INFOBITS 014 (August 1994) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/infobits/infobits-014 IAT INFOBITS August 1994 No. 14 ISSN 1071-5223 About INFOBITS INFOBITS is an electronic service of the Institute for Academic Technology's Information Resources Group. Each month we monitor and select from a number of information technology and instruction technology sources that come to our attention and provide brief notes for electronic dissemination to college and university educators. ========================================================== COMPUTER GRAPHICS CONFERENCE SIGGRAPH is the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics. SIGGRAPH 94, the 21st SIGGRAPH International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, took place last month in Orlando, Florida. Commercial fields -- movie animation production, multimedia publishing, and graphic art in advertising -- dominated the exhibitions; nonetheless, there were many opportunities to see what is being done in the field of education. The conference included SIGkids -- a special area for children to "experience the latest interactive technologies; video and animation production; computer graphics tools for art, design, and music production; mathematics; and science." Several groups from the area K-12 schools had booths set up with children assisting in demonstrating their projects. Virtual environment demonstrations were a large part of both the educational institution and the commercial areas in the conference. Since SIGGRAPH has a reputation for promoting leading edge technologies, it will interesting to see if more virtual reality programs show up in the near future in academe. To learn more about SIGGRAPH and its activities, connect to their World Wide Web (WWW) site (URL = http://siggraph.org), their Gopher site (siggraph.org), or their anonymous ftp site (siggraph.org). The SIGGRAPH Library is also available at these addresses. It includes a searchable collection of over 16,000 unique computer graphics and computational geometry bibliography references, written transcripts of SIGGRAPH conference panel discussions, and a collection of slides from previous conferences. ========================================================== GET A GRIP ON GRAPHICAL INFORMATION Speaking of computer graphics, the article "Images on the Internet" by Jennifer Cox and Mohamed Taleb [DATABASE 17 (August 1994): 18-22, 24-26] provides a good overview of what is available for viewing and downloading on the Internet and tools that are useful for retrieving the images. Addressing the complicated issue of dealing with graphics file formats, it provides a chart of some of the more popular utilities that are used to view image files. A listing of several Internet image collections and suggestions on hardware configurations (MS-DOS-compatible, Macintosh, and UNIX boxes) also contribute to the usefulness of the article. Database [ISSN 0162-4105] is published bimonthly by Online, Inc., 462 Danbury Road, Wilton, CT 06897-2126 USA; tel: 203-761-1466. Subscriptions are $99/year (USA and Canada), $121/year (Mexico), and $134/year (airmail to all other countries). For even more information on computer graphics file, see ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GRAPHICS FILE FORMATS by James D. Murray and William vanRyper (Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1994. 1st edition. 928 pp. ISBN: 1-56592-058-9. Cost: $59.95 US). The book covers graphics file format specifications, code, images and software packages for PC (MS-DOS, MS Windows, OS/2), UNIX, and Macintosh platforms. Included with the book is a CD-ROM that contains freeware and shareware software packages to help you view, convert and manipulate the nearly one hundred file formats covered in the book. You can read a more detailed description of the book using a World Wide Web (WWW) browser to connect to the publisher's WWW site. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is http://nearnet.gnn.com/meta/internet/mkt/ora/catalog/gff.desc.html For a catalog of O'Reilly's computer books and ordering information, contact: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 103A Morris Street, Sebastopol, CA 95472 USA; tel: 707-829-0515 or 800-998-9938 (USA and Canada only); fax: 707-829-0104; email: order@ora.com; WWW: http://nearnet.gnn.com/gnn/meta/internet/mkt/ora/catalog.html; Gopher: gopher.ora.com. The publisher also has several international distributors that are listed on their WWW and Gopher sites. ========================================================== KIDS ON CAMPUS WEB SITE >From a WWW site set up by the Cornell University Theory Center, educators (especially those involved in K-12 teacher training programs) can get ideas on how the Internet, and particularly World Wide Web, can be used in children's programs. The Center sponsors an annual "Kids on Campus" program during the National Science Foundation's National Science and Technology Week at Cornell. The web site was set up for easy use by third, fourth, and fifth graders to explore Internet resources on dinosaurs, the solar system, weather, and other science topics. To access the web site, use a World Wide Web (WWW) browser such as Mosaic. