INFOBITS 027 (September 1995) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/infobits/infobits-027 IAT INFOBITS September 1995 No. 27 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. ========================================================== DOES THE MEDIUM INFLUENCE LEARNING? Yes, no, maybe...the debate has been going on for over a decade with no definitive answer. In 1983, Richard Clark (Professor and Chair, Division of Educational Psychology and Technology, School of Education, University of Southern California at Los Angeles) claimed that the results of comparative research on educational media gave evidence "for the generalization that there are no learning benefits to be gained from employing any specific medium to deliver instruction." As more media are added to the educational technology mix, the question takes on renewed importance. Papers presented in two issues of EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT (Volume 42, Numbers 2 and 3, 1994) revisit the question and attempt to reframe it in light of new developments. Contributors include Richard Clark, Robert B. Kozma (Director of the Center for Technology in Learning, SRI International), David H. Jonassen (Pennsylvania State University), Robert D. Tennyson (Department of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota at Minneapolis), and several others. Educational Technology Research and Development (ETR&D) is published quarterly by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, Inc., 1025 Vermont Ave., N.W., Suite 820, Washington, DC, USA. Subscriptions are $55/year (US) and $63/year (all others, surface mail). ========================================================== INTERACTIVE LEARNING JOURNAL Interact: European Platform for Interactive Learning is an initiative of a group of educational institutions and companies in the Netherlands with a strong interest in interactive media. Interact sponsors conferences, Web pages, and a journal, INTERACT. A sample issue is available on their World-Wide Web site at URL http://valley.interact.nl/av/edu/interact/home.html. Issues cover various themes, including the pedagogical aspects of interactive learning. Interact [ISSN 0929-4465] is published quarterly by Interact, Editorial Office & Customer Services, P.O. Box 1139, 1000 BC Amsterdam, The Netherlands; tel: +31 20 665 1173; fax: +31 20 665 1688; email: office@interact.nl ========================================================== AROUND-THE-CLOCK NEWS ON WEB The CNN (Cable News Network) television channel now offers a Web page that is updated constantly with news, sound and video clips at URL http://www.cnn.com/ The CNN Newsroom and Turner Educational Services provide teachers with a daily classroom guide and lesson plan that lists titles and times of CNN news stories. Daily guides also contain suggested student activities, Internet resources, and other supplementary information. Copies of classroom guides for the current month are available at URL gopher://nysernet.org:3000/ 11/Academic%20Wings/Social%20Studies/CNN%20newsroom%20classroom%20guide ========================================================== DIGITAL ART GALLERIES Atelier Nord is a workshop for electronic art and printmaking located in Oslo, Norway. Artists in residence work with different projects within the Internet, multimedia, electronic imaging, computer animation, video, sound, performance, and printmaking. Kenneth Korstad Langas' contribution (URL http://www.oslonett.no/home/atelier/id.html) provides an excellent sample of real time, full-screen animation. Visit the site at URL http://www.oslonett.no/home/atelier/ The Art Gallery at the University of Maryland at College Park, in collaboration with the Computer Science Department, the College of Arts and Humanities, and The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, will present a major project during November and December consisting of: an exhibition of electronic art by eight internationally known artists; an interactive exchange of ideas and images over electronic networks with school and community sites; electronic music and multimedia performances; and lectures, workshops, demonstrations, and seminars. The theme is "Connectivity, Interface, and Imagination in the Digital Village." For more details, go to URL http://www.inform.umd.edu:8080/ EdRes/Colleges/ARHU/ArtGal/.WWW/digvil/digvil.htm In addition to the artists represented in the gallery, K-12 students are invited to exhibit their artwork in the Digital Village. Schools interested in joining the project can contact Julie Nelson, Education Coordinator, at tel: 301-405-2763 or email: scholmnk@wam.umd.edu To find out more about other Art Gallery exhibitions go to URL http://www.inform.umd.edu:8080/EdRes/Colleges/ARHU/ArtGal/.WWW/ ========================================================== ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE The ESL Virtual Catalog provides directories of ESL Internet resources, publishers