About INFOBITS
Infobits is an electronic service of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ITS Teaching and Learning's Center for Instructional Technology. Each month the CIT'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.
New Online Journal on Computer-Enhanced Learning
Hypertext Scholarship in American Studies
Electronic Representation of Math/Scientific Expressions
Learning Technology Newsletter
Making Websites Accessible
International WWW Conference Papers Online
CIT Information Resource Guides Update
NEW ONLINE JOURNAL ON COMPUTER-ENHANCED LEARNING
Interactive Multimedia Electronic Journal of Computer-Enhanced Learning (IMEJ) is a new publication edited and produced at Wake Forest University. Articles in IMEJ will explore the effective use of computers in education. In the fall of 1996, Wake Forest's Project 2000 placed a personal laptop computer into the hands of every student and faculty member; dorms, offices, and classrooms were wired with network connections. IMEJ complements this project by providing a peer-reviewed forum for exploring innovations in computer-enhanced learning.
Interactive Multimedia Electronic Journal of Computer-Enhanced Learning
[ISSN: 1525-9102] is available free on the Web at http://imej.wfu.edu/
For more information, contact: Jennifer J. Burg, Founding Editor;
email: imej@wfu.edu
For more information on Wake Forest's Project 2000, see the Campus Profile published in CAUSE/EFFECT, vol. 21, no. 4 1998. The article is available on the Web at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/cem9847.html
HYPERTEXT SCHOLARSHIP IN AMERICAN STUDIES
"How will hypertext and new media change the nature of scholarly argument, communication, and publication?" In May 1998, American Quarterly, in collaboration with the American Studies Crossroads Project at Georgetown University and the Center for History & New Media at George Mason University, launched an experiment in hypertext publishing to explore this question. People were invited to submit proposals for online scholarly "articles" that made use of hypertext. From twenty proposals four were selected, and the scholars were given the summer to prepare prototypes of their projects. The "beta versions" of their articles are available for public viewing on the Web, where readers can offer comments and reactions and the authors can continue to revise their work.
The four articles include:
"The Spanish-American War in US Media Culture," by James Castonguay, visiting assistant professor of Film and Video Studies and Communication Studies at the University of Michigan
"Dreaming Arnold Schwarzenegger," by Louise Krasniewicz, Director of the Digital Archaeology Lab at the University of California at Los Angeles, and Michael Blitz, professor of English and thematic studies at John Jay College of the City University of New York
"Hearsay of the Sun: Photography, Identity, and the Law of Evidence in Nineteenth-Century American Courts," by Thomas Thurston, project director for the New Deal Network (http://newdeal.feri.org) and a member of the Institute for Learning Technologies at Teachers College/Columbia University
"From Hogan's Alley to Coconino County: Three Narratives of the Early Comic Strip," by M. David Westbrook, an interactivity designer and multimedia programmer at Graphic Education Corporation in Columbia, Missouri
All materials are available at http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/hyperaq.html
The June-August 1999 issue of American Quarterly (vol. 51, no. 2, 1999)
continues the project by publishing commentaries on the articles by
scholars and additional statements by the articles' authors. The issue
is available on the Web to members of the
American Studies Association (ASA) at
http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/american_quarterly/toc/aq51.2.html
Other issues are accessible from the journal's Website at
http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/american_quarterly/index.html
American Quarterly [ISSN: 0003-0678; E-ISSN: 1080-6490] is published quarterly by the American Studies Association and is available to ASA members as part of their membership dues. The ASA was founded in 1951 to promote and encourage the study of past and present American culture. Membership is open to all individuals and to cultural or educational institutions. For more information about the ASA, link to http://www.press.jhu.edu/associations/asa/
Georgetown University's American Studies Crossroads Project is an international networking and curriculum innovation project that provides pedagogical, scholarly, and institutional information for the international American Studies Community. For more information, see http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/
George Mason University's Center for History & New Media produces "historical works in new media, tests the effectiveness of these products in the classroom, and reflects critically on the promises and pitfalls of new media in historical practice." For more information, see http://chnm.gmu.edu/
ELECTRONIC REPRESENTATION OF MATH/SCIENTIFIC EXPRESSIONS
Those interested in publishing mathematical and scientific expressions on the Web are invited to visit a new UNC-Chapel Hill Center for Instructional Technology resources page at http://www.unc.edu/cit/resources/math/
The site includes descriptions and evaluations for a number of authoring and display products. Some are based on the new MathML (Mathematical Markup Language) standard proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium; others use more traditional solutions like LaTeX and image formats.
