FreeRice.com Billions of grains of rice donated to UN anti-hunger agency thanks to Internet game What if just knowing what a word meant could help feed hungry people around the world? Well, at FreeRice it does . . . the totals have grown exponentially. - The Washington Post An Internet game in which a website donates 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Programme for every vocabulary question answered correctly by participants passed the 1 billion grain threshold after just its first month of operations. The amount donated by FreeRice.com, founded by the United States fundraising pioneer John Breen, reached 1,008,771,910 grains, 32 days after the site was launched. That is enough to feed more than 50,000 people for one day. To date, the program has donated more than 14 billion grains. World Food Programme Executive Director Josette Sheeran hailed the FreeRice game as an example of how the Internet can mobilize millions of people worldwide to end want. "Every grain of rice is essential in the fight against hunger," she said, noting that hunger claims more lives than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Read more about this program at the WFP website. The Future of Reading Amazon's founder believes he can improve upon one of humankind's most divine creations: the book "Technology," computer pioneer Alan Kay once said, "is anything that was invented after you were born." So it's not surprising, when making mental lists of the most whiz-bangy technological creations in our lives, that we may overlook an object that is superbly designed, wickedly functional, infinitely useful and beloved more passionately than any gadget in a Best Buy: the book. It is a more reliable storage device than a hard disk drive, and it sports a killer user interface. (No instruction manual or "For Dummies" guide needed.) And, it is instant-on and requires no batteries. Many people think it is so perfect an invention that it can't be improved upon, and react with indignation at any implication to the contrary. "The book," says Jeff Bezos, 43, the CEO of Internet commerce giant Amazon.com, "just turns out to be an incredible device." Books have been very good to Jeff Bezos. When he sought to make his mark in the nascent days of the Web, he chose to open an online store for books, a decision that led to billionaire status for him, dotcom glory for his company and countless hours wasted by authors checking their Amazon sales ratings. But as much as Bezos loves books professionally and personally˘he's a big reader, and his wife is a novelist˘he also understands that the surge of technology will engulf all media. "Books," he has said, "are the last bastion of analog. On November 19, 2007, Bezos announced the launch of an e-book device called Kindle. Sometimes called the "iPod of reading," it weighs 10.3 ounces, costs $399 and can be used without a computer, offering instead a free, high-speed wireless data network from Sprint. Users can download books in less than 60 seconds, as well as newspapers, magazines and blogs for $9.99 or less. The device uses an eye-friendly screen and lets readers increase the type size as needed. Read more of the Newsweek article... Educational podcasting Instructional content available for free on the internet These days, educational podcasting is a big deal. Many colleges and universities are podcasting - Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Duke University Yale, Bowdoin - as are many other organizations worldwide like NPR, BBC, The Museum of Modern Art, Deutsche Welle, NASA, and The New York Times. In May, 2007, Apple Computer announced the launch of iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store featuring free content such as course lectures, language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours. Apple also provides free online information to help educators learn more about podcasting. Podcasting is an automated technology that allows individuals to subscribe and listen to digitally recorded files.  These files can also include multimedia content to enhance the audio message.  Once you "subscribe" to a podcast, the files are automatically downloaded to your computer's media player, e.g. iTunes, and you can either listen to them on your computer or transfer them to any MP3 player. Instructional uses for podcasting are varied and can include course content dissemination, classroom recording, field recording, study support and review, and file storage and transfer. Music instructors can use podcasting to have students listen to, memorize and critique performances.  Modern language instructors can share native music, plays, and literature, and have their students create projects to share with their fellow students.  History and english literature instructors have used podcasting to share time-period music, historical speeches, interviews with experts and even audio books. With enhanced podcasts (pictures and slides over narration) and vodcasts (video podcasts), one has the ability to incorporate slides, pictures and videos. Podcasting offers an effective way to augment class instruction. In the Fall 2007 semester, Professor Jay Anderson offered enhanced podcasts of some of his lectures for his Foundations course, Forbidden Knowledge. Of 23 students (88%) responding to an end-of-course survey, 17, or 74%, had used one or more of the podcasts. Most used a podcast because they missed a class; some to review the material. One student reported using the podcasts "a couple of times, maybe once a week, to hear something again." It's not too late to subscribe in iTunes to Anderson's Forbidden Knowledge podcasts from the Fall semester. And he will be podcasting again during the Spring semester in CPS 210, "Intermediate Computer Programming," so tune in! If you are interested in learning more about podcasting and what it can do for you in the classroom, contact IET. Google Preso Updated features in the online giant's answer to PowerPoint Enhanced tools from Google for creating, collaborating, and sharing presentations online. Perfect for collaborative student reports as well as conference presentations! If you'd like to learn more about putting your presentations online, contact IET and we'll set up a time to get you started! Around the Web A snapshot of what's going on around the World Wide Web Searching Video Lectures: A Tool from MIT Finds Keywords So That Students Can Efficiently Review Lectures Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released the MIT Lecture Browser, a web interface to video recordings of lectures and seminars that have been indexed using automatic speech recognition technology. Users can search on terms or phrases and then play the video at the point(s) in the recording where their search term appears. Technology Review YouTube for