.EDU Tech Roundup
vmn@uoregon.edu
Students Replay Lectures at Santa Clara University
If students at California's Santa Clara University miss some of what the teacher says in class, they can go back to the lecture again and again, thanks to a lecture-capture solution from Tegrity. The students take notes with a high-tech pen and notebook that digitally records everything they write and draw. They then upload their notes from the pen to their own computers. Tegrity software, running on a university server, matches the notes up with a digital video of the class itself along with any other materials the professor used during the class. Students can watch a lecture they missed, review a lecture they attended, and add additional notes as they study. CIO Ron Danielson says the system frees students to listen instead of struggling to write down everything the professor says. Read more about the system at http://www.tegrity.com/tc2_pen.php or http://www.educause.edu/PressReleases/1176&ID=1375
UW and MS Collaborate to Create Virtual Worlds
Imagine moving through a 3D scene created from a collection of the digital photos of a place you've visited--and even being able to include hundreds of photos of the spot from the Internet. Now, thanks to Photo Tourism, software developed by University of Washington doctoral student Noah Snavely in collaboration with Steve Seitz, associate professor of computer science, and Rick Szeliski, an employee at Microsoft Research, such virtual worlds are possible. Photo Tourism can work with just a few photos or with hundreds. It analyzes each photo, determines the spot where the camera that took the photo was situated, and then builds a 3D model of the scene. While Snavely continues working on Photo Tourism as part of his doctoral program, Microsoft is moving forward with a commercial version of the software called Photosynth. Read more at http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/ and http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
Ball State Tests Power of WiMax
Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, has been granted a six-month experimental license from the FCC to study a powerful new wireless technology called WiMax. H. O'Neal Smitherman, Ball State's vice president for information technology, sees great promise in the fast, wide-ranging wireless, which he says might be able to cover the entire 700-acre campus and a four-mile radius around it with only one access point. He also sees a potential for using WiMax for bringing the Internet into rural areas around Muncie. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i21/21a03202.htm
Wanted: Thousands of Authors
A call has gone out from MIT and the Wharton School of Business for thousands of scholars and business people to help write a textbook on the power of community in the business world. Appropriately, the sponsors plan to use the power of community in the form of a wiki to write the book. According to the project website, "Together we will write the book on how the emergence of community and social networks will change the future rules of business." The book will be written online and come out in paper from Pearson Publishing next fall. For more information, check out http://campustechnology.com/news_article.asp?id=20096&typeid=150 Or visit the project website at http://www.wearesmarter.org/
UK Students Make Movies with Machinima, Visit Prof in Second Life
At the University of Kansas, film students in a course called "New Media and Cyber Culture" are using Machinima to make movies. The software product lets them shoot films inside the virtual reality of a computer game without the need for digital cameras or 3D packages. One of the two professors teaching the course is even getting into the VR spirit of the class by holding his office hours in Second Life, so his students--or at least their avatars--can visit him at his office in cyberspace. For more info, see http://education.zdnet.com/?p=824
ASU Turns to Google for Student Accounts
This past fall Arizona State University and Google announced the first large-scale deployment of Google Apps for Education. ASU's 65,000 students enthusiastically embraced the new system, which in addition to Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and 24/7 tech help, gives each student a two-gigabyte quota. On the day of the announcement, students were converting their old ASU email accounts to Gmail accounts at a rate of 300 per hour. Adrian Sannier, University Technology Office, said, "We believe that strategic alliances with technology leaders like Google are key to accelerating the contribution that technology can make to ASU's academic enterprise." Read more at http://www.asu.edu/news/stories/200610/20061010_asugmail.htm
At UV It's Official: Laptops are Ubiquitous
Does it seem that almost every student you see has a laptop? The University of Virginia has proof. UV has tracked the technology its freshmen bring to campus with them over the last ten years, and now reports a precipitous fall in the number of desktop units and a corresponding surge in the number of laptops. Just five years ago the ratio of desktops to laptops was one to one. This past fall, only 90 of approximately 3000 freshman students lugged the large machines to campus. Other changes noted in the university's report: One in five students now brings a Mac to campus, up from one in 35 in 2000--and a whopping 77 percent show up with digital music devices, 87 percent of which are iPods. Read more at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i26/26a03201.htm