News 01-23-2001
Syllabus Spring2001 Conference to Address Interactive Communications
The Syllabus Spring2001 conference, to be held April 5-8 in Cincinnati, Ohio,
will encompass five tracks. Track 2, Interactive Communications, Conferencing,
and Collaboration, will consider the impact technology has had on the academic
conversation. When the microcomputer was first introduced on campus nearly a
quarter century ago, text-based communications between people on and off campus
began to evolve, becoming more easily and directly related to work-in-progress,
more mobile, and more "24/7." Now, the part of the academic conversation that
normally occurs over the wires (or through wireless transmission) offers the
chance to engage students in collaborative knowledge construction that can be
iteratively viewed, reviewed, and reacted to in real time. And faster network
connections are beginning to allow the incorporation of more extensive video
and multimedia-based communications.
Yet the potential for new ways to interact among peers and colleagues is only
beginning to be realized. As bandwidth and connectivity on campuses improve
and more people have access to computers and to robust connections–we find new
ways to cluster around "teaching moments" that are not limited to the classroom
or to a set schedule.
Issues to be addressed in the Interactive Communications, Conferencing, and
Collaboration sessions include:
- Sharing visually rich documents, such as student portfolios
- Connecting for audio interaction over the Web
- Is streaming video too complicated for me (or my campus)?
- Guidelines for collaborative learning
- Building a virtual library
The Syllabus spring2001 conference will be held at the Albert B. Sabin Convention
Center in Cincinnati, Ohio April 5-8. The five conference tracks to be presented
are Wireless Technologies; Interactive Communications, Conferencing, and Collaboration;
Infrastructure, IT Planning, and Strategic Issues; Web Technologies: Portals,
Resources, and Development; and Distance Learning: Issues and Programs, as well
as a featured track concerning Virtual Teaching, Learning, and Technology Centers.
For registration information and detailed session descriptions, visit www.syllabus.com.
Also, be sure to check out the conference brochure in the January issue of Syllabus
magazine.
Presidential Web Site Changes Hands
The official Web site of the president of the United States (www.whitehouse.gov)
was passed to George W. Bush at noon on Saturday. TheNational Archives and Records
Administration will maintain the site as it existed at 11:59 a.m. on Saturday.
The site will be available at www.clinton.nara.gov
as part of the Clinton Presidential Materials Project. The project is a precursor
to the Clinton library, to be completed in late 2003 in Arkansas. The Archives
has managed all of the presidential libraries since Herbert Hoover's, with the
exception of Richard Nixon's.
HorizonLive Unveils OfficeHoursLive
HorizonLive recently announced the launch of OfficeHoursLive, the first virtual
office designed specifically for faculty, teaching assistants, tutors, counselors,
and other distance learning professionals. The product enables instructors and
students to speak with each other live over the Web, and can be used to hold
virtual office hours, "Q & A'' sessions and study groups, deliver live lectures,
host exam review sessions, or present guest speakers.
The OfficeHoursLive environment allows educators to interact with students
live and in real-time through standard Web browsers, without custom software
and on virtually any PC, Mac, or Unix computer. Each virtual Office features
a teaching and learning tool kit, and a set of templates provide instructors
a way to create and deliver interactive slides and exercises, as well as real-time
polls, surveys, and evaluations.
For more information, visit www.officehourslive.com.
Questia Launches Student Research and Paper Writing Process
Questia Media has launched a service offering students access to a large collection
of content online to research and compose papers 24/7. The service enables subscribers
to read the full-text of hyper- linked sources; automatically create footnotes
and bibliographies; provides instant access to an online dictionary, thesaurus
and encyclopedia; allows users to personalize text with highlighting and margin
notes; and to save papers online so they can access them from anywhere, at anytime.
Students using the service will be able to do research and write their papers
from home or dorm room, without checking out books or photocopying.
The Questia service has more than 30,000 titles in the humanities and social
sciences disciplines and will grow to 50,000 titles within the next month. Users
are able to search the service's entire collection for free, but a subscription
fee is required to read the full- text of books and to use the set of research
and writing tools.
From January 22 - February 14, a free 48-hour trial of Questia is available
by visiting www.questia.com/launch.
Online Learning Airborne
Online learning takes to the skies with a selection from Knowledge Anywhere's
Virtual Classroom in Tenzing Communications' beta trial of the first airborne
e-mail and Internet system. Tenzing's Global service, which allows passengers
to send and receive e-mail during flight and have access to on-board "Best of
the Web" content, including preview versions of Knowledge Anywhere courses,
is now being offered to passengers on a free trial basis on select Air Canada
flights within North America.
Participating passengers will be able to use their own laptop, e-mail account,
and browser and can receive the necessary software for the Tenzing system at
the Air Canada or the Tenzing Web site.
For more information, visit www.KnowledgeAnywhere.com.
Annotated Map of the Human Genome
The Ohio State University (OSU), Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), and LabBook,
Inc. recently announced their partnership to provide life science researchers
with an annotated map of the human genome. The project combines OSU's annotated
human genome database, backed by OSC's computational power, with the visualization
and analysis capabilities of LabBook's personal discovery space.
The process of annotation is extremely computationally intensive, involving
millions of automated searches and comparisons along the 3-billion letter code
of the human DNA sequence. The necessary hardware is beyond the capabilities
of most university or industry laboratories.
While genomic annotation provides a solid basis for genetic research, its
usefulness remains limited without powerful software to perform queries and
visualize the results. Moreover, an explosion of information has accompanied
the human genome project on human genes, along with modern high-throughput technologies
for analyzing their functions. This expanding collection of information for
drug discovery holds the key to treatments for a broad range of human diseases,
but the data sources are dispersed and of limited use to biologists who are
not trained in bioinformatics. Utilizing the data effectively requires integrating
these disparate data types in a unified Web environment. To solve this problem,
OSU, LabBook and OSC are providing the OSU Human Genome Database within LabBook's
genomic discovery space.
OSU's Human Genome DataBase will be made available later this year at www.labbook.com.
