To: web-eye
From: alan <levine@maricopa.edu>
Subject: web's eye view (June 14, 1999)
Cc: 
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 __     __ __     __ __     __  web's eye view (June 14, 1999)
| | /| / /| | /| / /| | /| / /  alan levine                        
| |/ |/ / | |/ |/ / | |/ |/ /   Maricopa Center for Learning & Instruction
|__/ |__/ |__/|__/  |__/|__/    http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/eye/
===========================================================================

Today is Flag Day! In honor of that, we have a read, whihc, and 
blue fresh bag of URLs is ready for pickup at
   http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/eye/bag/curr.html


Bag of AlertBoxes
=================
Former Sun web iterface designer Jakob Nielsen writers a regular
web column on usability issues.
See http://www.useit.com/

| The Alertbox for May 16 is now online at:
| http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990516.html
| Major websites violate 16% of the top ten mistakes in Web design
| on the average; huge corporate sites have many more design
| mistakes than the most popular sites (i.e., those that get the
| most traffic).


| The Alertbox for May 30 is now online at:
| http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990530.html
| New technology and conventions have led to several new classes of
| usability problems in Web design:
| 
| 	1. Breaking or Slowing Down the Back Button
| 	2. Opening New Browser Windows
| 	3. Non-Standard Use of GUI Widgets
| 	4. Lack of Biographies
| 	5. Lack of Archives
| 	6. Moving Pages to New URLs
| 	7. Headlines That Make No Sense Out of Context
| 	8. Jumping at the Latest Internet Buzzword
| 	9. Slow Server Response Times
| 	10. Anything That Looks Like Advertising

 
| The Alertbox for June 13 is now online at:
| http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990613.html
| New official standards make it easy to get the top priorities
| right and make websites accessible for users with disabilities
| (e.g., blind users who can't see images). But the single-design
| approach may be nearing the end of its life.


Rapidly Changing Face of Computing
==================================
"Rapidly Changing Face of Computing" is a weekly technology journal providing insight, analysis and commentary on contemporary computing and the technologies that drive them. The RCFoC is written by Jeffrey R. Harrow 
http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc

Example:

| Technology Is Being Adopted Ever-Faster -- One measure of when a
| technology "makes it" is when it has garnered 50 million users.
| When electricity was introduced it took 50 years to reach that
| point. Broadcast radio took 38 years. TV took just 13 years. And
| the Web? About 3. And growing strong. And growing faster...
| 
| And you wonder why you're suffering from a case of technological
| whiplash? http://www.digital.com/rcfoc/19990607.htm


Internet Scout
==============
Another great source of web sites for educators is the Internet
Scout, which has been combing the web for 5 years.
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/

| Condition of Education 1999 -- NCES [.pdf, 375p.]
| http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=1999022
| 
| The US Department of Education's National Center for Education
| Statistics (NCES) has recently placed online the 1999 edition of
| the well regarded _Condition of Education_ (last reviewed in the
| August 16, 1996 Scout Report). This compendium of 60 indicators
| selected by education studies professionals  and based on data
| from various NCES studies describes the "current status and
| recent progress of education in the United States." The
| indicators are arranged in five categories: Learner Outcomes;
| Quality of Education Environments (Elementary/Secondary); Quality
| of Education Environments (Postsecondary); Social Support for
| Education; and Educational Participation and Progress. Users may
| download the publication in its entirety or by section in .pdf
| format. Two sets of supplemental tables, totalling over 100
| pages, are also available. [MD]


Bag of EDUPAGE columns
======================
EDUPAGE is a great email resource for technology news "snippets"
See http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/edupage.html

| COPYRIGHT OFFICE RELEASES RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ON-LINE DISTANCE
| EDUCATION 
| A report from the U.S. Copyright Office makes several
| recommendations for changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright
| Act in order to protect educators' ability to use copyrighted
| materials in distance education.  The act was passed last October
| to prevent piracy as an increasing number of copyrighted
| materials have become available online, but some
| distance-learning experts say the act limits use of educational
| materials in online classrooms.  Traditionally, educators have
| been granted fair-use exemptions from copyright laws, allowing
| them to use materials such as book excerpts, audio recordings,
| and motion pictures in the classroom.  To maintain that right,
| the report suggests a number of steps: lawmakers should clarify
| laws to lessen the distinction between traditional and
| distance-learning classrooms; teachers should voluntarily
| incorporate education about copyright laws into their classrooms
| in order to prevent piracy; students should be given a password
| to grant them access to copyrighted materials; the materials
| should be removed from computers and servers when they become
| unnecessary; and classroom exemptions from copyright laws should
| be granted only to non-profit institutions, as they have in the
| past.  (Chronicle of Higher Education Online 06/02/99)

