STATE UPDATE. - UW-Extension Receives GTE Grant, GWETC a Great Success!
A BRIGHT IDEA - Linking Children's Hospital Units Via Technology
HOT TOPICS - Digital Imaging Workshops, Clinton Signs Y2K Legislation, Y2K Problem at Local Level
ED INFO BYTES - Online Review Comments-How do They Rate?, Schools and Technology-It's About Learning
NEW TECH TRENDS - PCs Break $500 Price Barrier, New Displays Usher in the Millenium, DVD It's Almost Here!
FYI - News, Conferences, Institutes

STATE UPDATE

THE GTE FOUNDATION AWARDS $50,000 TO UW-EXTENSION - The GTE donation will support distance education in the Pyle Center, UW-Extension's new state-of-the-art distance learning and conference facility at 702 Langdon St. With the grant, GTE seeks to increase public access to the premier educational opportunities offered by the UW System via the Center's advanced technological capabilities. The Pyle Center is scheduled to reopen for business on November 2. (Extension News & Ideas, Oct 98)

GWETC A GREAT SUCCESS! - The Governor's Wisconsin Educational Technology Conference (GWETC) October 6-8 was a great success! A final registration count of 1850 topped last year's conference by 450 attendees. Sessions were highly rated, as were the Featured Speakers, Dr. Humor and Greg Riker. The conference was rated "excellent" for the sharing of ideas and networking with peers. Almost everyone agreed that we've outgrown Green Bay and Stevens Point and are very positive about our move next year to the new Midwest Express Conference Center in Milwaukee.

Plans for GWETC '99 are well underway. Members of the Steering Committee have been meeting for several months and are building an expanded base of support with Milwaukee Public Schools, UW-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Area Technical College, the private colleges and business and industry. Initial plans for '99 include: adding a third Featured Speaker; expanding the number of sessions, repeat sessions and exhibits; showcasing special exhibit "hands-on" sessions; adding poster sessions; encouraging teacher/student presentations; initiating varied levels of registration; integrating school, business and cultural tours and setting up special areas for networking and sharing. We'll keep you updated on our progress in future DESIEN issues. (Rosemary Lehman)

A BRIGHT IDEA

STARBRIGHT - a Steven Spielberg Project, links children's hospital units via technology. The tools of technology are used in a unique way, to link children with serious illnesses to their peers in other hospitals. Through the creation of projects that encourage children to overcome the challenges that accompany prolonged illness, STARBRIGHT gives them something back - their childhood. STARBRIGHT is chaired by filmmaker Steven Spielberg and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. Hear Spielberg describe STARBRIGHT at: http://www.starbright.org/press/screening.html

STARBRIGHT will be demonstrated at TechLearn '98 where STARBRIGHT staff will address how the training and learning industry can build a new coalition of training and technology groups to support these efforts. What a great way to extend our collective belief in learning and collaboration! (TechLearn Trends #76, 15 Oct 98)

HOT TOPICS

DIGITAL IMAGING WORKSHOPS - Humber College Canada and Kodak Canada are planning a series of three-day corporate workshops on digital imaging in the workplace. The workshop on "Integrating Images into Business Documents," teaches the techniques and technologies required to create "professional high-impact documents. The workshop includes a thorough overview of the tools and techniques used in digital imaging today, including digital cameras, desktop scanners and printers and takes participants through the process of importing images into popular software applications for inclusion in business presentations and proposals, newsletters, information flyers, or similar communication materials." The workshops have received positive feedback. An October workshop is planned for Windows users and a late November for Macintosh users. Visit the website at: http://digital.humberc.on.ca/WEB SITE/kodaks.html

CLINTON SIGNS Y2K LEGISLATION - to encourage info sharing, President Clinton has signed legislation designed to encourage businesses and organizations to share information that might help avert a Year 2000 computer crisis, when software that used only two digits to code "year" fields may fail to make correct date calculations. The legislation gives a limited liability protection to sharers of information, so that fear of lawsuits will not discourage them from helping others. (AP 19 Oct 98)

