A New Face in ATS
Introducing Matt Russell
Matt Russell has joined the ATS staff as Coordinator of Instructional
Technology. In this position, Matt  supports
the effective use of current and new technologies for instructional
purposes at the College. In addition to collaborating and consulting
with faculty and students, Matt is responsible for
the daily operational support of media
production spaces in
ATS.
Matt has
BA in Technology in Education and Society from Juniata
College.
You can contact
Matt at 4672 and matt.russell@fandm.edu or
in his office in Stager
025.
Faculty Showcase
Kimberly Armstrong
Kim Armstrong, Associate Professor of Spanish and Linguistics at Franklin
& Marshall, has  been
using technology in the classroom for some time and feels that it does
enhance her teaching and provides her students with a different medium
in which to express themselves.
Most recently, Professor Armstrong implemented the use of podcasts.
Such projects "help students use and practice the language outside
of class." More...
Is there a place for Wiki
in the Academy?
The biggest multilingual free-content
encyclopedia on the Internet has often come under
attack by academics
 Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia
compiled by a distributed network of volunteers, has often come under
attack by academics as being shoddy and full of inaccuracies. Even
Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, says he wants to get the message
out to college students that they shouldn't use it for class projects
or serious research. The online encyclopedia even has an article that
offers criticism of itself.
Yet Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content
encyclopedia on the Internet, with over two million articles and still
growing. It is also one of the most popular sites on the web, and is
often the first place people will look up information.
Is Wikipedia
accurate? There was much reporting in the press surrounding the question
of accuracy in open-access publications. NPR, the BBC, the
New York Times - to name a few - all published articles pointing to
a survey by
the science journal Nature that found science entries in the volunteer-driven,
online encyclopedia Wikipedia "not markedly less accurate" than those
found in Encyclopaedia Britannica.
In the digital world of the internet,
blogs, wikis, open access academic publications, and other new information
resources are providing novel approaches
to how information is created and disseminated. There are, however,
complicated questions and strong opinions surrounding some of these
issues generally.
Is there a place for Wikipedia and/or other similar open
access resources in academia? Join this discussion...
Create, edit and share spreadsheets
online
Web-based alternatives to traditional
spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel
 Microsoft
has been the dominant player in the productivity software market
since defining it in the 1980s. For over two decades, Microsoft
Excel has been one of the killer weapons in the companies software
arsenal. First introduced for the Mac in 1985 followed by a Windows
version in 1987, Excel became the de facto application for number
crunching.
But over the years things happened. Institutions changed the
way they worked. The Internet, intranets, and email transformed
workflows.
Globalization and outsourcing dispersed people to satellite offices
and partner companies. Collaboration tools became critical. Excel
wasn’t made for this. Spreadsheets had to be mailed back
and forth, and group editing was impossible.
Today, a new generation of web-based spreadsheet software is
revolutionizing the way people work, both individually and collaboratively.
Online
spreadsheets like iRows, Num
Sum, Zoho Sheet,
and Google
Spreadsheets provide basic spreadsheet functionalities
coupled with web-based features like sharing, tagging, publishing,
and more. These novel web-based
solutions allow you to access your spreadsheets online from anywhere,
share and collaborate with others, and display your spreadsheet
on any website. More...
Around the Web
A snapshot of what's going on around
the World Wide Web
Will Wikipedia Mean the End Of Traditional Encyclopedias?
Can Wikipedia's everyone's-an-editor approach produce a reliable resource
tool without scholarly oversight? Are traditional encyclopedias like
Britannica limited by lack of input? The Wall Street Journal Online
invited Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to discuss the topic with Dale
Hoiberg, editor-in-chief of Britannica.
The Wall Street Journal
Yale to Make Select Courses Available on the Internet
Yale University is producing digital videos of selected undergraduate
courses that it will make available for free on the Internet through
a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Yale University
The
hard disk drive turns 50
On September 13, 1956, IBM launched the RAMAC (Random Access Memory
for Accounting and Control) 305 and RAMAC 350, two models of a disk
drive system that could store a whopping 5MB of data. It cost about
$50,000 a year to lease in 1956 dollars -- equivalent to nearly $350,000
today -- and had 5 megabytes of information, about enough space to
store one song on an iPod. On its 50th anniversary, the hard drive
is taking an ever-more-central role in the digital lifestyle, storing
movies, photos, e-mail and the
other sundry details of modern existence.
