The Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) reports on a new search engine from MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory that makes it possible to look for particular terms or phrases within a recorded lecture.

According to the brief news item, users can search for terms like “white dwarf” in a lecture on astronomy, rather than browsing the recording the old-fashioned way. Want to learn more? Go to the Lecture Browser home page and search for the desired term in one of more than twenty different disciplinary categories. The search engine will return a list of MIT lectures in that field which contain the term, with links to cue up the recording at the point(s) in each lecture where the term is found.

At present, this tool is available only at MIT, but the CHE report indicates it may be made available to other universities at some point in the future.

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Two professors are leading a project to produce and freely distribute 1,000 original open content electronic textbooks that will be freely available from a Web site. The goal is to make textbooks more available to those who are disadvantaged and cannot afford conventional textbooks.

Richard T. Watson, interim head of the department of management information systems at the University of Georgia, and Donald J. McCubbrey, a professor of information technology and electronic commerce at the University of Denver, have started what they call the Global Text Project. Professors and experienced professionals (including graduate students, in some cases) from around the world each write, pro bono, at least one chapter of a book. Each chapter is reviewed by a scholar. Editors then assemble the chapters into complete books. The books are written using wiki software which allows writers to frequently edit and update the material. Scholars and professors have the final word in the content, to avoid the criticism sometimes leveled at wikis, namely that the communal editing process can introduce errors or result in unsubstantiated information. The project leaders also plan to work with traditional publishers and relevant authorities to facilitate dissemination by other means when bandwidth is unavailable or inadequate.

The Global Text Project intends to publish books in Arabic, Chinese, English, and Spanish. The project leaders estimate that they will need 20,000 volunteers to write all the materials they have planned.

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s article about the project is here.

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Technology plays a major role in Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt’s new course titled Travel and Transformation in the Early 17th Century. The course “makes innovative use of all the tools and technical know-how a major university can deliver” including a course Web site with texts, images, artwork, music, geographic, cultural, and historical resources, even a virtual ship tour. According to Greenblatt, his use of new technologies - including GoogleEarth, digital images, and digital video - reflects his latest scholarly thinking, allows for true interdisciplinary approaches and stimulates deep engagement with the material and creativity in his students. Greenblatt is a world-renowned scholar of Renaissance literature and University Professor of the Humanities working on ways to “cross the conventional boundaries of the specialties.” For details of how the course is organized and how technology is used, see the Chronicle of Higher Education’s description.

The library guide for the course reflects the rich array of materials used.

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“Authentic learning”—or learning-by-doing— engages students in the multidisciplinary problem solving and critical thinking researchers and experts use every day. Advances in technology enable access to a greater range of real and virtual environments. Why Today’s Students Value Authentic Learning, a white paper from the Educause Learning Initiative (ELI), explores student attitudes toward authentic learning, highlighting its benefits as well as potential concerns.

Haptic technologies are one way to make learning more realistic for students. Haptics simulate physical properties such as weight, momentum, friction, texture, or resistance through interfaces that let users “feel” what is happening on the screen. For example, medical students may use haptics for a simulation of giving an injection or performing a surgical technique. ELI’s paper on The 7 Things You Should Know About Haptics provides a simple overview of how haptic technology can enable authentic learning.

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See the listing of tools. Many of them are FREE. These tools can be used to capture screens, create screencasts or demonstrations (ie narrated recordings of a system’s screen output) and/or simulations which also include functionality to interact with the simulated system.

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As we know Microsoft rival Google has its own Web-based office application known as Google Apps, users are now invited to pre-register for Office Live Workspace, which allows those with Microsoft Office to access their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents online. The software giant is dubbing the offering an “online companion” to the Office product. More…

But there is a catch: Users will not to able to edit the documents they are viewing through a browser unless they have Office installed on their computer.

“You need Microsoft Office to edit Office documents, but if you do not have it installed you can view Office documents in a browser [both Internet Explorer and Firefox will be supported] and can comment on them,” a Microsoft spokeswoman told eWEEK Sept. 30.

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Arden: The World of William Shakespeare ended a year of development, but the multiplayer online world modeled on the settings and characters in Shakespeare’s plays is incomplete. The MacArthur Foundation provided $240,000 for the project, but as Edward Castronova, the professor at Indiana University who led the virtual environment project notes in his blog, “…this is very hard to do, and especially hard to do in an academic context. ” As for future development, Castronova writes, “The Bard has left the building for now, and his return date is unknown.”

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The Third Annual World Usability Day New England conference will be held on November 8, 2007 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA.

Keynote
- The New Science of Universal Usability
by Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland at College Park

Track 1: Teaching and Learning
- Universal Design in Instruction: Moving Beyond Accessibility into Classroom Application
by Manju Banerjee, University of Connecticut and Loring C. Brinckerhoff, Educational Testing Service
- Making E-learning Usable at The Hadley School for the Blind
by Michael C. Rydel and Andre Lukatsky, Hadley School for the Blind

Track 2: Web Usability
- Universal Usability of Dynamic Content
by Marguerite Bergel and Ann Chadwick-Dias, Fidelity Investments
- Adaptive Design for Web Environments
by Sarah Horton, Dartmouth College and Patrick J. Lynch, Yale University

In addition, there will be a poster and demo session featuring technologies and methodologies that support universal usability, followed by a student panel, where learners share their experiences as beneficiaries of universal usability. The day will conclude with a roundtable discussion on Design, Creativity, Learning, and Usability, led by Steve Fadden from Landmark College.

The conference registration fee is $60, which includes meals and refreshments. You may pay by check or online using Google Checkout.

Register online at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~wud/. Don’t delay as space is limited!

Please contact Sarah Horton at sarah.horton@dartmouth.edu or 603-646-1087 with any questions or concerns.

WUDNE 2007
Third Annual World Usability Day New England
Universal Usability in Teaching and Learning
Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
November 8, 2007
9:00am – 4:00pm
www.dartmouth.edu/~wud

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The The New York Times Knowledge Network has expanded into an online initiative that provides distance education, course content and social networking. Mount Holyoke College, Stanford University and the Society for College and University Planning are some of the institutions working with this initiative. Educators can select Times articles, archival content, graphics and multimedia content, including videos and Webcasts and make them available to students online, along with other course materials. The Times will be providing technology and marketing for non-credit courses taught by college and university professors. Funds from tuition revenue will be split between the colleges and the Times.

Read more in The New York Times press release or in a news article from Inside Higher Ed.

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The KnowledgeWorks Foundation has created the highly interactive Map of Future Forces Affecting Education. The map consists of several conceptual blocks that highlight different potential ‘forces’ including various trends and social dilemmas such as long-tail economics, smart networks, mobile devices, media-saavy youth, participatory governance and more. The map also invites participation from users including links to discussions for each ‘force’ as well as the ability to tag items with new keywords.

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