TO PALM OR NOT TO PALM - According to Elliot Soloway, an engineering and
education professor at the University of Michigan, palm devices can be very useful as
educational tools because they allow students quick access to computing at a much cheaper
price than desktop systems and...students are able to relate to the use of electronic media
more than printed material. Others, see the devices as problems and objects of theft. In this
polarized debate, some schools have banned the palm devices, while others have mandated
their use. A recent International Communication Research report noted that 23% of schools
reported banning the devices. This was, however, a lower % than has banned cell phones or
beepers. (Wired News, 23 Aug 01)

BRINGING ANCIENT CITIES BACK TO LIFE - Indiana University researchers in
Indianapolis and Bloomington, along with IBM's High Performance Storage System
(HPSS), are bringing threatened archaeological sites back to "life" via virtual reality. Chichen
Itza, Uxmal and other critically important and threatened sites are among them. Using digital
techniques to archive and develop virtual replicas of the sites, the digital preservation project
will collect data, create scalable multimedia applications to recreate the history, sights and
sounds of the cultural locations and take visitors on a virtual "walk" through the digital
recreations. Participants will be able to see, hear and experience the ways in which people
lived during those ancient times. The IU Cultural Digital Library Indexing Our Heritage
(CLIOH) project is one of several such projects. CLIOH is an IU School of Informatics
initiative. It will also draw upon the visualization resources of the IUPUI New Media
Program, and extensive faculty expertise in interactive media. For more information, visit
the Web site at: http://www.cs.iupui.edu/~clio