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In the Comments
You have to learn to let go. The idea that books, magazines, databases or any form of information source can and should be kept for perpetuity is laughable. Items in a library need to be weeded and space is the major reason why. I know all of you want to keep your precious books, and I do to. But who’s going to pay for it, you?... — the other me
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June 29, 2009
Brigham Young U. Lifts Ban on YouTube
YouTube will make its debut in classes at Brigham Young University this fall, after administrators decided to lift a nearly three-year ban on the video-sharing Web site.
As of last Friday, students and faculty and staff members could access YouTube from anywhere on the campus, said a university spokeswoman, Carri Jenkins. Previously, students could choose to view YouTube off the campus, but the site was restricted from all campus computers, including those connected to the Internet in campus housing.
“We looked at the increasing opportunities for educational material and information on YouTube, particularly to be used in the classroom by students and faculty,” Ms. Jenkins said.
The university first restricted access to YouTube in 2006, after administrators said certain content could be found offensive and was inconsistent with the university’s mission statement and honor code, which requires faculty and students to avoid online content that is not “virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy.”
The university reconsidered the ban earlier this month, following complaints from professors and shortly after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released an official YouTube channel, Mormon Messages.
To help students filter the content they can now access on YouTube, the university now provides BeSafe@BYU, which lists its Internet policies and offers tips for dealing with violent, pornographic, and profane material. —Erica R. Hendry
Posted on Monday June 29, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [10]June 9, 2009
Brigham Young U. Reconsiders Its Ban on YouTube
Students and faculty members at Brigham Young University could view YouTube on the campus for the first time this fall if a re-evaluation of its policy results in a decision to lift the ban on the video-sharing Web site.
The university first restricted access to YouTube, along with several other Web sites, in 2006, after administrators said some content could be found offensive and was inconsistent with the university’s mission statement.
Since then, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has released an official YouTube channel, Mormon Messages. Videos posted on the channel have since been viewed more than 2.9 million times.
“The amount of educational material on YouTube is increasing,” said university spokeswoman Carri Jenkins. “What we’re looking at is the opportunities that are there for material that might be useful on campus and in the classroom.”
Ms. Jenkins said students are free to view any kind of online content off campus, but the current ban restricts YouTube from all campus computers, including those connected to the Internet in campus housing. The university does allow certain video-sharing sites on campus, like Google Videos, that it says uses a more thorough filtering system to catch offensive content.
The restriction is being reviewed by university administrators, with input from faculty members and students, Ms. Jenkins said. The university expects to make a decision by the beginning of the fall semester.—Erica R. Hendry
Posted on Tuesday June 9, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [20]March 27, 2009
YouTube Creates New Section to Highlight College Content
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, biology to philosophy, history, political science, psychology, law, and much more,” he said. “You can search within YouTube EDU to find videos on topics of interest.”
The new section makes it possible to find out which college-produced video is most popular. The winner so far is an interview with a University of Minnesota professor discussing the science behind the new movie Watchmen. That video has been viewed about 1.5 million times. The most popular lecture video on YouTube is from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, on the subject of “Advanced Finite Elements Analysis” (which has been viewed about 19,000 times). —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Friday March 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [6]March 3, 2009
Technologist Who Coined 'Edupunk' Defends the Term in a Video Debate
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 Bayne, a multimedia producer for Educause, the educational-technology association.
“The fact is it hit a nerve,” says Mr. Groom early in the first installment of the video series, adding that he was surprised by how much discussion the term sparked. “There was obviously a very deep-rooted reaction to a term.”
Mr. Campbell fired back that it is “the wrong metaphor,” noting that punk music was as much about theatrics as substance.
Three sections of the interview have been posted so far, with more apparently to come. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Tuesday March 3, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [7]February 23, 2009
You Can Now Use Location-Tracking Tools to Track Down Your TA's — Should You?
Norman M. Sadeh, a computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, knows exactly where his research assistants are. He can just pop open his laptop and see their locations on a Google map, represented as push-pin-like icons scattered around the campus. And his colleagues can track him, too — well, at least during weekdays when he’s in town.
