Web Resources

• Powerset has launched a new "natural language" search engine that not only indexes words but applies semantic information and contextual data to produce richer, more informative results. The new system has been initially deployed to search Wikipedia. An article describing the new tool and showing examples has been published on the on the searchengineland web site, and you can test drive the system itself at www.powerset.com. [May 13, 2008]

• The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies has compiled its annual list of the top 100 Tools for Learning. The rankings are based on the recommendations of 155 learning professionals from around the world. The top five for 2008 are del.icio.us (social bookmarking tool), Firefox (browser), Google Reader (RSS/Feed reader), Skype (instant messaging and VoIP tool), and Google Search (search engine). The remaining 95 applications are listed on the Centre's website. [May 12, 2008]

• "The Diverse and Exploding Digital University: An Updated Foredast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011" is the title of a report just published by IDC, an organization that provides information and advisory services to the IT and telecommunications industry. The report calculates the current growth rate of the world's digital data and suggests tools and strategies for coping with the information sunami. The report in PDF format is available online. For the record, the total number of bytes of digital information in 2007 was 281 exabytes -- that's 281 billion gigabytes or 281 followed by 21 zeros. The number is expected to be ten times larger by 2011. [Apr. 7, 2008]

• The US Patent and Trademark Office has issued a "non-final" determination of its examination of Blackboard's learning system patent, rejecting all 44 of Blackboard's claims. The patent was used by Blackboard in its recent successful lawsuit against its competitor Desire2Learn which resulted in a $3 million award for damages. This decision is not final and its effect on the lawsuit is not resolved, but it is a major event in the ongoing struggle to define the boundaries of intellectual property in the learning technology environment, and more broadly, the validity of software patents themselves. Campus Technology has published a detailed report on this issue. Statements from Blackboard and Desire2Learn are avaible on the patent information pages of their respective web sites. [Apr. 1, 2008]

• Re-Inventing the Possibilities: Academic Literacy & New Media is an online paper by Cheryl Ball and Ryan Moeller exploring the possibilites of using new technologies to teach English, rhetoric, and composition. The paper itself is constructed as a modular, nonlinear example of how new media might be used to convey these ideas. The article appears in issue 10 (2007) of Fibreculture Journal in a special issue devoted to new media, networks, and new pedagogies. [Mar. 7, 2008]

• The Winter 2008 edition of the online Journal of Electronic Publishing is a special issue devoted to cyberinfrastructure and higher education. Included are articles on scholarly communication in the digital world, research applications of high performance computing, and the influence of the emerging cyberinfrastructure on scholarship and publishing. [Feb. 19, 2008]

• Tara Brabazon, a British professor of media studies, has delivered in a recent lecture a sharp critique of students' use of Google, which she refers to as "white bread for the mind." She goes on to blame the easy access to internet information for dulling students' sense of curiosity and stifling debate. A summary of the lecture and a number of reader comments are available from the Times web site. The Times has also published a briskly worded rebuttal. [Jan. 19, 2008]

• MIT has developed Lecture Browser, a keyword-searchable collection of recorded lectures and seminars. The system is mostly automated, using voice-recognition software to convert recorded speech to text, and an indexing program that links words in the lectures to locations in the recorded video. It's easier to use than it is to explain. See web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/ for a demonstration. [Jan. 4, 2008]

• Indiana University, Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities have joined forces to explore best practices for audio preservation and develop new software tools and protocols for use in audio archival efforts. The results of phase one of this project have now been published as Sound Directions: Best Practices for Audio Preservation (PDF format). Topics covered in the report include standards for analog playback and digital capture, the handling and storage of digital files, and the development of metadata. [Jan. 3, 2008]

• Use and Users of Digital Resources, a recent article by Diane Harley in the Educause Quarterly, reports the results of a larger study of humanities and social science faculty from universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges on their use of technology. The article focuses on the various reasons why teaching faculty do not use instructional technologies in their classes, revealing attitudes about technology that differ significantly from the attitudes of the creators and advocates of those tools.

• UC-Berkeley has launched a new development project called OpenCast, the goal of which is to develop an "open, scalable, and sustainable" set of podcasting tools for use in higher education. The focus of the project is the development of easy-to-use tools for creating digital recordings in the classroom for distribution in a variety of settings, including Apple's iTunes U as well as open-source learning environments such as Sakai.

• The New York Times reports that some major libraries are rejecting digitization offers from Google and Microsoft in favor of a less restrictive program sponsored by the Open Content Alliance.

• Papers from a recent conference on scholarship and research in the digital world convened by the National Science Foundation and the British Joint Information Systems Committee are available on the conference web site.

• The Educause Center for Applied Research has just published the annual ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. Roosevelt University was one of the 103 institutions participating in this study, which is based on surveys of nearly 28,000 students.

• Inheritance and loss? A Brief Survey of Google Books. In the latest edition of First Monday, an Internet journal about the Internet, Paul Duguid explores the issue of quality control in Google's massive digitization project and discovers problems in the digitization of Tristram Shandy.

• Having a hard time remembering the way the web used to look? Take a spin on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, a tool for viewing fully functional copies of antique web pages no longer available on the live web. Just type a URL into the search box and click the Take Me Back button.

• In Point of Disconnect: Internet Traffic and the U. S. Communications Infrastructure Michael Kleeman of the University Of California, San Diego, warns that the fast rising use of the Internet for high-bandwidth applications such as video will soon lead to a bandwidth crisis.