Etcetera, Etcetera, Etcetera: ISU News, Interesting Links and So Forth
* Alder Planetarium & Astronomy Museum
From late April through early May, you have a rare
opportunity to see five planets bunched together in
the western sky after sunset. "The planets -- Mercury,
Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, will be visible to the
unaided eye and haven't appeared this close together since
1921." A good aid to locating the planets on any night
can be found at the Alder Planetarium and Astronomy site.
URL: www.adlerplanetarium.org/astronomy/sky/index.html
Source: TRIVIA TIME (1 May 02)
* Book Lists and Bibliographies
Looking for a good book? This site is a portal to a
wonderful array of reading lists - from the classics to
pulp fiction. Lists are categorized by topic, including
biography, mystery, historical fiction, science fiction
and fantasy. Just for fun, click on the "Great
Books" link and browse Clifton Fadiman's "Lifetime Reading
Plan" and Philip Ward's "A Lifetime's Reading: The World's
500 Greatest Books List," which suggests about 10 books per
year for 50 years. This site is sponsored by the Waterboro
Public Library in Maine.
URL: www.waterboro.lib.me.us/bklista.htm
Source: Search Day (10 April 02)
* BookFinder.com
Looking for an out-of-print book? This site enables you to
search the collections of over 40,000 sellers of new, used,
rare, and out-of-print books. The site claims to provide
information on forty million titles.
URL: www.bookfinder.com
Source: Search Day (10 April 02)
* isbn.nu
Looking for a good deal on a book? This site enables you
to search and compare the prices of any in-print and many
out-of-print books at nine online bookstores. In addition,
you can locate the bookstore that offers the best shipping
costs and turn-around time for shipping the book.
URL: www.isbn.nu
Source: Search Day (10 April 02)
* A CyberShuttle? That's right. The University of
California at San Diego's CyberShuttle enables passengers
to log on to the Web and send e-mail. The bus connects the
university campus with a commuter train station, a 30-minute
round trip that many students take daily.
Sources: EDUPAGE (4 April 02); Chronicle of Higher Education (2 April 02)
* South Korea is expanding fast internet connections to
make higher education available to both rural and urban
adults. According to a recent article in the Chronicle,
"...within five years, as many as 9 out of every 10 South
Koreans will be using the Internet, officials say. That
will make it possible for more than half of all adult
residents to receive some form of online instruction,
with a majority of these using the high-speed technology."
Korea has a population of 44.5 million. "The implications
for educators in South Korea right now are tremendous,"
says S.H. Kyong, a professor of telecommunications at
the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology's
Graduate School of Management, in the capital, Seoul.
Mr. Kyong is also a former minister of information and
telecommunications in the South Korean
government.
Sources: elearningpost Daily Links (5 April 02); Chronicle of Higher Education
* Get Ready for Pay-Per-View
A new service from RealNetworks lets users charge
consumers for the content they access through a
pay-per-view, rental, or subscription model. With
the RBN Managed Subscription Service, the video
or audio streams are hosted by RealNetworks, which
also handles online billing for content producers.
RealNetworks has been moving its core business
in the pay-per-view direction because the market
for paid online content has strengthened
significantly.
Sources: CNET (9 April 02; EDUPAGE (10 April 02)
* Copy Protection Doomed
Digital music, movies, and television programs will
never be copy-protected according to Marc Andreessen,
a co-founder of Netscape. "If a computer can see it,
display it, and play it -- it can copy it."
Sources: San Jose Mercury News (9 April 02); EDUPAGE (10 April 02)
* Misunderstood Minds
This companion site to the PBS documentary "Misunderstood
Minds" (aired March 02) includes profiles of the students
in the documentary as well as sections on attention,
reading, writing, and mathematics. Also included is
an interactive feature entitled "Firsthand" that
provides a sense of what it may be like for a student
with a learning disability. Tapes of the March 02
broadcast can be ordered online.
URL: www.pbs.org/wgbh/misunderstoodminds
Source: Scout Report (April 02)
* Working in the 21st Century Working is a "portrait
of the U.S. workforce at the beginning of the New
Millennium." This site is useful for information on
careers.
URL: www.bls.gov/opub/working/home.htm
Source: Scout Report (April 02)
* The Great Buildings Collection
This site touts itself as "...the leading architecture site
on the web and a gateway to architecture around the world
and across history." Included are thousand of buildings and
hundreds of leading architects, 3D models, photographic
images and architectural drawings, bibliographies, and links
to information on famous designers and structures.
URL: www.greatbuildings.com
Source: Scout Report (April 02)
* Visible Human Server
View three dimensional models of human anatomy. A free
registration allows users to log on and fully access
the site. You can view, rotate, and extract cross
sections from the anatomical models, or build your
own anatomic model. All this from the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology.
URL: http://visiblehuman.epfl.ch
Source: Scout Report (April 02)
* Biology-Online: Information in the Biological Sciences
This site claims to be "...a choice source for biological
information, ideal for homework, research projects and
general interest." The site features listing of links
and resources, tutorials, and dictionaries.
URL: www.biology-online.org/default.htm
Source: Scout Report (April 02)
* Froguts
Froguts is the first true virtual online frog dissection.
URL: www.froguts.com
Source: The Blue Web'n Update 13 April 02)
* Just for Fun
Visit the San Francisco Symphony Kids' site for a refresher
course on the instruments of the orchestra or introduction
to reading music in "Meet the Notes." A wonderful site
for children (and adults) with lots of interactivity.
URL: www.sfskids.org/templates/splash.asp
Source: The Blue Web'n Update 13 April 02)
* The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910-1934
This site, using FLASH animation, is a companion piece
to the current exhibit of Russian Avant-Garde artists
at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The site is
organized into three chronological themes: (1) A Slap
in the Face of Public Taste (1910-1924); (2) Transform
the World! (1916-1933); and (3) Building Socialism
(1924-1934).
URL: www.moma.org/russian
Source: Scout Report (19 April 02)
* Timeline of Art History
This site offers an overview of the history of art
"...illustrated and represented in the Museum's collection."
Browsers can search content chronologically, thematically,
and geographically.
URL: www.metmuseum.org/toah/splash.htm
Source: Scout Report (19 April 02)
* Freshwater and Marine Image Bank
The University of Washington Digital Libraries
Collection houses this collection of images
on freshwater and marine topics, including
fish and shellfish. The scope is global.
URL: http://content.lib.washington.edu/fish/
Source: Scout Report (19 April 02)
* The Internet Language Dictionary
This online dictionary contains thousands of popular
Internet words and definitions related to technology
and the Web.
URL: www.netlingo.com/inframes.cfm
Source: Scout Report (19 April 02)
* German for Travelers
Learn conversational German on this web site.
URL: www.germanfortravellers.com
Source: Blue Web'n Update (19 April 02)
* HomophoneZone
Students can brush up on homophones - "the plague of
spellcheckers and shaky spellers."
URL: www.cooper.com/homophonezone
Source: Blue Web'n Update (19 April 02)
* Civil Liberties Docket Archive
The Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute Archives is
supported by the Bancroft Library at the University
of California, Berkeley. Included are legal briefs,
transcripts, and motions in cases report to the Civil
Liberties Docket since 1955.
URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/meiklejohn/project.html
Source: ResearchBuzz #178 (April 18, 2002)
Thought for May:
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
- A sign hanging in Albert Einstein's office at Princeton
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