October 06, 2009, 12:00 PM ET
PBS and NPR Add to Trove of Free Online Lectures
PBS and NPR are now posting taped interviews and videos of lectures by academics, adding to the growing number of free lectures online.
Their site, called Forum Network, says it makes thousands of lectures available, including the Harvard professor Michael Sandel's take on calculating happiness in a lecture called "How to Measure Pleasure," and a discussion by a Northeastern University professor, Nicholas Daniloff, about the difficulties of reporting in Russia in a lecture called "Of Spies and Spokesmen: The Challenge of Journalism in Russia."
The Web site also includes material featuring political...
Read MoreOctober 05, 2009, 02:00 PM ET
ProfHacker Blog Highlights Widespread Interest in Teaching With Technology
Professors are past the days when most resisted technology. Now the question for many professors is how to make the most of the latest tools.
Two tech-happy English professors have started a group blog
called ProfHacker, which
provides tips for making the most of Internet tools for teaching
and research. With 10 regular contributors, the blog—the brainchild
of Jason B. Jones, a professor at Central Connecticut State
University, and George H. Williams, an assistant professor at the
University of South Carolina Upstate—is getting 10,000 page views a
week. The Chronicle spoke with Mr. Jones about the new
site.
Q. With so many technology blogs out there already, why did
you feel the need to create another?
A. We don’t think of ProfHacker as just a tech
blog....
September 15, 2009, 10:00 AM ET
University Uses 'Clickers' to Quiz Students in Multiple Locations
Students at far-flung campuses can now participate
simultaneously during lectures with the push of a button.
The University of British Columbia recently completed a trial of a
new satellite polling system by i>clicker, which sells student-response
systems. The new system allowed students on three campuses, all
part of the university's Distributed Undergraduate Medical Program,
to respond to questions in a simulcast lecture . I>clicker hopes
to make the product widely available by January 2010.
Clickers allow teachers to electronically “poll the audience” (as
in TV game shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?).
They first appeared in classrooms about five years ago as a means
to increases student participation in large lecture courses. The
company claims that this is...
August 11, 2009, 10:00 AM ET
Education Dept. Disputes Nonprofit's View of New Internet Harassment Ruling
The nonprofit group Security on Campus issued a news release this week about a U.S. Department of Education ruling that it said held institutions responsible under Title IX for responding to sexual harassment on the Internet. But the department says the ruling does not have those implications.
The ruling came out of the department's Office for Civil Rights in New York, which investigated Hofstra University, after a student complained the institution did not "appropriately address" her complaints about peers who made sexually explicit and sexist comments about her on the now-defunct gossip...
Read MoreAugust 05, 2009, 11:00 AM ET
Author Explores the Juicy Origins of Facebook
The creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, famously started the
popular social network from his dorm room at Harvard University.
Ben Mezrich fills in some juicy details of that story (based on
interviews and court documents but with imagined dialogue) in his
new book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of
Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. Mr.
Mezrich argues that the student created the site out of frustration
over getting rejected from an exclusive "final club" at
Harvard, and that the social-networking site was his attempt to
build a new kind of elite club online -- one that he could control.
As Mr. Mezrich tells it, the student and his friend, Eduardo
Saverin, essentially created the site as a way to pick up
girls.
Mr. Mezrich's previous work includes Bringing Down
the...
July 21, 2009, 11:00 AM ET
U. of Iowa Law Class Uses Wiki as Textbook
The University of Iowa law professor Lea VanderVelde has no problem with her students using Wikipedia. In fact, she hopes others use the information her students have posted in their own research.
Law professors across the country have struggled with how they can use technology in their classes and teaching to their advantage.
Some professors have banned laptops in their classes, saying they can just be a distraction. In California, one group began teaching law courses in virtual reality using Second Life.
When Ms. VanderVelde was preparing to teach a class on employment law last semester, she was trying to think of a new way to teach the complex differences among states’ laws. She decided to divide the states up and give a few to each student to research extensively, and to post their...
Read MoreJune 10, 2009, 02:00 AM ET
Arbitrator Rules That Google E-Mail System Does Not Violate Faculty Agreement at Canadian Campus
An arbitrator says Lakehead University, in Ontario, had the right to switch its campus e-mail service to a free program offered by Google and did not violate the collective agreement with the Lakehead University Faculty Association.
The union objected to the switch because it feared that e-mail messages could be opened by the FBI or CIA under the USA Patriot Act since Google is an American company, subject to that law. The arbitrator acknowledged in his ruling that "the likelihood of such incursions by U.S. authority into a private e-mail system (Lakehead’s own former system) was marginal compared to what might occur in the presence of the Google system." However, he...
Read MoreMay 06, 2009, 11:41 AM ET
Supreme Discomfort Caused by Law Professor's Internet Privacy Project
Joel R. Reidenberg, a Fordham University School of Law professor, has raised the hackles of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court by collecting a lot of the jurist’s personal information via the Internet.
Mr. Reidenberg teaches a course on privacy law. Justice Scalia made comments earlier this year that sounded skeptical about legal privacy protection for all online information. So Mr. Reidenberg asked his class to compile a dossier on Justice Scalia. After some Googling, the Washington Post reported Tuesday, the class came up with with Mr. Scalia’s home address and phone number, the price of his house, some of his favorite foods and movies, his wife’s personal e-mail address, and photos of his grandchildren. (The dossier has not been published, online...
Read MoreApril 30, 2009, 08:35 AM ET
Have Wikis Run Out of Steam?
Just a few years ago, it seemed nearly everyone, in academe and out, was hailing the wiki as the next great transformative technology — or, at the very least, a tool worth getting a bit excited about. Fast forward to 2009, though, and much of the enthusiastic talk has died down.
So says Renay San Miguel in an article for Linux Insider, and he’s got something of a point. Wikipedia aside, there really aren’t many heavily hyped wiki projects, and social-networking tools like Facebook and Twitter seem to have stolen the spotlight. So Mr. San Miguel wants to know: “Have wikis lost their mojo?”
It’s worth noting that plenty of wiki-friendly concepts and innovations...
Read MoreApril 24, 2009, 03:42 PM ET
U. of Michigan's Online Teaching-Evaluation System Fails
Class bombed?
Good news! So did the course-evaluation system.
The University of Michigan is investigating an end-of-semester technology mystery: the failure Monday night of its new system for evaluating professors online.
The tool remained broken as of Friday afternoon, but university spokeswoman Kelly Cunningham was unable to shed any light on what brought it down.
“I can tell you that a large number of people are working on the problem,” Ms. Cunningham said.
Last year, Michigan promoted the new system as a major advance. It would save paper. Allow for more customized surveys. Speed up results.
Late Thursday, though, a university e-mail message apologized for the “immense disappointment” to the community. Just under 40 percent of possible...
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