LEARNING TECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER
The first issue of Learning Technology, a newsletter published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Learning Technology Task Force (LTTF), is now available via email and on the Web. The newsletter is an effort to "document the lessons learned from the integration of existing technologies, as well as new developments, in modern education." The publication will also report on the activities of the LTTF. The July 1999 issue (vol. 1, no. 1) is on the Web at http://grouper.ieee.org/ltsc/ifets/lttf/learn_tech/issues/july99/index.htmll
Email subscription information is available at http://grouper.ieee.org/ltsc/ifets/lttf/learn_tech/subscription.html
Learning Technology [ISSN 1438-0625] will be published semi-annually.
For more information about the newsletter, contact the editor:
Dr. Kinshuk, Department of Information Systems, Massey University,
Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North, New Zealand; tel: +64 6 350 5799
ext. 2090; email: kinshuk@massey.ac.nz;
Web:
http://grouper.ieee.org/ltsc/ifets/lttf/learn_tech/
The purpose of the IEEE Learning Technology Task Force is to contribute to the field of learning technology and to serve the needs of professionals working in this field. For more information about the IEEE LTTF, see: http://grouper.ieee.org/ltsc/ifets/lttf/learn_tech/
For more information about the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.), see their Website at http://www.ieee.org/
Rey Junco, counselor in the Pennsylvania State University Office for Disability Services, visited the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus this month. Using examples from UNC-Chapel Hill Web pages, Junco gave a presentation on creating Websites that are readable and navigable by users with sight, hearing, or motor disabilities. He also provided a list of Websites that address guidelines and the laws that cover disability issues:
Bobby Home Page
Bobby is a program that checks Web pages for accessibility.
http://www.cast.org/bobby/
W3C Web Content Guidelines Working Group
The goal of this group is to produce the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/
The Assistive Technology Act of 1998
This act supports programs of grants to States to address the assistive
technology needs of individuals with disabilities.
http://www.mdtap.org/tt/1998.09/1b-art.html
The Workforce Investment Act of 1998
The act ensures that individuals with disabilities have access to and
use of information and data that is comparable to the access to and use
of the information and data by such members of the public who are not
individuals with disabilities.
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/508/508law.html
Department of Justice Americans with Disabilities Act Home Page
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm
List of Mobility Impairments Alternative Input Devices
http://www.wolfe.net/~dr_bill/mobaltin.html
A videotape of one of Junco's presentation sessions is available on the
Web at http://metalab.unc.edu/stabley/cit/reyJunco.ram
To view the file download the free RealAudio RealPlayer from
http://www.real.com/
For more information on the Pennsylvania State University Office for Disability Services, contact: Rey Junco; email: rxj112@psu.edu; Web: http://www.lions.psu.edu/ods/
INTERNATIONAL WWW CONFERENCE PAPERS ONLINE
The Eighth International World Wide Web Conference was held in Toronto May 11-14, 1999) The conference brings together leaders from academia, research organizations, government, and industry to gain a global perspective of the issues facing the Web community. Papers from the Eighth International World Wide Web Conference, held last May in Toronto, are available on the Web at http://www8.org/fullpaper.html
Paper topics include multimedia and user interaction, XML, customizing Websites, hypertext and hypermedia, and Web document management.
CIT INFORMATION RESOURCE GUIDES UPDATE
The following documents in the CIT Information Resource Guides collection have recently been checked for broken links and updated:
"Extranets: Readings and Resources"
http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/irg-50.html
"What's What on the Web: Finding New Resources On and Information About
the Internet"
http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/irg-41.html
For a complete list of all the resource guides, see:
Title Listing
http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/guides.html
or
Subject Listing
http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/