Y2K PROBLEM AT LOCAL LEVEL - States are spending more than $2.5 billion to deal with the Year 2000 problem, but many of the nation's local governments, police departments and fire departments have done little to get ready. A survey found that 54% of New York State's towns, 48% of its villages and 26% of its cities have not made plans for fixing the problem. Another survey found that 42% of California cities, counties and special districts have no funds budgeted to avert the problem. (USA Today 19 Oct 98)

ED INFO BYTES

ONLINE REVIEW COMMENTS - HOW DO THEY RATE? - The British journal, BMJ, is testing a new kind of article review with a recent paper, "The Metamorphosis of Biomedical Journals," authored by a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh. The paper was rejected for publication by several journals, but can now be read at the BMJ site: http://www.bmj.com Readers can post comments and read others' opinions about it. Based on those comments and the evaluation of traditional peer reviewers, BMJ will decide later this year whether to publish the article in its print journal. "I don't believe in the conventional process of peer review," says Ronald LaPorte, "this is the model (for) scholarly publishing." Other scholars aren't sure: "Raw articles are not worth people's attention," says a professor of psychology who operates a Web site on cognitive science. "They're not worth sending out to gazillions of people. This is no way to run a journal." (Chronicle 0f Higher Education 16 Oct 98)

SCHOOLS AND TECHNOLOGY - IT'S ABOUT LEARNING - Teachers are tackling the critical issue of how to proceed with technology in the schools. They're saying:

* it's not about wiring or hardware, it's about content, collaboration, community and learning models for technology, not just about dropping in a few PC's into the back of the classroom;
* nobody can really predict the pathway of future technology. Will wireless LAN's replace Ethernet in schools? Will Palm-like devices be the form factor of choice? Will voice recognition make its way into classrooms? Schools need to have a value base of how to evaluate new and emerging technologies for their benefit to the learning mission and to develop a process for experimenting short of "the bleeding edge;"
* community leaders can help shape the technology decisions. There are great resources waiting to be invited into the process that can bring strong IT and management visions to the table. (TechLearn Trends #76, 15 Oct 98)

NEW TECH TRENDS

PCs BREAK $500 PRICE BARRIER - The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the newly formed company, Emachines, is introducing a fully equipped PC, including a monitor, for less than $500. The $499 eTower sports a 266 MHz Cyrix microprocessor, a 2.1 gigabyte hard drive, 32 megabytes of memory, a 56K modem, a CD-ROM drive and a 14-inch monitor. The same machine can be purchased without the monitor for $399. "Five hundred dollars is the magic number for opening up the next wave of adopters in the home," says the company's CEO. Emachines is a joint venture of TriGem and Korean Data Systems. The company is planning to offer several other computers in the next year or so, including a 300 MHz eTower with monitor for $599, an ultralight notebook for under $2,000 and an entertainment device for games and DVD movies. (St. Petersburg Times 10 Oct 98)

NEW DISPLAYS USHER IN THE MILLENNIUM - A new type of flat display called OLEDs, for organic light-emitting diodes, could be widely available in a few years, ushering in an era of video postcards, laptops with furling screens and glowing ceiling panels that illuminate jetliners. "This is probably the hottest research area in the whole field of flat-panel displays," says the VP for display-industry research at Stanford Resources Inc., who predicts that OLED sales are likely to soar from almost nothing today to $400 million by 2004. "I don't think there has ever been a new display technology that went from nothing to 65 players in just three or four years." Physicist Richard Friend, who is a co-discoverer of the light-emitting organic polymers, predicts: "It's not fanciful to think of active electronic circuits that are no more difficult to make than the glossy Sunday newspaper supplement, which you throw away on Monday." (Business Week 19 Oct 98)

