February 1994 No. 8

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.

MusDisc News Goes Electronic
What's Wrong with Multimedia in Higher Education?
What Else is Wrong with Multimedia? -- The Dark Side of Interactive Technologies
Creating a Campus Network Infrastructure
Science Fiction -- Predicting the Information Future
Teaching Writing with Technology

MUSDISC NEWS GOES ELECTRONIC

MusDisc News, the University of Delaware Newsletter for Music Laserdiscs in Educational Settings, has been on hiatus for over a year. The latest issue (vol. 5; nos. 1, 2, & 3; 1992-93) arrived with the news that all future issues will be in electronic format on the Internet.

The current issue contains an article on using technology in music teaching, reviews of new discs, and information on sources for discs. The "What's New on Disc" column covers the following categories: choral, vocal solo, opera, country, instrumental, jazz, musical, and pop/rock/general. Back issues are available for $4/issue or $45/all back issues from the editor: Larry W. Peterson, MusDisc News, Department of Music, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA 19716; tel: 302-831-8134; fax: 302-831-3589; email: peterson@brahms.udel.edu.

To subscribe to the electronic version at no charge, send email after March 1, 1994, to: mus-disc-register@strauss.udel.edu with the message:
subscribe MusDisc News

If you have any problems, contact Larry Peterson.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH MULTIMEDIA IN HIGHER EDUCATION?

The February 1994 issue of T.H.E. Journal (Technological Horizons in Education) is devoted to multimedia. One the more provocative articles is "What's Wrong with Multimedia in Higher Education?" (pp. 81-83) by Dr. Martin B. Soloman, Vice Provost for Computing and Communications at The University of South Carolina. He discusses "factors that have inhibited widespread use of multimedia instructional courseware in U.S. higher education as well as the factors that are necessary to allow multimedia to thrive." Solomon writes that just as television and microcomputers have not fundamentally revolutionized higher education, multimedia will also fail if educators do not take into account the time, talents, and incentives that technological innovation requires to be successful. Other articles that address these issues focus on faculty motivation, training, and multimedia architecture standards.

T.H.E. Journal [ISSN 0192-592x] is available free in the United States and Canada to qualified subscribers; non-qualifying subscriptions to USA and Canada are $29/year; all other countries are $95/year. Contact T.H.E. Journal, Circulation Dept., 150 El Camino Real, Suite 112, Tustin, CA 92680-9833 USA; tel: 714-730-4011; fax: 714-730-3739.

WHAT ELSE IS WRONG WITH MULTIMEDIA? --THE DARK SIDE OF INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGIES

Tay Vaughan, president of a CD-ROM and multimedia title production and publishing company, explores the "multimedia swamp" in his article "Video Violence Too Dangerous to Ignore" (Morph's Outpost on the Digital Frontier, Feb. 1994, p. 9). Violence in U.S. society now has the attention of politicians ("violence will become more important than the deficit") as well as parents and educators. Violence in video games and television is becoming a target for censorship and legal action. Vaughan wonders if developers and marketers can be "creative enough to overcome the dark side" of interactive multimedia and "add to the common good as they spin new techniques and new methods." Educators may not be able to ignore the infringement of free speech in the growing "edutainment" arena, but they may also not be comfortable taking the side of both "Sonic the Hedgehog" and the "Blood Dreamers."

Morph's Outpost on the Digital Frontier is published monthly by Morph's Outpost, Inc., P.O. Box 578, Orinda, CA 94563 USA; tel: 510-238-4545; fax: 510-238-9459; online BBS: 510-238-4554. Individual subscriptions are $39.95/year.

CREATING A CAMPUS NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE

In conjunction with the IAT's March satellite broadcast, "Creating a Campus Network Infrastructure," two new publications are available on our FTP site. "Creating a Campus Network Infrastructure" by Steve Griffin, Director of the IAT Technical Support Group, discusses five activities for networking your campus: advocate, survey, plan, install, and operate. The document is available on the IAT Web site at URL http://www.iat.unc.edu/technote/teknote4.txt.

Suggested sources of more information can be found in "Creating a Campus Network Infrastructure: Bibliography," which is available on the IAT Web site at URL http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/irg-15.html.

For more information about this and other IAT satellite broadcasts, send email to barbara_bickell@unc.edu.

SCIENCE FICTION -- PREDICTING THE INFORMATION FUTURE

In "Science Fiction: Better Than Delphi Studies" (EDUCOM Review, Jan/Feb 1994, pp. 30-34), Milton T. Wolf contends that "the interchange of ideas between science fiction and technology has generated an extremely valuable cross-fertilization." If you want to know where the current wave of information technology is taking us, reading science fiction may provide more insights (and hours of entertainment) than studying think tank reports. Wolf includes a descriptive list of science fiction books that provide "visions of possible information futures" to get the reader started in this genre. He also recommends the nonfiction guide Anatomy of Wonder by Neil Barron for pointers to more science fiction works.

EDUCOM is a nonprofit consortium of colleges, universities, and other organizations serving higher education. EDUCOM's bimonthly magazine EDUCOM Review [ISSN 1045-9146] is currently offering individual first-time subscribers in USA and Canada a special trial subscription price of one year (6 issues) for $18, rather than the usual price of $60. Contact: Educom Review, 1112 16th NW, Washington, DC 20036 USA, or send email to offer@educom.edu. International orders require an additional $15(US). EDUCOM member institutions are eligible for a number of free subscriptions; contact your campus' EDUCOM Institutional Representative for more details.

TEACHING WRITING WITH TECHNOLOGY

The Winter 1993 issue of Educator's Tech Exchange covers using technology to teach writing. Since writing crosses all disciplines and is fundamental to students' overall education, "writing has come to be the number one use of computers in schools across the country," according to one of the featured authors. Feature articles covering the theme include: "Reinventing Writing in the Virtual Age" by Paul J. LeBlanc, which provides both an historical view and a look at "current hypermedia and network-based applications"; "The Audience Made Real: Hypertext and the Teaching of Writing" by J. Yellowlees Douglas, which recounts how a marked improvement in students' writing was observed after the use of hypertext software in the writing classroom; and "The Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment" by Fred Kemp, which describes this award-winning suite of network-based programs.

Educator's Tech Exchange [ISSN 1065-9447] is published quarterly by Edutech, Inc., P.O. Box 51760, Pacific Grove, CA 93950 USA; tel: 408-372-8100; fax: 408-372-2041. Subscriptions are free to qualifying faculty and administrators in the USA; non-qualifying subscriber rate is $30/year/USA; $40/year/Canada & Mexico.