and distributors of ESL materials, and ESL professional organizations. For more information go to URL http://www.pvp.com/esl.htm ========================================================== DESKTOP VIDEOCONFERENCING Desktop videoconferencing products are applications that can be used on standard desktop computer systems such as an Intel-based PC, Apple Macintosh, or UNIX workstations. Interest is growing in using these technologies in distance education. Leigh Anne Rettinger provides an index designed to aid in comparing the many different desktop videoconferencing systems. The index is available at URL http://www2.ncsu.edu/ eos/service/ece/project/succeed_info/dtvc_survey/products.html "Desktop Videoconferencing: Technology and Use for Remote Seminar Delivery," Rettinger's Master's thesis for a degree in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University, evaluates the potential effectiveness of this technology for delivering interactive seminars to a remote audience. It is available at URL http://www2.ncsu.edu/eos/service/ece/project/succeed_info/larettin/thesis/ For a related article with more resources, read "Digital Video and the Internet: A Powerful Combination" by Ann E. Barron and Gary W. Orwig (JOURNAL OF INSTRUCTION DELIVERY SYSTEMS, vol. 9, no. 3, Summer 1995, pp. 10-12). Journal of Instruction Delivery Systems [ISSN 0892-4872] is published quarterly by the Learning Technology Institute, 50 Culpepper Street, Warrenton, VA 22186 USA; tel: 540-347-0055; fax: 540-349-3169. Subscriptions are $60/year (US/individual), $75/year (US/institutions); add $15 for subscriptions outside North America. ========================================================== DIGITAL DARWINISM For some researchers merely creating artificial intelligence is not enough. They are at work creating programs that will populate the planet with artificial creatures. In a recent SOUNDPRINT broadcast on National Public Radio titled "Digital Darwinism," producers John Keefe and Samantha Beres explored the new world of self-evolving computer organisms. They also showed how some independent computer programs, or even little robots, can develop community behavior. "Like ants at a picnic, each program or robot just fends for itself: moving around, looking for food, and collecting food. But when enough of them get together, computer societies akin to ant colonies 'emerge' with little or no human intervention." For more information on these new "life forms," go to URL http://soundprint.org:80/~soundprt/more_info/digital_darwinism.html The SOUNDPRINT radio series is produced by the SOUNDPRINT Media Center, Inc. (SMCI), a production, training and educational center based in Washington, DC. The primary purpose of SMCI is to provide the public with information through: the production and distribution of radio documentaries and other public affairs and cultural programs; the development and dissemination of audio, video and multimedia programs and ancillary print educational materials; and research, editorial and production support services. The Center's activities encompass the international arena, including the development of training workshops, producer exchanges, collaborations and co-productions, in order to inform and educate audiences both in the U.S. and abroad. For more information about SMCI and other SOUNDPRINT programs, go to URL http://soundprint.org/ ========================================================== IAT LIBRARIAN'S LINKS We have a new page on our World-Wide Web site titled "Librarian's Links." This page features pointers to miscellaneous Internet resources that are compiled/collected by the IAT librarian. This is a more informal publication than our Information Resource Guides series, and includes URLs, handouts, and demos that I use in my work at the IAT and that may be useful to others. The URL for Librarian's Links is http://www.iat.unc.edu/library/liblinks/liblinks.html ========================================================== IAT GOPHER SERVICE ENDED This month the IAT Gopher service was discontinued. All the files that were on our Gopher are available on our World-Wide Web server URL: http://www.iat.unc.edu/ and our anonymous FTP site, which was moved to a new address this month URL: ftp://ftp.iat.unc.edu/pub/ ========================================================== 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 Oscar Levant INFOBITS is also available online on the IAT's World-Wide Web site at URL: http://www.iat.unc.edu/infobits/infobits.html or can be downloaded from the IAT's anonymous FTP site at URL: ftp://ftp.iat.unc.edu/pub/infobits/ If you have problems subscribing or want to send suggestions for future issues, contact the editor, Carolyn Kotlas, at carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu ======================================================= Copyright 1995, Institute for Academic Technology. All rights reserved. May be reproduced in any medium for non-commercial purposes.