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for the site is http://www.tc.cornell.edu/Kids.on.Campus/KOC94/ An article about the "Kids on Campus" program is in FOREFRONTS, the Cornell Theory Center's newsletter (Vol. 9, No. 5, Summer 1994, pp. 1, 14). The issue can be read online using a WWW browser (URL = http://www.tc.cornell.edu/Forefronts/forefronts.html) or a Gopher client (gopher.tc.cornell.edu). Forefronts [ISSN 0889-4833] is published quarterly by the Cornell Theory Center, External Relations, 514 Engineering and Theory Center Building, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-3801 USA; tel: 607-254-8686; email: forefronts@tc.cornell.edu. There is no charge for USA hardcopy subscriptions; others should contact the Center. Subscription forms are available on both the WWW and the Gopher sites. ========================================================== U.S. FEDERAL INFORMATION POLICY "Keeping Track of Current Developments in Federal Information Policy" by Joe Ryan, Sarah Haining, and Michael Persick. INTERNET RESEARCH, vol. 4, no. 2, Summer 1994, pp. 67-81. Using information compiled by members of Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, this paper provides pointers to print and online resources for keeping current on developments in U.S. federal information policy area. Resources listed include columns appearing in professional journals; regularly-appearing publications; federal agencies and sources concerned with information policy on the Internet; looseleaf law and regulatory services; names and address of organizations, lobbyists, and media contacts; address of listservs, Usenet newsgroups, and online bulletin boards. The authors also provide an extensive list of recent information policy documents along with retrieval information. Currently, there is no electronic version of the information; however, a printed report, "A Guide to Government Information Available on the Internet," is available. Contact Publications Officer Rebecca Freeland by mail: Syracuse University, School of Information Studies, 4-206 Center for Science and Technology, Syracuse, NY 13244-4100 USA; or tel: 315-443-2911; or fax: 315-443-5806. Individual copies cost $8.50 post paid [Make checks payable to Syracuse University.] Proceeds from the sale of this guide will be donated to Syracuse University's School of Information Studies. For group discounts, contact the author Joe Ryan by email: joryan@suvm.acs.syr.edu or joryan@suvm.bitnet. Internet Research [ISSN 1066-2243] is published quarterly by Mecklermedia Corporation, 11 Ferry Lane West, Westport, CT 06880 USA; tel.: 203-226-6967. Subscriptions are available for $115.00/year (USA), $133.00/year (Canada, Central, and South America). Subscriptions for other countries are available from Mecklermedia Ltd., Artillery House, Artillery Row, London SW1P 1RT, UK; tel: +44-071-976-0405. ========================================================== FROGS ON THE INTERNET The widespread occurrence of frogs and other amphibians is a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Perhaps the widespread availability on the Internet of information about frogs is a sign of a healthy "infosystem." Anyway, here are some sites to explore if you are looking for information to use in biology classes. Unless otherwise noted, you will need a World Wide Web browser like Mosaic to access the information. The Imaging and Distributed Computing Group of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory has an interactive frog dissection kit on the Internet. Images of the frog from various views, and in various stages of dissection, are generated on-the-fly based on parameters set by the user. The URL is: http://george.lbl.gov/ITG.hm.pg.docs/dissect/info.html The University of Virginia/The Curry School of Education's Instructional Technology Program has developed another interactive frog dissection tutorial. The tutorial combines text with 60 in-line color images and 17 QuickTime movies illustrating dissection procedures and internal organs. Numerous clickable image maps provide interactive practice. The URL for this site is: http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/~insttech/frog/ Sandra Loosemore at Yale University maintains The Froggy Page, a site containing links to frog pictures, frog sounds, stories about frogs ("The Frogs" by Aristophanes, Grimm Brothers' "The