Etcetera, Etcetera, Etcetera: ISU News, Interesting Links and So Forth
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project,
women "outshopped" men on the Internet during the holidays
for the first time. Of the 29 million Internet users
who bought gifts online between Thanksgiving and Christmas,
about 58 percent were women, up from 50 percent last year.
An interesting note: Most successful are those retailers
who "blur the lines" between online and off-line shopping
by offering shoppers conveniences - such as the ability to
return merchandise purchased online to a "brick and mortar"
store. Those surveyed indicated that a huge advantage to
Internet shopping was the efficiency. "About 84 percent
of online shoppers believed they saved time, an especially
critical factor for women with children." Studies on
e-learning site similar trends.
Source: WashingtonPost.com (2 Jan 02)
Some facts. Five percent of Internet users report taking
a class online for college credit, and five percent also
report having ever taken any other kind of class online.
People under age 50 and those with at least some college
education are the most likely to have taken classes online.
On any given day, 1% of Internet users are taking a class
online. That amounts to about one million adults.
Source: The Internet and Education: Findings of the Pew
Internet & American Life Project (Report Released
1 Sep 01)
Just for fun, visit the National Gallery of Art
video streaming slideshow on Winslow Homer's
painting titled "Right and Left." This feature
enables you to examine details of the painting while
listening to Gallery Curator Nicolai Cikovsky Jr
discuss the details that make this painting so powerful.
This site is truly a "mini art course" - and an
excellent example of powerful content on the web.
URL: http://www.nga.gov/collection/rightandleft.htm
RocketNews - a search engine for news - offers links
to thousands of major online national and city newspapers,
newswires, magazines, trade publications, and press
releases. Each search produces a list of headlines,
each with a summary and links to the article.
URL: http://www.rocketnews.com
Truth or Fiction? To verify the content of an
email message, visit http://www.truthorfiction.com
This site features summaries and a search engine
that will help you determine if the email you just
received is an urban legend or scam.
Source: EditorandPublisher.com (3 Jan 02)
UMass Lowell Online Learning's newest program is
an online undergraduate and graduate certificate in
photons and optoelectronics. The graduate
certificate offers students an introduction to
electro-optics and fiber optics plus the opportunity
to study in one of several areas, including medical
optics, device physics, remote sensing/image processing,
and fiber-optics. UMass Lowell Online also offers
online degrees in educational administration,
information technology, and liberal arts.
Source: Optically Networked (16 Jan 02)
StrokeSTOP is a new series of online modules
designed to train first-year medical students
on stroke risk and prevention. The modules,
developed by the University of Massachusetts
Medical School in conjunction with the American
Stroke Association, use a "student-driven" design.
Course components include: instructional text,
diagrams, case studies, radiographs and scans,
self-tests, patient videos, and animation.
Students use these materials to assess risk
factors and work out patient counseling
strategies.
Source: Syllabus (Jan 02)
Through digital asset management, the Shoah Foundation
will be able to catalog and distribute thousands of
videotaped testaments of holocaust survivors. Survivor
videos are "...broken into segments with a customized
back-end database; each segment is assigned one of 21,000
topic keywords, and then the testimonies are cataloged with
lists of keywords, photos of survivors and their families,
related documentaries, and textual descriptions." Currently
5,000 of more 51,000 tapes have been cataloged. The Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, the University of Maryland
in College Park, and IBM are subcontractors on the project.
Source: Computerworld (14 Jan 02)
Online Courselets? That's right - courselets.
The Stanford Center for Professional Development
is developing "online courselets" that are self-contained,
integrated sets of Web-based learning materials and
tools designed to support Stanford's online graduate
courses in areas such as engineering. The two-year
"courselet" project is supported by a $400,000 grant
from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation with additional
resources from Stanford University.
Source: Edupage (Jan 02)
Students with learning disabilities will benefit
from computerized transcription systems being tested
at Stanford University. This testing is part of the
the Liberated Learning Project, which uses voice-activated
software that instantly translate an instructor's words
into print that flashes onto a large screen. Students with
or without learning disabilities can get a copy of the
lecture online. Visually impaired students can have
the notes translated into Braille. The benefits for
hearing impaired students are obvious. The LLP software
is also being tested at schools in Canada, Britain, and
Australia.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education Online (24 Jan 02)
The University of Texas at Austin is one of many
colleges that are customizing existing online degrees
for the specific needs of individual companies.
Employees like customized degree programs because
of the ability to earn an accredited degree - with
the added bonus of projects and course components
tailored to the needs of their specific industry.
And employers are more likely to fund employee
education if the degree program offers knowledge
and new skills pertinent and therefore of benefit
to the company. Currently, the University of Texas
at Austin is developing online, company-specific
master's degrees in science, technology, and
commercialization aimed at enrolled IBM workers.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education Online (28 Jan 02)
Can admission policies, community groups, and
interdisciplinary courses break gender barriers?
Yes, according to the findings of a four-year
study conducted by Jane Margolis (UCLA) and
Allan Fisher (Carnegie Mellon University).
Between 1995 and 2000, the percentage of female
computer science majors at Carnegie Mellon
jumped from 7 percent to 40 percent - and
retention improved. "Concluding surveys indicated
that female students were no more likely than their
male counterparts to leave the major, whereas
they were twice as likely to do so in 1995."
For more information, read "Unlocking the Clubhouse:
Women in Computing" a new book authored by Margolis
and Fisher).
Source: (Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 25 January 2002)
Convenient, transfer-friendly programming:
The University of Maryland University College's new
online master's degree in management accepts 18 out of
20 credits of the Naval War College's Joint Professional
Military Education Certificate Program. According to
John E. Jackson, associate dean of academics for
distance education at the War College, "...the new
transfer program will enable people to build on what
they've already done." This new degree will be offered
through the Navy E-Learning Network.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education Online (16 Jan 02)
Thought for February:
Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.
- Chinese Proverb
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