Archive for October, 2009
« Previous EntriesOnline Education, Growing Fast, Eyes the Truly ‘Big Time’
Saturday, October 31st, 2009Online Education, Growing Fast, Eyes the Truly ‘Big Time’
Orlando, Fla. — Online education is a runaway best seller. Its growth rate — 12.9 percent — dwarfs the overall pace of academe’s student expansion. More than 25 percent of all students may have taken at least one online class this year, according to a speculative estimate [...]
The Latest File-Sharing Piracy: Academic Journals
Saturday, October 31st, 2009The Latest File-Sharing Piracy: Academic Journals
Illicit file sharing isn’t just for kids these days. Once mainly used for downloading pirated music, sites have sprung up on the Internet that allow free swapping of academic journals (think Napster’s younger dweeby brother).
A new study,
Getting Real Space to Teach–Virtually
Friday, October 30th, 2009Getting Real Space to Teach–Virtually
What did civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy have to do with the Apollo moon missions? Find out next week, when the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum holds its first virtual conference for educators. The date is November 10, and the time is from 11 AM to 5 PM Eastern time.
There [...]
The Netflix of Academic Journals Opens Shop
Friday, October 30th, 2009The Netflix of Academic Journals Opens Shop
By opening the largest online rental service for scientific, technical, and research journals, the company Deep Dyve is hoping to do for academic publications what Netflix has done for movies: make them easily accessible and inexpensive for everyone.
The Web site has been an academic-journal search engine since 2005 and [...]
Are College E-Mail Addresses on the Way Out?
Thursday, October 29th, 2009Are College E-Mail Addresses on the Way Out?
If the last four years are any indication, college-student e-mail addresses may soon be a thing of the past.
So says a report issued by Educause, a nonprofit dedicated to the advancement of information technology in higher education. The “Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2008 Summary Report” took information [...]
Columbia and Cornell Libraries Announce ‘Radical’ Partnership
Thursday, October 29th, 2009Columbia and Cornell Libraries Announce ‘Radical’ Partnership
Collaboration is old news. “Radical collaboration” is the way of the future. That’s the idea behind a new partnership announced by the libraries at Columbia University and Cornell University.
Called 2CUL (pronounced “too cool”) after the partners’ acronyms, the project will first focus on how the libraries can jointly transform [...]
Software Helps Music Students Collaborate Online With Crystal Clarity
Thursday, October 29th, 2009Software Helps Music Students Collaborate Online With Crystal Clarity
Music schools have a tradition of bringing in famous musicians to hold master classes with a handful of students, but many of those visits have been cut this year because of tight budgets. Free software developed at the University of Southern California promises to make videoconferencing clear [...]
Carnegie Mellon U. to Dedicate Bridge in Honor of Randy Pausch
Thursday, October 29th, 2009Carnegie Mellon U. to Dedicate Bridge in Honor of Randy Pausch
On Friday, Carnegie Mellon University will dedicate a pedestrian bridge in honor of Randy Pausch, a computer-science professor whose lecture about achieving childhood dreams, given while he was terminally ill, inspired millions after it was posted on YouTube. Mr. Pausch succumbed to pancreatic cancer in [...]
Students Take Sledgehammers to Computers to Raise Money
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009Students Take Sledgehammers to Computers to Raise Money
For five hours last Friday, Tyler Penrod watched his fellow students at Purdue University take sledgehammers to computers.
Mr. Penrod, a senior at Purdue and president of a computer-animation club at the university, organized the event with other club leaders to raise travel funds for students to attend [...]
Archive Watch: Cantors and Klezmer Go Digital
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009Archive Watch: Cantors and Klezmer Go Digital
Between the early 1990s and 2002, Florida Atlantic University’s Wimberly Library acquired about a thousand recordings of Jewish music. In 2002 that collection became the foundation for the Judaica Music Rescue Project, founded by Nathan Tinanoff, with the goal of creating a central repository for Judaic sound recordings. In [...]