Frog Prince"), words to songs about frogs, and information about the most famous frog, Kermit. The URL for this site is: http://www.cs.yale.edu/HTML/YALE/CS/HyPlans/loosemore-sandra/froggy.html The Australian National Botanic Biodiversity Server includes a section on the frogs in the Australian National Botanic Gardens. The URL is: http://155.187.10.12:80/projects/frogs/anbg-frogs.html Finally, there is Frog-Net, an electronic forum for researchers engaged in the study of the behavior and the underlying neural mechanisms in amphibians. The list is moderated by Jim-Shih Liaw, Department of Computer Science and Program in Neuroscience, University of Southern California. To subscribe to the mailing list, send email to: liaw@rana.usc.edu. To send email to all members of the list, address it to: frog-net@rana.usc.edu ========================================================== To Subscribe INFOBITS is published by the Institute for Academic Technology. The IAT is a national institute working to place higher education at the forefront of academic technology development and implementation. A partnership between The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and IBM Corporation, the IAT strives to facilitate widespread use of effective and affordable technologies in higher education. To subscribe to INFOBITS, send email to listserv@unc.edu with the following message: SUBSCRIBE INFOBITS your_firstname your_lastname substituting your own first and last names. Example: SUBSCRIBE INFOBITS Paul Auster INFOBITS is also available online on Washington University's Gopher server. Point your Gopher client to: ike.engr.washington.edu and travel through the following menu tree: Academic Technology Services/Institute for Academic Technology/Infobits If you have problems subscribing or want to send suggestions for future issues, contact Carolyn Kotlas at carolynk.iat@mhs.unc.edu >From carolynk.iat@mhs.unc.edu Thu Sep 22 12:33:39 1994 Received: from hermes.oit.unc.edu by gibbs.oit.unc.edu (8.6.4.3/10.1) id MAA28205; Thu, 22 Sep 1994 12:33:38 -0400 Received: from mhs.unc.edu by hermes.oit.unc.edu (4.1/TAS/11-16-88) id AA19806; Thu, 22 Sep 94 12:33:35 EDT Received: from NetWare MHS (SMF70) by mhs.unc.edu via XGATE 3.01.b16J MHS to SMTP Gateway; Thu, 22 Sep 94 12:33:42 -0400 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: Date: Thu, 22 Sep 94 12:31:39 -0400 From: Carolyn Kotlas Sender: Carolyn Kotlas Organization: UNC To: infobits@gibbs.oit.unc.edu Subject: IAT INFOBITS - Sept. 1994 X-Mailer: XGATE 3.01.b16J MHS to SMTP Gateway IAT INFOBITS September 1994 No. 15 ISSN 1071-5223 About INFOBITS INFOBITS is an electronic service of the Institute for Academic Technology's Information Resources Group. Each month we monitor and select from a number of information technology and instruction technology sources that come to our attention and provide brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators. ========================================================== EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES ON THE INTERNET Harris, Judi. Way of the Ferret: Finding Educational Resources on the Internet. Revised Edition. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education, 1994. 191 pages. ISBN: 1-56484-069-7. $24.95. Harris writes a column called "Mining the Internet" in the journal THE COMPUTING TEACHER, and much of the material for her book comes from this column. Although there are now a vast number of guides to the Internet [see "Tsunami of Internet Books," IAT INFOBITS, no. 9, March 1994], this one highlights resources of interest to K-12 educators (and college and university faculty involved in K-12 teacher education programs). In addition to providing overviews to all the standard Internet tools and pointers to useful resource sites, the author includes a section on educational applications with projects to get students involved in using the Internet. Project descriptions include lists of activities, grade level of audience, disciplines covered, purpose of the project, and names of contacts for projects that require registration. The Computing Teacher [ISSN 0278-9175] is published eight times a year by The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). ISTE is a nonprofit professional organization dedicated to the improvement of education through computer-based technology. To order the book call the Order Desk: 800-336-5191. For information on ISTE or subscriptions to The Computing Teacher, write: ISTE, 1787 Agate Street, Eugene, OR 97403-1923 USA; tel: 503-346-4414; fax: 503-346-5890; email: iste@oregon.uoregon.edu (Internet), ISTE (America Online), ISTE (AppleLink), or 70014,2117 (CompuServe); or Gopher: ISTE-gopher.uoregon.edu ========================================================== WWW FOR INSTRUCTIONAL USE