IAT Infobits - September, 1994
No. 15
ISSN 1071-5223
About INFOBITS
Infobits is an electronic service of the Institute for Academic Technology's Information Resources Group. Each month we monitor and select from a number of information technology and instruction technology sources that come to our attention and provide brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators.
Educational Resources on the Internet
WWW for Instructional Use
I Heard It Through the Internet
Robo Babes and the Gender Gap
Get WWW Pages by Email
Libraries and the Future Broadcast
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES ON THE INTERNET
Harris, Judi. Way of the Ferret: Finding Educational Resources on the Internet. Revised Edition. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education, 1994. 191 pages. ISBN: 1-56484-069-7. $24.95.
Harris writes a column called "Mining the Internet" in the journal The Computing Teacher, and much of the material for her book comes from this column. Although there are now a vast number of guides to the Internet [see "Tsunami of Internet Books," IAT Infobits, no. 9, March 1994], this one highlights resources of interest to K-12 educators (and college and university faculty involved in K-12 teacher education programs). In addition to providing overviews to all the standard Internet tools and pointers to useful resource sites, the author includes a section on educational applications with projects to get students involved in using the Internet. Project descriptions include lists of activities, grade level of audience, disciplines covered, purpose of the project, and names of contacts for projects that require registration.
The Computing Teacher [ISSN 0278-9175] is published eight times a year by The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). ISTE is a nonprofit professional organization dedicated to the improvement of education through computer-based technology. To order the book call the Order Desk: 800-336-5191.
For information on ISTE or subscriptions to The Computing Teacher, write: ISTE, 1787 Agate Street, Eugene, OR 97403-1923 USA; tel: 503-346-4414; fax: 503-346-5890; email: iste@oregon.uoregon.edu (Internet), ISTE (America Online), ISTE (AppleLink), or 70014,2117 (CompuServe); or Gopher: ISTE-gopher.uoregon.edu
How are people using the World-Wide Web in educational settings? Check the University of Texas-Austin's Web Central to locate course syllabi, lecture notes, exams, multimedia textbooks, and more. Categories of disciplines covered include: anatomy, archaeology, architecture, art and art history, astronomy, biochemistry, biology and botany, chemical engineering, chemistry, communication, computer science, finance, history, language labs, management, management information systems, mathematics, medicine, music, nuclear engineering and engineering physics, physics, psychology, and religious studies. The resource's URL is http://wwwhost.cc.utexas.edu/world/instruction/index.html
I HEARD IT THROUGH THE INTERNET
A couple of recent broadcasts on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program have featured Internet sites with audio collections. Here are more details.
The Voice of America (VOA) is the international broadcast service of the U.S. Information Agency. It produces and broadcasts programs on shortwave in 45 languages, including English. Reporters in VOA's central newsroom and correspondents at 25 news bureaus throughout the world provide first-hand coverage of an average of 180 news stories each day. Selected broadcasts are available for downloading from the Internet in Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, Czech, and English in several audio formats. (Be warned, these files can be very big.) The site also contains information and broadcasting schedules for VOA, Worldnet Television, and Radio and TV Marti. You can get copies of the audio files from their anonymous FTP site: ftp.voa.gov or through their Gopher site at: gopher.voa.gov
The Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) describes itself as the net's first free hi-fi music archive. IUMA is dedicated to the "worldwide distribution of otherwise obscure bands and artists ... including everything from traditional folk to indie rock to instrumental jazz to Japanese experimental noise." The archive site includes information about performers, complete songs and short excerpts, and utilities for playing the audio files on a variety of platforms. You can access the archive by World-Wide Web: http://www.iuma.com, by Gopher: gopher.iuma.com, or by anonymous FTP: ftp.iuma.com
In "No Girls Allowed!" [TECHNOS, vol. 3, no. 3, Fall 1994, pp. 14-19] Melissa Koch voices the concern that girls in U.S. schools are not attracted to computers in the same numbers as their male peers. Since competency in computer use and other technologies is increasingly linked to academic success, especially in math and science, this disparity translates into fewer women entering technology professions. According to Koch, the problem cannot be attributed to any one cause, but is a combination of how girls are socialized, girls' learning styles, peer pressure, and teacher encouragement. She describes some ways that could reverse the situation and bring technology to more girls in the classroom. The article includes information on several technology programs set up to promote girls' participation in science, math, and computer technology.
