Thanks to videoconferencing, literary criticism is playing a small part in the rebuilding of Iraq.
At the end of last year, Steve Wilson, a professor of English at Texas State University at San Marcos, got an email from a U.S. official working on provincial reconstruction in Iraq. Through contacts at Iraqi universities, the official had met some professors of English who wanted to find a way to talk to their U.S. counterparts about literature. So he went looking on the Internet for American professors who had experience that might be relevant and found Mr. Wilson, who had taught in a largely Muslim country, Malaysia.
Mr. Wilson and two of his Texas State English-department colleagues, Nelly Rosario and John Blair, were invited to talk with the Iraqi scholars via videoconferencing. The first conversation took place in March. To participate, the Iraqi scholars had to dodge curfews and be…
The university will open its fourth “Art of Science” exhibit online Monday. All the photographs and other images in the collection were made in the course of the institution’s scientific research.
This year’s theme is “energy,” a broad term that can refer to everything from the use of electric propulsion technology to protein design meant to identify new amino-acid sequences. There are 45 pieces in the exhibition chosen from 115 submitted works from 20 different departments on the campus.
“In this we were thinking very broadly, but I do think if you look at these images as a whole, you can see energy in them,” said Adam Finkelstein, an organizer and associate professor of computer science.
Seen any good art in science? Send it to us via Twitter @wiredcampus or post it…
Imagine if you could play Chatroulette without the perverts. And with more women.
That’s the goal of a new student-focused video-chatting service being developed by a company in Massachusetts called CampusLIVE.
The new tool is one of several knockoffs of Chatroulette, an Internet phenomenon that allows users to communicate over their Webcams with random strangers around the world. Chatroulette is a brutally simple platform: one box with your image, one with a stranger’s, and a “next” button you can click if you don’t like the person staring back at you. The male-dominated site is also a magnet for sexual exhibitionists.
CampusLIVE, whose business is producing campus-specific Web portals for students, hopes to filter the Chatroulette experience by rejecting the site’s anonymity and requiring users to register with a “.edu” e-mail address. Instead of limiting chats to random strangers, the…
Wikipedia is advocating for users to add videos to its online encyclopedia, which could give academics a new forum in which to share their multimedia work.
Ben Moskowitz, general director of the Open Video Alliance, said he had talked with a number of universities interested in adding their content to the Web site or participating in data mobbing — using small groups to reach a measured goal such as improving a specific area of Wikipedia. He declined to give names, saying talks are still preliminary.
Mr. Moskowitz said institutions could also see the videos as a beneficial way to teach students…
The University of California at Los Angeles has restored its streaming video service about two months after temporarily suspending the service amid complaints from an educational-media trade group.
The Association for Information and Media Equipment told UCLA in the fall that the university had violated copyright laws by letting instructors use the videos, some of which were full-length productions. UCLA decided that beginning this semester it would suspend the password-protected video-streaming service, available only to students in specific classes.
UCLA announced Wednesday that it will restart streaming of instructional content. The university hopes material will be back up by the spring quarter, which begins March 29. L. Amy Blum, senior campus counsel for UCLA, says the university wants to take steps to ensure that faculty members explicitly say why they are using the copyrighted…
Students at the University of Denver created a parody video essay — in the style of the popular TV show “The Office” — to show their frustrations with technology in the classroom and urge professors and students to work together to make classes more lively.
Many of the scenes in the six-minute video will probably seem familiar to anyone who has sat in on a college class in recent years: a professor funbles with his PowerPoint presentation, a student goofs around on Facebook during the lecture, and another student complains about being required to buy laptops when the devices are rarely used for assignments.
“Now the class is about technology, and you’re really not using any,” says a student assistant to the bumbling professor in the video. “The board doesn’t really count. Maybe you can add more technology to the classroom, like show them actual uses of technology. I know you can…
Thomas McNeal wants students to become “geohistorians.”
In the latest effort to turn cellphones into learning tools, his Geo-Historian project at Kent State University plans to put students to work creating multimedia content about historic sites.
The technology behind this idea is a program that ties the information to a bar code. Then you could leave that bar code on, say, the memorial commemorating the 1970 Kent State shootings. Visitors could get access to the student-produced audio and video clips by scanning the bar code with their cellphone cameras.
“All of the students have it now,” says Mr. McNeal, director of the desktop-videoconferencing project at Kent State’s Research Center for Educational Technology. “Instead of being afraid of it, we’re going to show teachers and parents that they can embrace this.”
Mr. McNeal is particularly interested in working with elementary- and…
Washington and Lee University dancers Anna Rogers (kneeling), Stephanie Brown (standing, left), Jennifer Ritter (standing, center) and Hannah Kate Mitchell pose with Wii remotes, which they used to transfer their motions into sounds during several performances.
Kevin Remington/Washington and Lee University
Performance halls usually frown on patrons whipping out their phones to check Twitter in the middle of an event.
But at a dance concert at Washington and Lee University, using Twitter isn’t just allowed; it’s encouraged.
During a set of performances at the university at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Saturday, the W&L Repertory Dance Company will have a student running a live Twitter feed with context and commentary for dance pieces. One performance will also feature dancers using Wii remote controllers to create the music accompanying the piece. William H. Meadows, a composer from…
More than 100 colleges have set up channels on YouTube, and this week the popular video service unveiled a new section that brings together all of that campus content in one area.
It had been difficult to find college lectures on YouTube, since they are generally far less popular than the site’s humorous and outrageous clips, and so they do not show up in lists of the most viewed videos on the site. Although YouTube has long had an education category, it relies on users who post videos to decide whether to categorize their videos as educational, and as a result the definition of education is very broad. The new YouTube EDU page includes only material submitted by colleges and universities.
Spencer Crooks, a spokesman for YouTube, said in a statement that the site now features complete lectures for some 200 full college courses. “Subjects range from computer science to literature,…
The term “edupunk” started with a blog rant by Jim Groom, an instructional-technology specialist and adjunct professor at the University of Mary Washington, who was annoyed at commercial course-management systems and wanted to encourage professors to take a do-it-yourself approach to using the latest Web tools for their courses. But since we wrote about that rant last year, the term has been widely discussed in educational-technology circles — with some people excited about it, and others arguing that professors should use the tools provided by colleges rather than go off on their own to try to replicate them.
Educause recently released a series of videos called “Edupunk Battle Royale,” pitting Mr. Groom against W. Gardner Campbell, director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor University, who argues that the concept is counterproductive. The debate is moderated by Gerry …
The MIT Press and other critics say proposed legislation to
limit public access to the results of some studies would work
against the open exchange of ideas.
Budget restrictions are an ever-present threat to innovation on college campuses. Learn how top technology companies are working with institutions to advance online learning as programs continue to expand on campuses across the country. This special sponsored section features resources available to help develop a successful online education program at your institution.
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Budget restrictions are an ever-present threat to innovation on college campuses. Learn how top technology companies are working with institutions to advance online learning as programs continue to expand on campuses across the country. This special sponsored section features resources available to help develop a successful online education program at your institution.
