TL Infobits - July, 2008
Issue 25
ISSN: 1931-3144
15 Years of Infobits: Looking Back
Stakeholders in E-Learning Success
Mellon Report on the State of Scholarly Publishing Initiatives
Web Science
Webcasting Tips
Online Learning Books Online
Learning Games Reviews
Recommended Reading
15 YEARS OF INFOBITS: LOOKING BACK
This month marks the fifteenth year of publishing Infobits. Looking back over the early issues, I found it interesting to see how information and instructional technologies in academe have changed and, I hope, progressed over the years. Some of the items in the very first issue (July 1993) included the following:
A quote from a Wired magazine article announced "an intriguing new tool for managing the cornucopia of information linked to the Internet." The tool was the World Wide Web.
There was information on how to receive IBM publications -- via your fax machine.
Answers to National Endowment for the Humanities grant questions could now be emailed to you. Readers were given a telephone number and postal address, but no email address, to request the service.
A new publication, CD-ROM Today, was announced with the speculation that it "may fill the niche that the now-defunct MPC World had intended to fill." CD-ROM Today ceased publication in 1996.
The recommended reading was Michael Schrage's Shared Minds which introduced the concept of collaborative environments. (Haven't read it yet? You can now buy a used copy from an online bookseller for $0.47 US.)
-- Carolyn Kotlas
Editor of Infobits in all its incarnations:
TL Infobits (2006-present)
CIT Infobits (1998-2006)
IAT Infobits (1993-98)
STAKEHOLDERS IN E-LEARNING SUCCESS
In "Who Is Responsible for E-Learning Success in Higher Education? A Stakeholders' Analysis" (by Nicole Wagner, Khaled Hassanein, and Milena Head, Journal of Educational Technology & Society, vol. 11, no. 3 2008, pp. 26-36), the stakeholder groups that determine the success of e-learning are identified along with their needs and responsibilities. Stakeholder groups include students, instructors, educational institutions, content providers, technology providers, accreditation bodies, and employers. The authors provide a Stakeholders' Responsibility Matrix to clarify the interdependencies of these groups. The paper is available at http://www.ifets.info/journals/11_3/3.pdf.
The Journal of Educational Technology & 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/.
MELLON REPORT ON THE STATE OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING INITIATIVES
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has recently released its 2007 Annual Report. One of the essays in the document, "Scholarly Publishing Initiatives," by Donald J. Waters and Joseph S. Meisel, reports on two scholarly publishing initiatives that the Foundation funded: "one aimed at increasing the capacity of university presses to publish first books by junior scholars in fields where publication opportunities have become constrained, the other at strengthening the substantive relationship between university presses and their home institutions."
The essay is available at http://www.mellon.org/news_publications/annual-reports-essays/presidents-essays/scholarly-publishing-initiatives/.
The complete annual report is available at http://www.mellon.org/news_publications/annual-reports-essays/annual-reports.
See also:
"Mellon Foundation Assesses the State of Scholarly Publishing"
By Jennifer Howard
The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 28, 2008
http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/07/3986n.htm
The Chronicle of Higher Education [ISSN 0009-5982] is published weekly by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc., 1255 Twenty-third Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037 USA; tel: 202-466-1000; fax: 202-452-1033; Web: http://chronicle.com/.
WEB SCIENCE
"[T]he Web influences the world, and the world influences the Web. So complex is the Web, with tens of billions of pages on the 'surface Web' and hundreds of billions of documents in the 'deep Web', and so interrelated with society (especially in the rich democracies) has it become, that its health is a matter of real importance."
In "Web Science" (ALT Online Newsletter, Issue 12, May 2008), Kieron O'Hara and Wendy Hall present their case for a new area of research -- Web Science. Such a discipline would encompass not only the fields of computer science, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and engineering, but also psychology, sociology, biology, economics, and law. The authors believe that the field of learning technology would benefit from and contribute to Web Science. The article is online at http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/e_article001068553.cfm.
ALT Online Newsletter [ISSN 1748-3603] is published quarterly by the Association for Learning Technology (ALT). The newsletter is available at no cost on the Web at http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/.
ALT, with over 200 member organizations, is a "professional and scholarly association which seeks to bring together all those with an interest in the use of learning technology. For more information, contact ALT Administration, Gipsy Lane, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK; tel: +44 (0)1865 484125; fax: +44 (0)1865 484165; email: admin@alt.ac.uk; Web: http://www.alt.ac.uk/.
WEBCASTING TIPS
In "Presenting from a Distance: Webcasting Tips" (Presentations.com, July 14, 2008), Dave Paradi offers some simple, but useful, advice for anyone giving a presentation via teleconferencing technology. He offers tips to handle the following characteristics of giving such a presentation:
1. The Internet will limit what you can do.
2. Your audience is multitasking.
3. Graphics need more explanation.
The article is available at http://www.presentations.com/msg/content_display/sales/e3i78e076c5490e1313478b4b3ec6950ed3.
Presentations.com, published by Nielsen Business Media, Inc., is a "comprehensive presenter's resource providing instant access to up-to-date information on technology and techniques for effective communication." Current and past articles are available at http://www.presentations.com/.
ONLINE LEARNING BOOKS ONLINE
Two texts that focus on online learning have recently been released online in PDF format and can be downloaded for free.
The Theory and Practice of Online Learning, 2nd Edition
Edited by Terry Anderson
Published by Athabasca University Press
http://www.aupress.ca/books/Terry_Anderson.php
This second edition "updates each chapter from the 2004 edition and includes new chapters on social software, online learning philosophy, business costing, and mobile learning." Anderson is professor and Canada Research Chair in Distance Education at Athabasca University and the editor of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (http://www.irrodl.org/).
Education for a Digital World: Advice, Guidelines, and Effective Practice from Around the Globe
Co-published by BC Campus and the Commonwealth of Learning
http://www.col.org/colweb/site/pid/5312
The book "contains a comprehensive collection of proven strategies and tools for effective online teaching, based on the principles of learning as a social process. It offers practical, contemporary guidance to support e-learning decision-making, instructional choices, as well as program and course planning, and development."
LEARNING GAMES REVIEWS
Games4Learning is an initiative to explore the use of computer games in the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill curriculum. A new feature has been added to the initiative's website: reviews of eight free or low-cost games designed to be used as learning tools, and more game reviews are planned. Reviews are written by students at or near the intended age range of the games tested. To read the reviews and to learn more about the Games4Learning initiative, see
http://learnit.unc.edu/games4learning/.
Also of note:
The theme of the latest issue of the Communications of the ACM (vol. 51, no. 8, August 2008) is "Designing Games with a Purpose."
http://cacm.acm.org/
(Please note: for some papers, online access is not available to non-subscribers.)
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 kotlas@email.unc.edu for possible inclusion in this column.
"'wot do U tink?' (What Do You Think?)"
By M. O. Thirunarayanan
Ubiquity, vol. 9, no. 30, July 29 - August 4, 2008
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/volume_9/v9i30_thirunarayanan.html
"d Conventions of a # of d st8z, havN @ d tym of thR adoptin d Constitution, expressed a desire, n ordr 2 prevnt misconstruction o abuse of itz powRz, dat furthr declaratory & restrictive clauses shud b +D: & az extending d ground of public confidNc n d Government, wiL best ensure d beneficent ndz of itz institution."
No, your computer is not malfunctioning. As an entertaining exercise, M. O. Thirunarayanan, faculty member in the Florida International University College of Education, used a text converter (transl8it!) to translate the text of the U.S. Bill of Rights into text messaging language. Transl8it! is available at http://www.transl8it.com/.
