UNC-CH Information Technology Services

Publication charts progress of instructional technology

Each month a number of information and instructional technology sources are reviewed and items of interest to academics using technology in instruction and research are collected and disseminated electronically through Infobits. A monthly publication with over 7,500 subscribers, Infobits marked 15 years of publication in July.

Some items from the very first Infobits issue 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 47 cents.)

“Looking back over the early issues, I found it interesting to see how information and instructional technologies in academe have changed and progressed over the years,” said Carolyn Kotlas, Infobits editor and academic outreach consultant.

Infobits is a service of ITS Teaching and Learning and is available by e-mail or on the Web. Subscriptions are free. For information on how to subscribe, visit http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/.