"If
absolute power corrupts absolutely, does
absolute powerlessness make you pure ?" ~Harry
Shearer
On the show:
SP2 for Office 2007; Encarta dies; the World
Digital Library debuts; Jaunty Jackalope
appears; Google has introduced two new search
features; electricity from space; PBS introduces
a new streaming video portal; students suing
TurnItIn lose; Oracle gobbles up Sun; Apple
rises on sales of iPods and iPhones, Microsoft
sinks on bad investments; GeoCities to be
euthanized; and a tech book on iMovie and iDVD. David's Blackboard Feature
urges you to "drop the dropbox." Haydn discusses
the value of podcasts
in his Teaching with Technology segment. In our
Tech Talk Topic segment describe how to use Jing
to paste images into Blackboard.
adds the ability to open, edit and save
documents in version 1.1 of the OpenDocument Format
for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint;
supports uninstall of client updates;
save as PDF is now built-in to the Office
products (no extra downloadable add-in requried);
graphics rendering has been improved;
charting has been improved in Excel;
SharePoint synchronization with OneNote has been
improved;
Outlook is more reliable;
File saves in PowerPoint has been improved;
Word/PDF fidelity has been heightened;
integration with various web browsers has been
improved.
At the same time, Microsoft has announced that
the next version of Office (Office 14, due out in
2010) will be released in 32 and 64-bit versions.
Expect browser-based versions of Excel, Word,
PowerPoint and OneNote to be included in the
distribution (bink).
"In January, Wikipedia got 97 percent of the
visits that Web surfers in the United States made to
online encyclopedias, according to the Internet
ratings service Hitwise. Encarta was second, with
1.27 percent" (NY
Times, see also
this article).
Consequently, Microsoft has finally given up on
Encarta, and Encyclopedia Britannica, which has
lately become "open," allowing for participant edits
of the articles (by invitation, at least) is barely
hanging on by virtue of its print version income.
Microsoft announced that Encarta will be removed
from stores by June. If Microsoft wanted to
earn points in heaven, they could release to the
public domain the Corbis material they own and used
in Encarta. This, of course, is a
non-Calvinist view of Microsoft.
Speaking
of the encyclopaedic, a new site, the
World Digital
Library, is now available online:
"The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on
the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual
format, significant primary materials from countries
and cultures around the world. The principal
objectives of the WDL are to:
Promote international and intercultural
understanding;
Expand the volume and variety of cultural
content on the Internet;
Provide resources for educators, scholars, and
general audiences;
Build capacity in partner institutions to narrow
the digital divide within and between countries.
While the selection is not yet great, the primary
materials are thought provoking and valuable.
Click here
for a brief video by US Librarian of Congress James
Billington explaining US involvement in the WDL.
In addition to April 23 being
World Book Day
and Shakespeare's supposed
445th birthday,
it was the release date for the latest version of
Ubuntu Linux, code named
Jaunty Jackalope.
Google labs
has announced two new search tools:
Similar Images,
a tool the finds similar images based on an image,
and Google News
Timeline, a web application that
organizes information chronologically. Google
is investigating methods to bring new developments
in search technologies to information consumers
faster. These two examples have been released
to the public far sooner than most.
California has taken the step that the rest of
the world must eventually take: the Public
Utilities Commission is considering a request from
PG&E to begin, in 2016, to purchase electricity from
Solaren, whose space-based network of electrical
generator/collectors will deliver it to earth, no
fossil fuel involved (Discovery
News).
PBS
has a new streaming video portal at
pbs.org/video.
It is slick and easy to use, like
Hulu.com
(where, by the way, you will also find
several PBS
titles streaming in a commercial venue).
Now much of the great quality programming heretofore
available only by purchasing DVDs or using your
Netflix account can be enjoyed free in streaming
format online. Available programming includes
American Experience, American Masters, FrontLine,
NOVA, Great Performances, Masterpiece Classic,
Nature, The NewsHour, and others. This has
important implications for media use in education,
since one of the provisions of the copyright code is
that videos cannot be encoded and streamed from
institution servers if a digital version is already
available online.
Bad news for students, "...the Fourth Circuit
Court of Appeals has found that Web-based plagiarism
detection service TurnItIn.com does not violate the
students' copyrights in their work, even though it
sometimes stores their complete papers for future
plagiarism hunting" (ars
technica - and
click here
for the PDF of the Federal decision). Four
high school students had sued TurnItIn in 2007,
claiming copyright infringement, but the federal
court judged it fair use, similar to the recent case
against the use of thumbnail images by Google image
search. Palomar now uses
Safe Assign
as its anti-plagiarism tool, which gives students
the right to opt out of the national database of
papers, a right they did not (and do not) enjoy with
TurnItIn.