Intellectuals Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, talks about the importance of racial, socioeconomic, and religious diversity at colleges in a video on bigthink, a new Web site that is meant to be a YouTube for intellectuals. In addition to featuring academics, the site includes one- to two-minute videos from politicians, artists, and business people. The site was started by Peter Hopkins, a 2004 graduate of Harvard University. He said he hopes bigthink becomes popular among college students. David Frankel, a venture capitalist, put up most of the money for the enterprise. Lawrence H. Summers, a former president of Harvard, has invested tens of thousands of dollars as well. The New York Times Virtual Slide Rule Before electronic hand held calculators, the slide rule was widely used in Engineering, Science and Commerce for rapidly performing calculations involving multiplication and division which have to be accurate to not more than three or four decimal places. It can also be used for such operations as involution (raising to a power) and evolution (extraction of a root) and for calculations with trigonometric functions (sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent). In addition to those for general use there where many different types of special purpose slide rules. What they all have in common is logarithmic scales. See how calculations used to be done before the days of electronic calculators! EngCom.net Searching Library Collections in Facebook A new application lets Facebook users start their library research in the popular social-networking system. The plug-in provides an interface in Facebook for searching the popular Worldcat database, operated by the nonprofit OCLC. The group's Web site says the index includes more than a billion items in more than 10,000 libraries. The Chronicle of Higher Education - Wired Campus Elizabeth II launches YouTube channel Elizabeth II, the Queen of England, has launched her own channel on the video-sharing website YouTube. The Royal Channel will feature her Christmas Day message, and has recent and historical footage of the monarch and other members of the Royal Family. The launch marks the 50th anniversary of the Queen's first televised festive address in 1957. The Queen's 2007 Christmas Day speech was made available as a podcast for the first time this past year. BBC News Taking iTunes U Beyond Campus iTunes U, the education portal within Apple's iTunes, has expanded its content to include educational materials from sources beyond colleges and universities. Called "Beyond Campus," the area provides programming from Smithsonian Global Sound, KQED, Little Kids Rock, the Museum of Modern Art, and, most recently, American Public Media, which is making its radio programming available free for educational purposes. Campus Technology

FreeRice.com The Future of Reading Educational Podcasting Google Preso Around the Web How are today's teenagers using interactive online media? The use of social media is gaining a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media. Digital content creation by teenagers continues to grow, with 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation, up from 57% of online teens in 2004. Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. More... What kind of information technology user are you? Take the Internet Typology Test now... Source: Pew internet & American Life Project [12/19/2007] Importing a Blackboard Course Package This powerful feature in Blackboard allows instructors to move course material from one course to another. Instructors have an option to move an entire course or just selected parts. IET QuickStarts are designed to provide short, concise instructions for using hardware, software, and facilities managed by IET. Featured Podcast: Book Lovers iTunes Spotlight Producer: Various These days, even the venerable world of books is going digital. Find your next perfect read with the help of featured editors, critics, and assorted book lovers. Or go straight to the source and listen to works as they're read aloud. Learn about your favorite writer with iTunes: Meet the Author. 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? Amazon Kindle Amazon Kindle is an electronic book (e-book) device launched in the United States by Amazon.com in November 2007. It uses an electronic paper display, reads the proprietary Kindle (AZW) format, and downloads content over Amazon Whispernet, which uses the Sprint EVDO network. This means that the Kindle can be used without the need for a computer. Whispernet is accessible through Kindle without any fee. On the release day, the Kindle Store had more than 88,000 digital titles available for download. Amazon's first offering of the Kindle sold out in five and a half hours. It retails for $399 from Amazon.com. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that is being written collaboratively by people from around the world in several languages. January Technology Workshops January 18 · Introduction to the eLL · Sharing Course Materials Online · Introduction to Clickers · Introduction to Podcasting · Using an Interactive Whiteboard Third Thursday Brown Bags February 21, March 13, April 17 Informal lunchtime conversations about using technology to support teaching and learning Technology Demonstrations March 7 Informal technology demonstrations centered around broad instructional technology topics TLT Discussion April 8 Lunchtime discussions about the ways in which faculty are using technology to enhance teaching and learning.- lunch provided More information about upcoming IET Events is available online. Seven Things You Should Know About Skype Skype is a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) application that lets users make free phone calls between Skype-equipped computers and inexpensive calls between Skype computers and landline or cell phones. Skype functions on a P2P model rather than as a centralized application, and it offers features such as voicemail, call forwarding, conference calling, and video chat. In most circumstances, Skype provides access to voice and video communication for a fraction of what other options cost. It allows more frequent contact between colleagues, collaborators, and friends and permits connections with those not likely to be in touch through conventional phone systems. Professor Jay Anderson, Mathematics and Computer Science, and students in his Foundations course, Forbidden Knowledge, participating in a transatlantic videoconference with a guest speaker from Germany.  Professor Anderson also provided his students with podcasts of this course. IET eNews February, 2008 Volume 3, Issue 4 Tips, techniques, and tools for using technology to enhance teaching, learning, and research IET eNews is published by the Office of Instructional and Emerging Technologies. http://ats.fandm.edu/enews/