How are people using the World-Wide Web in educational settings? Check the University of Texas-Austin's Web Central to locate course syllabi, lecture notes, exams, multimedia textbooks, and more. Categories of disciplines covered include: anatomy, archaeology, architecture, art and art history, astronomy, biochemistry, biology and botany, chemical engineering, chemistry, communication, computer science, finance, history, language labs, management, management information systems, mathematics, medicine, music, nuclear engineering and engineering physics, physics, psychology, and religious studies. The resource's URL is http://wwwhost.cc.utexas.edu/world/instruction/index.html ========================================================== I HEARD IT THROUGH THE INTERNET A couple of recent broadcasts on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program have featured Internet sites with audio collections. Here are more details. The Voice of America (VOA) is the international broadcast service of the U.S. Information Agency. It produces and broadcasts programs on shortwave in 45 languages, including English. Reporters in VOA's central newsroom and correspondents at 25 news bureaus throughout the world provide first-hand coverage of an average of 180 news stories each day. Selected broadcasts are available for downloading from the Internet in Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, Czech, and English in several audio formats. (Be warned, these files can be very big.) The site also contains information and broadcasting schedules for VOA, Worldnet Television, and Radio and TV Marti. You can get copies of the audio files from their anonymous FTP site: ftp.voa.gov or through their Gopher site at: gopher.voa.gov The Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) describes itself as the net's first free hi-fi music archive. IUMA is dedicated to the "worldwide distribution of otherwise obscure bands and artists . . . including everything from traditional folk to indie rock to instrumental jazz to Japanese experimental noise." The archive site includes information about performers, complete songs and short excerpts, and utilities for playing the audio files on a variety of platforms. You can access the archive by World-Wide Web: http://www.iuma.com, by Gopher: gopher.iuma.com, or by anonymous FTP: ftp.iuma.com ========================================================== ROBO BABES AND THE GENDER GAP In "No Girls Allowed!" [TECHNOS, vol. 3, no. 3, Fall 1994, pp. 14-19] Melissa Koch voices the concern that girls in U.S. schools are not attracted to computers in the same numbers as their male peers. Since competency in computer use and other technologies is increasingly linked to academic success, especially in math and science, this disparity translates into fewer women entering technology professions. According to Koch, the problem cannot be attributed to any one cause, but is a combination of how girls are socialized, girls' learning styles, peer pressure, and teacher encouragement. She describes some ways that could reverse the situation and bring technology to more girls in the classroom. The article includes information on several technology programs set up to promote girls' participation in science, math, and computer technology. In "Robo Babes" [I.D.; THE INTERNATIONAL DESIGN MAGAZINE, vol. 41, no. 3 (May/June 1994) pp. 38-45] Karrie Jacobs focuses on one area of computer technology where girls and women are turned off. She writes that almost all popular computer and "video games are still stubbornly entrenched in adolescence--a decidedly male adolescence. . . . It is a culture that builds systems that demand quick, reactive thinking in a universe of limited choices. And it is this culture that is designing the so-called information superhighway." Some video game companies are realizing that by concentrating on software that doesn't appeal to girls or women they have failed to reach half of their potential customers. So far most of their entries into this market have been limited and embarrassing. For example, Nintendo's "Barbie: Super Model" allows girls to apply makeup to electronic Barbie faces, and Philips' "Girls' Club" is a slot-machine game that displays boys' heads on the screen and lets players pick their "dream date." Jacobs thinks that while video games are just toys, they do teach children about computers and that the electronic interfaces in games are being incorporated into computer interfaces in technology used by adults. "If we don't get girls interested in computers at an early age, and if we don't have computers that are friendly or interesting to girls, we're just going to have guys behind the wheel on that superhighway. . . . If we don't seriously question the games and, more to the point, the