Dababase monster Oracle this week acquired Sun
Microsystems for $7.4 billion, or $9.50 for each
share of Sun stock. The move is a direct
challenge to IBM, who until last week had been
negotiating to purchase Sun but abandoned the effort
when Sun shareholders rejected their $9.15 per share
offer. With the acquisition Oracle has
positioned itself to compete directly with IBM and
HP in providing large-scale hardware/software
solutions to institutions and corporations (BBC).
sun is expected to increase profits in the next
year, but lay off approximately 10,000 workers in
order to do so.
Apple, in the mean time, announced an
unexpectedly high profits for the third quarter, up
15%, driven by sales of the iPod and the iPhone.
Mac sales were down 3% (NY
Times).
Microsoft
reported disappointing earnings, down 6%
from last year on overall earnings, but profits
being reported as down 33% from the same quarter
last year, due primarily to failed investments (BusinessWeek
Online).
File this under "End of an Era": According to
ars technica, "Believe it or not, the
webpage service Geocities is still alive—but not for
long. Fifteen years after its original creation,
Yahoo has announced that it will shut down the
service later this year. An exact date is
not specified,
but Yahoo is warning current users to consider
moving to other options, such as Yahoo's own
Web Hosting
service." GeoCities, RIP.
Featured
Safari Tech Book Online:
iMovie '09 and iDVD: The Missing Manual by David Pogue
and Aaron Miller. "Bursting with new features,
Apple's iMovie '09 is vastly more usable and
complete than iMovie '08 -- amazing right out of the
box. But the box doesn't include a good user's
guide, so learning these applications is another
matter." Palomar maintains a subscription to
Tech Books Online, and the books can be accessed
from any computer on the campus network without as
login, or with your Palomar login and password from
anywhere in the world.
Training Opportunities - the next two weeks
Academic Technology Workshops
We have completed the Academic Technology
training schedule for spring 2009, but are always
available for TBA training, TBA departmental
training, and also have online, self-paced training
courses in Blackboard and other training materials
at our web site.
For example, we have developed (or linked to) sets of
screen videos (screencasts) that teach how to use the features of
the various technology tools available to faculty
members through Blackboard:
Blackboard 9 is coming, and when it arrives there
is one notable tool change that certain faculty need
to be aware of: There is no Digital Drop Box.
Of course, even on our current Bb8 system, the
functionality that, once upon a time, required the
Digital Drop Box, has been replaced by more mature
and controllable tools such as the Assignment
Manager. Of all the faculty I have persuaded to try
out the Assignment Manager in favor of the old
Digital Drop Box, all have preferred the new tool;
of course some have not been persuaded to try the
Assignment Manager yet… This would be a good time to
do so.
For any faculty interested in finding out how to
use the Assignment Manager, we do have an online
demonstration video available
here.
Now, if you’re also looking for something that
will run plagiarism detection on the student’s
works, you may be interested in using a
SafeAssignment, as explained in online videos
available
here.
Either way, I strongly suggest that faculty who
are currently using the Digital Drop Box to start
looking at alternate tools for students to submit
their files to you; the clock is ticking, and the
Drop Box will soon be no more.
See
the index of Dave's previous
"Blackboard Feature of the Week"
segments.
Teaching with Technology - Dr.
Haydn Davis
The Box Score: Podcast 1, Lecture 0
A headline in a technology newsletter caught my
eye recently: “Online Learning Set To Soar.”
According to Harvard Business School’s Clayton
Christensen, in less than 10 years more than 50% of
higher education classes will be presented online.
That headline reminded me of an article published
in eSchool News that compared learning online
compared with learning in a traditional on-campus
classroom. The study, conducted at the State
University of New York Fredonia, compared test
scores from students who watched a lecture podcast
(actually a vodcast) compared with students who
attended the same 30-minute classroom lecture. Test
results revealed the following:
Podcast students scored an average of 71% on
the test, and
Classroom lecture students scored an average
of 62% on the same test.
Even more interesting was the finding that
students who watched the video podcast and took
notes scored an average of 15 points higher than
their lecture classroom peers who also presumably
were taking notes.
What accounted for this significant difference?
It seemed like the main explanation was that the
students who scored highest were the ones who paused
the podcast, rewound it when necessary, and took
notes throughout – all behaviors that can’t be
replicated in the classroom.
Maybe the best lesson for anyone who uses
Blackboard is to combine classroom lectures with
podcasts, the proverbial best of both worlds.
See
an index of previous "Tech Talk
Topics" segments.
Music
The
music for today's show was provided by
Magnatune.com,
and is used through their Creative
Commons license for podcasts.
Today's album is "Sky"
by
Ty Burhoe. "It's extraordinary how
seamlessly the intricate sounds of
Indian tabla merge with melodic piano
and soulful rhythms in this elegant
blend of jazz, classical, and world
music."
"Nothing
is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it
himself." ~ A. H. Weiler
Podcast
for April 24, 2009 - Episode 103
Speaking
of the encyclopaedic, a new site, the
PBS
has a new streaming video portal at
Featured
Safari Tech Book Online:
How-to screencasts:
The
music for today's show was provided by