Mr. Sadeh’s research focuses on whether location-tracking services can be run in a way that doesn’t creep people out. College campuses are, in many ways, ideal settings for the technology. Students and professors are highly mobile, and they often want to find partners for study groups, meetings, or trips to the bar. I recently visited Mr. Sadeh’s lab to see a demonstration of a system his team developed, and to get a sense of how college life might change if these tools catch on.
Read the latest installment of College 2.0 for my take. Or watch me use the system to make a surprise visit to one of Mr. Sadeh’s research assistants in the latest installment of Wired Campus TV. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Monday February 23, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [10]February 18, 2009
Vice President Who Helped Steal a Student's Bicycle Resigns After Video Hits YouTube
Just days after someone posted security-camera footage to YouTube that showed an associate vice president at the University of South Florida helping someone steal a bicycle, the administrator, Abdul S. Rao, is resigning.
Stephen K. Klasko, dean of the university’s medical school, announced at a faculty meeting last night that Dr. Rao would step down effective this Friday. Dr. Rao, senior associate vice president for research in the university’s health division, admitted that he had helped a day laborer take a bicycle parked at a loading dock behind the university’s Byrd Institute.
He said in a statement that a “lapse of judgment” led him to give permission to a “nearly homeless man” to use the bike, which a student later reported stolen. “I have no excuse,” Dr. Rao said in the statement. “I can only say that my intention was never to bring harm, alarm, or disruption to anyone.”
The student whose bike was stolen asked the police for the security-camera footage, which the student then placed on a server that others could see, according to press accounts. Someone then posted the footage to YouTube, where it received thousands of views before it was removed because of an unspecified violation of the video-sharing site’s terms of service. Michael J. Hoad, a vice president for communications at the university, said in an interview that the leaking of the video was “a minor secondary issue” that the university had no plans to investigate.
Dr. Rao did not return calls and e-mail requests for comment from The Chronicle this week. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Wednesday February 18, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [34]February 16, 2009
Video of University Administrator Taking Bicycle Posted to YouTube
An administrator at the University of South Florida has been placed on leave after he admitted to stealing a student’s bicycle from behind a campus building, according to a report in The Tampa Tribune. In an Internet-era twist, the incident was caught on surveillance camera and posted to YouTube.
The YouTube video shows a woman parking her bike at a loading dock. The video then shows footage several hours later, as a van pulls into the loading dock and two men inspect the bikes and take one. One of the men was apparently Abdul S. Rao, senior associate vice president for research in the university’s health division. He is also a professor of surgery and molecular medicine.
According to The Tribune, Dr. Rao said he was trying to help a day laborer find transportation, and loaned the man a bike from the back of the building. The bike was reportedly returned to the student and no criminal charges were filed.
Stephen Klasko, dean of the medical school, wrote a letter to staff members saying: “I’m very sorry to hear of the bicycle incident this week at the Byrd Institute loading dock, and I apologize to everyone involved. I will write again when the USF review is completed. Until then Dr. Abdul Rao will be on annual leave.” —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Monday February 16, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [32]February 13, 2009
New From YouTube: Free Downloads of College Lectures
YouTube began testing a new feature that lets users download videos posted to the site from partner institutions — including colleges — rather than just watching the videos in a streaming format. That means people can grab lectures from Duke and Stanford Universities and several institutions in the University of California system to watch any time, with or without an Internet connection.
YouTube partners have the option of charging users for such downloads, but all the universities have offered to make their lecture videos free instead, using Creative Commons licenses that restrict usage to non-commercial purposes and prohibit derivative work.
Some universities already allow users to download lectures through campus Web sites or through Apple’s iTunesU using Creative Commons licenses. But Obadiah Greenberg, a strategic-partner manager at YouTube, said in an interview this week that the site’s new feature would allow an even larger audience to take advantage of such content.
Scott Stocker, director of Web communications for Stanford, said the university had made audio and video content available for download through Apple’s iTunesU since 2007. But Mr. Stocker said that iTunesU and YouTube attract different audiences: Users of iTunesU generally search out content to download to their devices, while YouTube users stumble upon content through videos embedded on blogs or links shared among friends.