In "Robo Babes" [I.D.; The International Design Magazine, vol. 41, no. 3, May/June 1994, pp. 38-45] Karrie Jacobs focuses on one area of computer technology where girls and women are turned off. She writes that almost all popular computer and "video games are still stubbornly entrenched in adolescence--a decidedly male adolescence. . . . It is a culture that builds systems that demand quick, reactive thinking in a universe of limited choices. And it is this culture that is designing the so-called information superhighway."
Some video game companies are realizing that by concentrating on software that doesn't appeal to girls or women they have failed to reach half of their potential customers. So far most of their entries into this market have been limited and embarrassing. For example, Nintendo's "Barbie: Super Model" allows girls to apply makeup to electronic Barbie faces, and Philips' "Girls' Club" is a slot-machine game that displays boys' heads on the screen and lets players pick their "dream date." Jacobs thinks that while video games are just toys, they do teach children about computers and that the electronic interfaces in games are being incorporated into computer interfaces in technology used by adults. "If we don't get girls interested in computers at an early age, and if we don't have computers that are friendly or interesting to girls, we're just going to have guys behind the wheel on that superhighway. . . . If we don't seriously question the games and, more to the point, the culture that designs them, our lives could become one endless round of Space Invaders."
TECHNOS: Quarterly for Education and Technology is published by the Agency for Instructional Technology (AIT), Box A, Bloomington, IN 47402-0121 USA; tel: 812-339-2203; fax: 812-333-4218; email: technos@linknet.com. Subscriptions are available for $20/year (US), $24/year (International), $16/year (library rate).
I.D.; The International Design Magazine [ISSN 0894-5373] is published bimonthly by Design Publications. Subscriptions are available from I.D., P. O. Box 11247, Des Moines, IA 50340-1247 USA for $60/year (US), $70/year (Canada), $85/year (Europe).
To read more on the Internet about women and computing:
-- connect to Ellen Spertus' Women and Computer Science WWW site: http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/ellens/gender.html
-- get The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture Special Issue: Gender Issues in Computer Networking, vol. 2, issue 3, July 26, 1994. The issue can be retrieved by sending email to: listserv@kentvm.kent.edu with the message: get ejvcv2n3 package or by anonymous FTP to ftp://byrd.mu.wvnet.edu/pub/ejvc/EJVCV2N3.PACKAGE
If your system doesn't support World-Wide Web viewers like Mosaic, Lynx, Cello, etc., you can still retrieve information from WWW sites. CERN, the European research group that developed the World-Wide Web, now makes it possible for people to get Web pages by email.
Send a message to: listproc@www0.cern.ch [note the character after www in the address is a zero] and in the body of the message type www and the Universal Resource Locator (URL) for the Web page you want. For example, to get a copy of Ellen Spertus' Women and Computer Science page mentioned above, send the message:
www http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/ellens/gender.html
LIBRARIES AND THE FUTURE BROADCAST
In December the IAT will present "Libraries: Today's Issues, Tomorrow's Challenges," a satellite broadcast covering technology in libraries, trends, new media and copyright, and other issues facing libraries and information centers. The broadcast includes a live question and answer session. We have assembled an interesting and diverse group of speakers who can provide some thoughtful insights based on their years of experience.
The speakers include: Toni Carbo Bearman, Dean of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh and the only librarian on the U.S. Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure; Wilson (Bil) Stahl, Director of Information Planning for The University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Marcia Tuttle, Head of Serials, Davis Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Introduction to Serials Management, and editor of Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues; John Ulmschneider, Assistant Director for Library Systems, North Carolina State University; Laura (Lolly) Gasaway, Director of the Law Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and frequent contributor to cni-copyright, the Coalition for Networked Information's electronic discussion list on copyright issues; and Richard Hulser, library consultant for IBM Corporation. IAT Infobits editor, Carolyn Kotlas, will moderate the broadcast.
URL: http://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits/bitsep94.html
Infobits editor: Carolyn Kotlas
© Copyright 1994, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.
May be reproduced in any medium for non-commercial purposes.
Center for Instructional Technology
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