contact: AACU, 1818 R Street NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA;
tel: 202-387-3760; fax: 202-265-9532; Web:
http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/.



For a perspective on educating learners on the other end of the
generational continuum see:


"Boomer Reality" 
By Holly Dolezalek 
TRAINING, vol. 44, no. 5, May 2007
http://www.trainingmag.com/msg/content_display/publications/e3if330208bec8
f4014fac339db9fd0678e


Training [ISSN 0095-5892] is published monthly by Nielsen Business
Media, Inc., 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003-9595 USA; tel:
646-654-4500; email: bmcomm at nielsen.com; Web:
http://www.trainingmag.com.


.....................................................................


TECHNOLOGY AND CHANGE IN EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE


"Even if research shows that a particular technology supports a certain
kind of learning, this research may not reveal the implications of
implementing it. Without appropriate infrastructure or adequate
provisions of services (policy); without the facility or ability of
teachers to integrate it into their teaching practice (academics);
without sufficient support from technologists and/or educational
technologists (support staff), the likelihood of the particular
technology or software being educationally effective is questionable."


The current issue (vol. 19, no. 1, 2007) of the JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL
TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY presents a selection of papers from the Conference
Technology and Change in Educational Practice which was held at the
London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, London in October 2005.
The papers cover three areas: "methodological frameworks, proposing new
ways of structuring effective research; empirical studies, illustrating
the ways in which technology impacts the working roles and practices in
Higher Education; and new ways of conceptualising technologies for
education."


Papers include:


"A Framework for Conceptualising the Impact of Technology on Teaching
        and Learning" by Sara Price and Martin Oliver, London Knowledge
        Lab, Institute of Education


"New and Changing Teacher Roles in Higher Education in a Digital Age"
        by Jo Dugstad Wake, Olga Dysthe, and Stig Mjelstad, University
        of Bergen


"Academic Use of Digital Resources: Disciplinary Differences and the
        Issue of Progression Revisited" by Bob Kemp, Lancaster
        University, and Chris Jones, Open University 


"The Role of Blogs In Studying the Discourse and Social Practices of
        Mathematics Teachers" by Katerina Makri and Chronis Kynigos,
        University of Athens


The issue is available at
http://www.ifets.info/issues.php?show=current.


The Journal of Educational Technology and Society [ISSN 1436-4522]is a
peer-reviewed, quarterly publication that "seeks academic articles on
the issues affecting the developers of educational systems and
educators who implement and manage such systems." Current and back
issues are available at http://www.ifets.info/. The journal is
published by the International Forum of Educational Technology &
Society. For more information, see http://ifets.ieee.org/.


.....................................................................


EMAIL: TOO MUCH OR NOT A BOTHER?


A couple of recent articles discuss people's aggravation with the
masses of email that they receive and how they are curtailing or
eliminating it altogether:


"The supposed convenience of electronic mail, like so many other
innovations of technology, has become too much for some people. . . .
So some say they're moving back to the telephone as their preferred
means of communication." ("E-Mail Reply to All: 'Leave Me Alone'" by
Mike Musgrove, THE WASHINGTON POST, May 25, 2007, pg. A01;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/05/24/AR2007052402258.html)


"More university professors are joining the ranks of those who have
given up or severely curtailed their use of e-mail as a medium for
personal -- and most of all -- private correspondence. They have had
enough with electronic spam, come-ons, nonsense and smut-vertisements"
(Paul McCloskey, "Academics Joining Ranks Declaring 'E-Mail
Bankruptcy'," CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY, May 29, 2007;
http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=48289).
        
Conversely, "Spam 2007," a Pew Internet & American Life Project paper
released this month, reports that "37% of email users said spam had
increased in their personal email accounts, up from 28% of email users
who said that two years ago. And 29% of work email users said spam had
increased in their work email accounts, up from 21% two years ago. Yet
fewer people say spam is 'a big problem' for them."