DVD - IT'S ALMOST HERE! - Digital Television (DVD) will be coming to Wisconsin this fall. Milwaukee Public Television and a commercial station in Madison will begin with a limited amount of programming. Because digital signals can carry more information on the same amount of bandwidth as today's analog signals, it will display more detailed pictures, clearer images, brighter colors and sharper sound. It is also capable of multicasting - carrying at least four different programs simultaneously. Public Television plans are to multicast: continuing education programs, children's/school educational programs, "how-to" programs and programs for lovers of cultural and performing arts. (Public Television Q & A Digital Television Flyer)

FYI
News, Conferences, Institutes

NUTN `99 is issuing a Call for Papers for "The Digital Millennium: Collaboration, Integration, Education" June 27-29, 1999 in Seattle, Washington.

Papers are being solicited from individuals and organizations on the following topic areas:

Distance Learning Partnerships and Case Studies
Accreditation issues
Organizational support
Budgets
Web-based projects
Online courses
International programs
Instructional use of technologies
Teleconferencing Program evaluation
Assessment

A special category for papers: is Action Research that Assesses the Impact of Technology on Teaching and Learning. The winner of best presentation on this topic will be given special recognition at the annual conference, a $100 award and a complimentary registration. For more information see: http://www.odu.edu/~nutn

 

EASI-WEB is an on-line workshop demonstrating how to use universal design principles to create web pages for everyone including people with print disabilities. Next workshop starts October 26.

EASI-WEB Instructors:

Norman Coombs, Ph.D.
Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology
Chair of EASI: Equal Access to Software and Information Consultant on distance learning and adaptive computing
nrcgsh@rit.edu
http://www.rit.edu/~nrcgsh

 

Richard Banks
EASi Electronic Resource Manager
Adjunct Ratchasuda College, Mahidol University, Thailand
rbanks2@discover-net.net
http://www.rit.edu/~easi/banks.html

EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information) is a non-profit organization affiliated with the American Association for Higher Education with a mission to help make information technologies more accessible to users with disabilities.

Registration is $195.

EASI-WEB lesson materials will be accessed through a passworded web page. This will permit the participant to cover the material at his or her own pace. While this format provides considerable self-instruction, the workshop is intended to provide as much interaction as each participants wants or needs. Email will be used for interaction with instructors and with other participants. Those students who submit a web page to share with the class at the end of the workshop will receive a certificate of completion.

The material is divided into 11 major lessons.

Lesson 1: Introduction to distance instruction techniques
Lesson 2: Advantages and problems of the WWW for the "print disabled"
Lesson 3: Examples of accessible and inaccessible web pages
Lesson 4: Ways to check pages for accessibility
Lesson 5: Introduction to basic HTML coding commands for novices
Lesson 6: Introduction to simple and important HTML features
Lesson 7: Some more advanced HTML access features
Lesson 8: Planning pages for maximum impact: a. What's your purpose
b. Keep it simple
Lesson 9: Captioning materials for deaf and hard-of-hearing
Lesson 10: Descriptive texts to accompany complex graphics and videos for blind and low vision
Lesson 11: Submit a sample HTML page to exemplify how to deal with access problems and to earn certificate of completion

For more information and to register: http://www.rit.edu/~easi/workshops.html

 

MOUNT ROYAL COLLEGE in Calgary, Alberta is hosting the conference "Technology, Pedagogy, Politics: Critical Visions of New Technologies in Education" May of 1999. The conference organizers are seeking work that addresses "the historical, social and political contexts of technology in education." The conference takes for its starting point the premise that politics pedagogy and technology are "inextricably linked," and offers an opportunity for a pause for reflection in the breakneck pace of educational technology development and adoption. Proposals are invited "from all perspectives and which employ both traditional and non-traditional formats. Submissions from the public sector and student work are welcome." The deadline for proposals is December 1, 1998. For more information visit:
http://www.mtroyal.ab. ca/programs/arts/english/TPPConf.htm