Tired of YouTube? There are at least 3 sites for finding videos on scientific subjects: SciVee, LabAction, and JoVE.

SciVee offers “pubcasts“, which are videos of scientists speaking about a paper they have just published. This is a painless and time saving way of keeping up with some of the peer-reviewed literature.

SciVee also offers videos on scientific topics, from pushing a styrofoam cup through a box to an animation of exploring the moon, to organic chemistry lab videos, to mapping ear wax genes onto human migration patterns across the globe, and a comedy routine about infectious diseases.

“SciVee is about the free and widespread dissemination and comprehension of science. SciVee is operated in partnership with the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC).”

Watch the inner life of a cell, or learn real time PCR, or see a simulation of childbirth on LabAction.

“… here at LabAction we make efforts to provide the biology community with the latest videos/movies/information on human genetics, science experiments, science projects, biotechnology, current biology news and much more. LabAction is a community driven free resource for the information on biotechnology, cloning, human genetics, genetic disorders, stem cell research and marine biology. “

JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments is an online video-publication for biological research.

“Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is an online research journal employing visualization to increase reproducibility and transparency in biological sciences. “

You can learn about motor neuron disease, using microarrays to analyze gene expression, and biofilms, as well as several techniques for maintaining human stem cells.

These sites may be useful not only for scientists, but also for people interested in current events and public policy to help visualize the human genome, stem cells, or simply see how scientists work. And some of them are entertaining.

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Would you like to have your students work together to build an annotated map? Google Maps has just added a collaboration feature. When you are creating a personalized, annotated map using the “My Maps” feature of Google Maps, there is a new button entitled “collaborate“. This feature allows you to email an invitation to others to allow them to help annotate the map. For example, a group of students could create a map based on a course reading, annotating placemarks with insightful interpretations. Alternatively, students could map geological features, watersheds or species distributions. Students involved in community projects could place their own pictures together on a map.

Next to the collaborate button on Google Maps is another feature for sharing information. If you’ve found or created a wonderful KML/ KMZ file using Google Earth, and want to share it with someone who does not have access, click the “import” button to upload the file from the web or your computer. You can then send Aunt Mary the link to see your vacation trip, or share the link with your students via Blackboard. Your students or Aunt Mary do not need to have or use Google Earth to see your map.

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Amazon.com will be soon releasing their highly anticipated e-book reader device, code-named Kindle.

The CIT tested the Sony Reader earlier this year and the Amazon device has many similar features - a screen that uses E Ink technology that resembles a printed page and the ability to hold up to 200 titles. However, Amazon’s entry into the market will include wireless capability that allows for purchase of titles directly on the device without a computer and can even be used to update purchased titles with new information. It can also search through books for particular words and phrases. Amazon has several partners in the publishing industry, providing what promises to be a wide range of content.

feature article at Newsweek

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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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Audio and even video capture of lectures is becoming more common on college campuses, which post the material to their Web sites so that students can revisit a lecture after the fact.

But Drexel University in Philadelphia, long known as a technology powerhouse, is using the university’s academic capture product in another way. There, instructors are far more likely to produce recordings from their desktops, including individual commentaries to a student from a professor. Staff members also are using rich media recording software, a product from TechSmith called Camtasia Studio, in new ways, such as creating online training videos for new hires.

However, where Camtasia really shines at the university is in what Drexel’s director of academic technology innovation, John Morris, calls “individual capture.” Most Drexel instructors who are taking advantage of Camtasia, he said, are using it at their desktops… ( Here’s an example* of a professor providing written and audio feedback while marking up a student’s paper and recording the process in a Camtasia video.  *Need a RealPlayer to view the video)

The source is from: Linda L Briggs, “Drexel Puts Course Capture To Work on Desktops,” Campus Technology, 10/24/2007, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=52378

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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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Google Earth has recently published new imagery, allowing higher resolution viewing in some areas in over 130 countries. You can read more about it and follow clues to the new images at the Google Lat-Long Blog.

The Google Earth Blog (not affiliated with Google) highlights interesting uses of Google Earth, including a visualization of Burma, and a description of new, free tools to explore census data in Google Earth. From Frank Taylor’s Google Earth Blog:

“A nice new US census visualization tool for Google Earth has been released by Zonums Software. The new tool is called GE Census Explorer and allows you produce colorful 3D bar charts, pie charts, histograms, and scatter-plots. FreeGeographyTools has a good review and lots of screenshots. This new tool requires you to download an application, but a web interface is promised “soon”. Meanwhile, you could also try gCensus which does something similar for Google Earth using a web interface.”

The Center for Instructional Technology is offering workshops for anyone interested in Google Earth, including a brief lunchtime introduction, a hands-on workshop to create your own materials within Google Earth, demonstrations by the Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness and a Google Earth users group. Come and find out what you can do! Register on the CIT website for these events.

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Courses, events and campus life activities at the University of California at Berkeley are now featured on YouTube. Much of the content is similar to U.C. Berkeley’s channel on iTunes U.

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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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