The report is available at
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Spam_May_2007.pdf.


.....................................................................


HELP DIGITIZE BOOKS FROM YOUR DESKTOP


Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is used to transform
scanned book pages into searchable text. However, the accuracy of this
method is dependent on the clarity of the characters being scanned.
Fuzzy or indistinct printed texts are not always rendered correctly.
Human proofreading of scanned texts can correct OCR errors, but it is
labor-intensive and expensive. "Researchers at Carnegie Mellon
University have discovered a way to enlist people across the globe to
help digitize books every time they solve the simple distorted word
puzzles commonly used to register at Web sites or buy things online.
The word puzzles are known as CAPTCHAs, short for 'completely automated
public Turing tests to tell computers and humans apart.' Computers
cannot decipher the twisted letters and numbers, ensuring that real
people and not automated programs are using the Web sites." (Associated
Press, May 24, 2007)


According to the project website, "Each new word that cannot be read
correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word
for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read
both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the
system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then
gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with
higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct." The
results are then used to correct the word in the scanned texts.


For more information about the project and to participate, go to
http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html.


.....................................................................


RECOMMENDED READING


"Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or
that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or
useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits
subscribers. Send your recommendations to carolyn_kotlas at unc.edu for
possible inclusion in this column. 


An excerpt from: 


KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY, DEVELOPMENT AND THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION:
        RECLAIMING THE CULTURAL MISSION 
by Michael A. Peters
(Book is part of a series: Educational Futures: Rethinking Theory and
        Practice)
Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2007
288 pgs.
ISBN 978-90-8790-070-0 hardback 
ISBN 978-90-8790-069-4 paperback
E-book: http://www.sensepublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?
products_id=287 


UBIQUITY magazine has received permission to publish an excerpt
(Introduction and Chapter 11) from this new book by Michael A. Peters,
professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the
University of Glasgow. The excerpt is available at
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v8i18_peter.html.


Ubiquity associate editor A. Triptahi writes of it: "Prophetically,
almost thirty years ago Jean-Francois Lyotard forecast the end of the
modern research university based on Enlightenment principles. He
envisaged the emergence of technical institutes in the service of the
information-rich global multinationals. This book reflects on the
post-war Western university and its discourses charting the crisis of
the concept of the modern university. First, it examines the university
within a global networked economy; second, it adopts poststructuralist
perspectives in epistemology, politics and ethics to appraise the role
of the contemporary university; third, it introduces the notion of
'development' in a critical fashion as a way of explaining its
potentially new regional and international learning roles; fourth, it
analyzes the rise of global science and the disciplines in the context
of the global economy; and, finally, it raises Lyotard's 'logic of
performativity' and the assessment of research quality within a
neoliberal economy, linking it firmly to the question of freedom and
the republic of science." 


.....................................................................


To Subscribe


TL INFOBITS is published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill Information Technology Services Teaching and Learning division.
ITS-TL supports the interests of faculty members at UNC-Chapel Hill who
are using technology in their instruction and research. Services
include both consultation on appropriate uses and technical support.


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If you have problems subscribing or want to send suggestions for future
issues, contact the editor, Carolyn Kotlas, at kotlas at email.unc.edu.


Article Suggestions


Infobits always welcomes article suggestions from our readers, although
we cannot promise to print everything submitted. Because of our
publishing schedule, we are not able to announce time-sensitive events
such as upcoming conferences and calls for papers or grant
applications; however, we do include articles about online conference
proceedings that are of interest to our readers. We can announce your
conference on our "Calendar of World-Wide Educational
Technology-Related Conferences, Seminars, and Other Events" at
http://atncalendar.depts.unc.edu:8086/. 


While we often mention commercial products, publications, and Web
sites, Infobits does not accept or reprint unsolicited advertising
copy. Send your article suggestions to the editor at
kotlas at email.unc.edu.


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Cheers all ..
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia