News Update for Tuesday, January 25, 2005

• 01/25/05

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News for Tuesday, January 25, 2005

* Internet Study Predicts Aptitude Will Drive Class Composition
* Governors Launch Online Career Center for Southern Teachers
* With Latest Offerings, Every Campus of UMass Now Online
* OSU Forms “Web Media Collective” for Sharing Multimedia
* Texas A&M Standardizes Campus on Screen Recording Tool

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Internet Study Predicts Aptitude Will Drive Class Composition

A sweeping survey of nearly 1,300 technology experts and scholars
on the future of the Internet has concluded – not surprisingly –
that the Internet would reach into and influence every corner of
American life over the next 10 years. The study, released under
the auspices of Elon University and the Pew Internet & American
Life Project, paints a picture of a digital future that enhances
the lives of many but which also contains some worrisome notes.

For instance, over half of the respondents predicted the Internet
would spawn “a new age of creativity” and that formal education
would incorporate more online classes, with students grouped by
interests and skills, rather than by age. At the same time,
two-thirds predicted a devastating attack on the country’s network
infrastructure would occur or in the next 10 years, and that
government and business surveillance would rise dramatically.

Full results of the survey can be found on the Web at
http://www.elon.edu/predictions

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The integration of presentation technologies and new media has
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Governors Launch Online Career Center for Southern Teachers

The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) last week launched
the SREB-State Teacher Center, an online resource to help teachers
plan their careers at schools, colleges and universities throughout
the South. The SREB, formed in 1948 by 16 Southern governors
to advance education and economic opportunities in the South,
called the Teacher Center the ‘nation’s first interstate compact
for education.” The site is a component of SREB's Electronic Campus
and was designed with education leaders in all 16 SREB member
states, and Xap Corp., a provider of Internet-based educational
services.

“We created a one-stop source of information and resources for
teachers, administrators, counselors, librarians, teacher aides
and others who are, or want to become, teachers," said SREB chair
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco in announcing the Center. "The
center allows educators to find all of the resources on any
SREB state -- including the latest information about every
state's 'highly qualified' requirements.”

For more information, visit http://www.theteachercenter.org or
http://www.electroniccampus.org

With Latest Offerings Every Campus of UMass Now Online

Online education bellwether UMassOnline added six programs to its
electronic course offerings last week, bringing to 45 the number
of online degree and certificate programs in its portfolio. With
the addition of online continuing medical education (CME) courses
from UMass Medical School, UMassOnline now represents every campus
in the university system, officials said.

The new online programs include continuing medical education courses,
as well as certificate programs in hospitality, domestic violence
prevention, and forensic criminology. “The extent to which we can
continue to broaden access to a UMass education will be the ultimate
measure of our success," said UMassOnline CEO David Gray.

For more information visit http://www.umassonline.net

Ohio State Forms “Web Media Collective” for Sharing Multimedia

Ohio State University has added a rich media content management
system to its web infrastructure, enabling professors to pull digital
images from various university collections into the classroom. The
school is using a platform from Scene7 Inc. as the technology behind
what it calls its “Web Media Collective.” The system is designed to
help solve the problem of how to help individual faculty as well as
curriculum teams share media assets for teaching and research.

The first phase of the project consists of six digital media collections
containing over 850,000 pieces of media that will be available to
over 20,000 students in 105 course sections annually. Diane Dagef'erde,
Director of Technology, Office of the Colleges of the Arts & Sciences,
said the system provides, “a cost-effective way to manage, process,
and deliver our vast collections of high resolution images for use in
the classroom and to share these images throughout the University.”

Texas A&M to Standardize Campus on Screen Recording Tool

Texas A&M University has settled on a standard for screen recording
software, so that its faculty can have a common tool for preparing
online course content from a screen creation. The university will use
Camtasia Studio, from TechSmith Corp., which is known for its
onscreen capture and recording software. With the new software,
faculty and researchers are able to create and share live lectures,
distance-learning videos, as well as in-class presentations and
tutorials. The latest version of software includes an add-in for
recording, editing, and sharing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

Mike Speed, a professor of statistics and the Associate Dean for
Technology Mediated Instruction at Texas A&M, called the tool a “key
software application for us. Hundreds of professors are using it to
improve the effectiveness of their instruction, and we're excited to
roll it out to the entire campus over the next year."