culture that designs them, our lives could become one endless round of Space Invaders." TECHNOS: Quarterly for Education and Technology is published by the Agency for Instructional Technology (AIT), Box A, Bloomington, IN 47402-0121 USA; tel: 812-339-2203; fax: 812-333-4218; email: technos@linknet.com. Subscriptions are available for $20/year (US), $24/year (International), $16/year (library rate). I.D.; The International Design Magazine [ISSN 0894-5373] is published bimonthly by Design Publications. Subscriptions are available from I.D., P. O. Box 11247, Des Moines, IA 50340-1247 USA for $60/year (US), $70/year (Canada), $85/year (Europe). To read more on the Internet about women and computing: -- connect to Ellen Spertus' Women and Computer Science WWW site: http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/ellens/gender.html -- get The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture Special Issue: Gender Issues in Computer Networking, vol. 2, issue 3, July 26, 1994. The issue can be retrieved by sending email to: listserv@kentvm.kent.edu with the message: get ejvcv2n3 package; by anonymous FTP to host: byrd.mu.wvnet.edu, directory: /pub/ejvc, filename: EJVCV2N3.PACKAGE; or by gopher to: gopher.cic.net ========================================================== GET WWW PAGES BY EMAIL If your system doesn't support World-Wide Web viewers like Mosaic, Lynx, Cello, etc., you can still retrieve information from WWW sites. CERN, the European research group that developed the World-Wide Web, now makes it possible for people to get Web pages by email. Send a message to: listproc@www0.cern.ch [note the character after www in the address is a zero] and in the body of the message type www and the Universal Resource Locator (URL) for the Web page you want. For example, to get a copy of Ellen Spertus' Women and Computer Science page mentioned above, send the message: www http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/ellens/gender.html ========================================================== LIBRARIES AND THE FUTURE BROADCAST In December the IAT will present "Libraries: Today's Issues, Tomorrow's Challenges," a satellite broadcast covering technology in libraries, trends, new media and copyright, and other issues facing libraries and information centers. The broadcast includes a live question and answer session. We have assembled an interesting and diverse group of speakers who can provide some thoughtful insights based on their years of experience. The speakers include: Toni Carbo Bearman, Dean of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh and the only librarian on the U.S. Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure; Wilson (Bil) Stahl, Director of Information Planning for The University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Marcia Tuttle, Head of Serials, Davis Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of INTRODUCTION TO SERIALS MANAGEMENT, and editor of NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES; John Ulmschneider, Assistant Director for Library Systems, North Carolina State University; Laura (Lolly) Gasaway, Director of the Law Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and frequent contributor to cni-copyright, the Coalition for Networked Information's electronic discussion list on copyright issues; and Richard Hulser, library consultant for IBM Corporation. IAT INFOBITS editor, Carolyn Kotlas, will moderate the broadcast. For more information about the broadcast (and other IAT broadcasts) send email to: info.iat@mhs.unc.edu with the subject "broadcasts" or tel: 919-405-1958. ========================================================== To Subscribe INFOBITS is published by the Institute for Academic Technology. The IAT is a national institute working to place higher education at the forefront of academic technology development and implementation. A partnership between The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and IBM Corporation, the IAT strives to facilitate widespread use of effective and affordable technologies in higher education. To subscribe to INFOBITS, send email to listserv@unc.edu with the following message: SUBSCRIBE INFOBITS your_firstname your_lastname substituting your own first and last names. Example: SUBSCRIBE INFOBITS Georges Simenon INFOBITS is also available online on The University of Washington's Gopher server. Point your Gopher client to: ike.engr.washington.edu and travel through the following menu tree: Academic Technology Services/Institute for Academic Technology/Infobits If you have problems subscribing or want to send suggestions for future issues, contact Carolyn Kotlas at carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu ------------------------------ Cut here ------------------------------