The Mercury News
In
Defense of Google's Book-Scanning Project
" The nation’s colleges and universities should support Google’s
controversial project to digitize great libraries and offer books online," writes
Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, in an opinion
article for The Washington Post. "It has the potential to do a lot of good
for higher education in this country." Google’s endeavor has drawn
criticism from publishers, who have argued that the book-scanning project
amounts to a violation of copyright law.
The Washington Post
U. of
California Will Provide Up to 3,000 Books a Day to Google for Scanning
The University
of California may provide as many as 3,000
books a day to Google for scanning, according
to its contract
with the company, a copy of which was obtained by The
Chronicle. The contract offers clues to the scale of Google's
ambition and details restrictions on how the university can
use its copies of the scanned material.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Patent
review goes Wiki
The problem: an epidemic of shoddy patents.
The solution: Wikipedia?
That's the basic concept behind a pilot program sponsored by IBM and other
companies, which the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office appears poised to green-light.
The project would apply an advisory version of the wiki approach to the patent-approval
process.
Fortune Magazine
U. of
Michigan Adds Books Digitized by Google to Online Catalog, but Limits
Use of Some
As it works with Google to scan nearly all the books on its shelves, the University
of Michigan at Ann Arbor has decided not to make full-text versions of copyrighted
books available online, even to on-campus users.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Wired
for safety, late-night snacks
This fall college students across the country will use their cellphones
to send each other text messages and to keep in touch with their parents.
But at some institutions, the phones will do a whole lot more. About
15 colleges have signed up to use Rave
Wireless — a service
that aims to turn every student’s cellphone into a social and
academic jack-of-all-trades. Students can use the service to view their
grades, check the availability of study rooms, and see transportation
and event schedules
USA Today
YouTube in 'landmark' music deal
Video-sharing site YouTube has signed a deal with media giant Warner
Music to allow its material to be used legally. It means interviews and
videos by Warner's artists can be used in return for a slice of advertising
revenue.The agreement also covers the use of material in homemade videos,
which form a large part of YouTube's content.
BBC News
|
|
|
 |
| |
How big is Wikipedia?
On March 1, 2006, Wikipedia, the online interactive encyclopedia,
hit the million-article mark. The Encyclopædia
Britannica, which for more than two centuries has been
considered the gold standard for reference works, has
only a hundred and twenty thousand entries in its most
comprehensive edition.
The number of visitors has been
doubling every four months; the site receives as many
as fourteen thousand hits per second. The site has achieved
this prominence largely without paid staff or revenue.
It has five employees in addition to Jimmy
Wales, Wikipedia’s
thirty-nine-year-old founder, and it carries no advertising.
Yes, there is even an article on Franklin & Marshall!
Source: The
New Yorker
|
  |
|
Featured Podcast:
Biology without a book
How
do you learn biology?
Producer: U-M News Service
MP3 (4:48) 
Daniel
Klionsky
Department
of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology
The University of Michigan
Podcasting, a portmanteau of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcasting",
is a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users
to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically
by subscription, usually at no cost. It first became popular
in late 2004, used largely for audio files.
Do you have a favorite podcast you'd like to share?
|
 |
|
ATS
QuickStarts are designed to provide short, concise instructions
for using hardware, software, and facilities managed by ATS.
|
|
 |
|
Bcc: Blind Carbon Copy
BCC, which stands for blind carbon copy, provides the means
to send the same message to multiple recipients WITHOUT revealing
any one individuals e-mail particulars (addresses) to any of the
others. Unlike addresses in the To: field or the CC: (carbon copy)
field, addresses in the BCC: field cannot be seen by other users.
Although in many situations it may be appropriate to list email
recipients in the To: or CC: fields, sometimes using the BCC:
field may be the most desirable option. For example, using Bcc:
for large e-mail lists simplifies the message header by concealing
the large list of recipients. More...
|
|
|
Professor Eiman Zein-Elabdin, Economics, confers with students
in one of the College’s Technology Enhanced Classrooms.
Professor Zein-Elabdin frequently integrates a variety of instructional
media in her courses.
|
 |
Click to
view larger image and description...
|
|
 ATS
eNews
October, 2006
Volume 2, Issue 2
Tips, techniques, and tools for using technology
to enhance teaching and research
ATS eNews is published by Academic Technology
Services. http://ats.fandm.edu/enews/
|
|
|
