February 14, 2012, 3:45 pm
By Karen Birchard
Your text messages may be worth more than you think. They could help advance the understanding of just how language changes—or at least that’s the theory behind Text4Science, a global project to gather 100,000 donated texts. Linguistic researchers from three Canadian institutions—the universities of Montreal and Ottawa, and Simon Fraser University—are collaborating to build a database that will depend on the public sending old texts to the project’s Web site.
The Canadian researchers hope to dispel the theory that texters “r” lazy and fully expect to find that texters are instead creative, literate people who have found imaginative ways to use the medium. They dismiss the idea that people sending text messages are illiterate.
“When they talk to their friends, they speak differently than if they were to speak to [Canadian Prime Minister] Stephen Harper or the queen or to a…
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June 21, 2011, 2:45 pm
By Karen Birchard
Case studies published by the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business are now available 24/7 through Apple’s iBookstore, according to the school’s announcement, which says that Ivey is the first major case publisher to distribute through iTunes. More than 500 cases are available now, with more coming. Each download will cost $3.99 in Canadian currency (about $4.08 U.S.). The Ivey school is the second-largest publisher of case studies after Harvard, according to the Financial Post. The school has a second campus in Hong Kong, which has helped make it the largest publisher or distributor of Asian business cases. Ivey officials say the choice of the iBookstore and iTunes means a chance to reach a wider audience that may find case studies useful.
February 7, 2011, 5:12 pm
By Karen Birchard
A new job-hunting Web site for students almost cost McGill University’s student-government president his own job. At the end of last week, the student group, called the Students’ Society Council, voted to publicly censure its president, Zach Newburgh, for failing to reveal that he had worked for and received compensation from Jobbook, an Internet service designed to match students from elite universities with employers.
According to The McGill Tribune, a student newspaper, Mr. Newburgh had received an unspecified stake in Jobbook, and also made recruiting visits with the Web site founder to various student leaders at the California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In addition, he made a deal giving the McGill student government one share in the company for every McGill student who…
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October 15, 2010, 3:36 pm
By Karen Birchard
An Alberta court has ruled that students who criticize their professors online are protected from university sanctions by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedom according to a report in the Calgary Herald. The precedent-setting ruling by Justice Jo’Anne Strekaf says that when universities try to suppress the free speech of students, the students’ right to speak is protected. The University of Calgary put Keith and Steven Pridgen, who are identical twins, on nonacademic probation for criticizing a professor on Facebook three years ago. Justice Strekaf wrote: “As an educational institution, the university should expect and encourage frank and critical discussion regarding the teaching ability of professors amongst students. …” The university, citing a precedent in mandatory-retirement cases, argued that the charter did not apply to universities. This ruling, as noted in a…
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June 3, 2010, 4:00 pm
By Karen Birchard
Some professors and students in Canada are grumbling about a new copyright-reform bill that was introduced there Wednesday, saying that it would lead to new restrictions on the use of media in classrooms, distance learning, and libraries.
The proposed law is designed to make it easier to go after commercial pirates while allowing individuals to copy legally obtained content from one device to another and to make backup copies. But critics say the bill’s protection of so-called digital locks—encryption that publishers place on music, movie, or software files to keep them from being illegally copied—could make it impossible for users to do things that are technically legal, like making copies for educational use.
“The government has struck some pretty good compromises over all, but the one place where they didn’t compromise at all was with digital locks, and that’s incredibly…
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February 3, 2010, 11:00 am
By Karen Birchard
Students have long turned to Wikipedia for answers — often to the frustration of professors, who complain that the user-written encylopedia is not always accurate. But students at McGill University have taken their love of the free resource guide to a new level by starting a Wikipedia club on the campus.
The university’s student government granted interim status to Students Supporting Wikipedia last month, making it a bona fide student organization. It might be the first officially sanctioned Wikipedia club on a college campus.
“I wasn’t surprised when the group applied, because Wikipedia is so often used by students now that it wouldn’t be long before students somewhere rallied round to show support,” said Sarah Olle, the Students’ Society vice president responsible for clubs.
The main purpose of Students Supporting Wikipedia is to raise money and contribute information to the online…
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January 6, 2010, 1:41 pm
By Karen Birchard
Memorial University, in Canada, has created a research Web site inspired by online dating services — only this one matches researchers to interested members of the public, politicians, students, journalists, and other interested scholars.
The service, called Yaffle, was designed to connect researchers at or near the university and to allow members of the public or businesses to suggest projects. All the research is described in lay terms. “Google Scholar doesn’t have the matchmaking ability that Yaffle does,” said David Yetman, Memorial’s manager of knowledge mobilization, who put the project online last year. He called it a cross between a dating site and a search engine.
Yaffle has drawn attention from far outside campus boundaries. The site has attracted users from Australia, Asia, and Africa.
A primary benefit is to improve the university’s ability to communicate the breadth and…
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