Mr. Stocker said Stanford had no plans to charge money for its video downloads, since the university sees giving away lectures as part of its educational mission.
Other YouTube partners participating in the test include a weekly Web show hosted by Dan Brown of Lincoln, Neb., and Khan Academy, a non-profit organization that offers video lectures on subjects like physics and finance for 99 cents per download. —David Shieh
Posted on Friday February 13, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [4]February 6, 2009
Politicians, Students Videoconference About Climate-Change Solutions
With several men in ties staring at laptops and talking over one another into headsets around a table laden with Ethernet cables on Wednesday, the cramped room looked like a call center. In fact, it was a conference room in the U.S. Capitol building, and the men on the headsets were members of Congress.
They were at the National Teach-In on Global Warming Solutions, a nationwide event involving more than 750 colleges and schools. Twelve representatives and one senator cycled through Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s fourth-floor suite to participate in live Web conferences with colleges and high-school students from their home districts. The subject of the day was climate change.
“The idea that basically four people in Portland can organize something that involves 750 schools … and create video dialogues with the Capitol and Congress,” said Eban S. Goodstein, an economics professor at Lewis and Clark University, in Oregon, who founded the event, “that’s obviously a function of the networked nature of technology that we have.”
The representatives used Webcams and the videoconferencing client SightSpeed to communicate with up to five classrooms at a time. Students asked questions on a broad range of climate-related topics, including mass transit, carbon sequestration, cap-and-trade, near-zero emissions power plants, and legislation being considered by Congress. It was a rare opportunity for the students and their representatives to chat face-to-face.
“It actually lets them know that I’m a living human being, and not just this guy on a yard sign or someone that they see in a 30-second campaign commercial,” said Rep. Phil Hare, Democrat of Illinois, who spoke to students at Knox College.
Rep. Bob Inglis, Republican of South Carolina, used the visual medium to his advantage by bringing a prop: a decalcified egg floating in a jar of vinegar. “As carbon sinks into the ocean, it increases the acidity of the ocean, and that acidification causes the shells of calcium-based organisms to dissolve,” Mr. Inglis explained to students at Wofford College, Furman University, Lander University, Clemson University, and the University of South Carolina Upstate. “You don’t want to open up a hole at the bottom of the food chain.”
“In the age of technology, bringing government to your doorstep in such a convenient style is very important,” said Rep. Paul Tonko, Democrat of New York, who spoke to students at the State University of New York at Albany, as well as several area high schools. “And for them to know where we’re at with our thinking on global warming and climate change is important, and for them to ask significant questions, as they did, puts you on notice that they’re watching and that they want to be consulted.”
Bruce Carlson, vice president for engineering at SightSpeed, was there to help oversee the technical logistics of patching students through to the Capitol, which he said was a delicate process involving poking “lots of tiny holes in the Congressional firewalls.” —Steve Kolowich
Posted on Friday February 6, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [11]February 3, 2009
TED Conferences Announces Fellowship Program
The annual TED Conference — the name stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design,” and the event is cross-disciplinary — draws big-name speakers and is one of the most expensive tickets on the technology circuit, costing about $6,000 for standard admission. But this week the nonprofit organization announced a fellowship program to identify and bring in new innovators to their events. The group chose 50 winners for the first year’s program, hailing from around the world and representing a variety of academic perspectives.
Tom Rielly, community director for TED, said in an interview that anyone could apply for the fellowships, provided that they are between 21 and 40 years old and have a “world-changing” idea. But he added that for now the group was “targeting the developing world” in picking winners.
The goal of the program, said Mr. Rielly, is to give exposure to the fellows’ research. So in addition to coming to TED events, the winners will be given training in public speaking and in getting support for their work. “We can help them dramatically amplify their message, whatever it is,” said Mr. Rielly.
TED has gained visibility in recent years by giving away recordings of most of its talks — they are among the most popular technology lecture videos online — though usually the group waits until months after the talks were delivered to release the videos. Mr. Rielly said that the group’s 300 publicly-released lectures have collectively drawn more than 100 million views online over the years. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Tuesday February 3, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [7]