| NEW TECHNOLOGY MAKES WORK HARDER 
| Communication technology is distracting office workers, according
| to a joint report commissioned by Pitney Bowes and conducted by
| the Institute for the Future and Gallup.  The study surveyed
| workers in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Germany.  It found
| that most workers are interrupted by telephones, faxes, and
| e-mail every 10 minutes. Workers in the U.S. receive an average
| of 200 e-mail messages per day, while in the United Kingdom
| workers receive 171 messages per day, half of which are from
| people within the workers' departments.  Although e-mail and
| electronic communication is intended to save time and ease
| communication, they can become a burden, as 38 percent of U.K.
| workers claim that they are very distracted by the interruptions.
| The report suggests that people communicating internationally
| should consider that different countries prefer different methods
| of interaction.  Although almost all U.S. workers use voice mail
| every day, only one-third of German workers do.  Furthermore,
| twice as many British workers use mobile phones daily than in the
| U.S. or Germany.  (BBC News Online 06/01/99)

| UCLA PLANS TO TRACK INTERNET'S LONG-TERM EFFECT ON SOCIETY
| UCLA today will announce plans to conduct a decades-long survey
| of the Internet's social impact in as many as 18 countries.
| Thousands of households will participate in the study, which is
| receiving corporate backing from AOL, Microsoft, Walt Disney,
| Sony, and others.  Costs for the study are expected to run
| upwards of $800,000 per year.  UCLA's Center for Communication
| Policy is overseeing the study.  The study will focus in
| particular on how households with Internet access differ from
| those that do not; research shows that less than 25 percent of
| U.S. households have Internet access.  Two thousand U.S.
| households will participate in the first phase of the survey,
| which kicks off within six weeks.  Organizations in Italy and
| Singapore will participate in the study in its first year, and
| some 15 other countries will likely join them within five years,
| says Jeffrey Cole, director of UCLA's communication policy
| center.  (Los Angeles Times 06/08/99)
 
| NEW REPORT OF SUPPLY OF TECHNOLOGY WORKERS INCLUDES
| RECOMMENDATIONS FOR COLLEGES 
| Colleges and universities should offer more information
| technology training to relieve the shortage of IT workers,
| concluded a report by 23 university and industry experts.
| Although the report could not prove definitively that there is a
| shortage of workers in the industry, enough anecdotal evidence
| was found to suggest that the supply is limited.  Particularly
| strained areas are Java designers and programmers, Internet and
| electronic commerce specialists, network designers,
| software-project managers, and experienced college faculty
| members.  Among the report's 37 suggestions to colleges and
| universities are increased access to computer-science departments
| and stronger integration between computer-science, business, and
| communications curriculum.  Graduate programs should be more
| technology-oriented, transforming computer-science,
| computer-engineering, and information-science courses into
| certificate programs that would entice mathematicians,
| physicians, biologists, and engineers. (Chronicle of Higher
| Education Online 06/08/99)
| 
| IS EDUCATION THE NEXT ONLINE MONEY-MAKER?
| A number of education-related companies have announced plans to
| incorporate distance learning into their educational methods.
| These programs will be designed for professionals who want
| additional training in their fields, as well as for children who
| want to supplement their school education.  7thStreet.com is
| expanding its distance learning offerings greatly, adding more
| than 150 information technology courses in a partnership with
| Cytation.com, and preparing for a joint venture with AOL to make
| its courses available to AOL users.  Learning.Net has also
| established a distance learning site offering continuing
| education, recurrent training, and certification programs for
| professionals and businesses.  The program notifies professional
| organizations or state boards when a student finishes a course,
| and professional organizations can monitor a student's progress
| in each course.  Global DataTel and EDUVERSE are partnering to
| provide Spanish and Portuguese versions of English as a second
| language distance learning programs.  The companies will offer
| the EDUVERSE's programs on eHola's Web site, as well as
| EDUVERSE's freeENGLISH.com Web site. (E-Commerce Times 06/04/99)
| 
| SURF YOUR WAY INTO COLLEGE
| For many years, various companies have offered scholarships and
| prizes to students who excel in one field or another.  Now some
| companies are looking for students who are whizzes at Internet
| research or who design nifty Web sites or games or programs.
| ArsDigita head Phillip Greenspun is looking for teenagers "who
| can contribute to an interesting and useful Internet future," and
| ArsDigita is awarding $10,000 and access to the company's digital
| equipment to a top young programmer with a useful site.
| Accounting.Net offers scholarships for accounting students--they
| must explain how the Internet has changed the business.  The
| Chicago Tribune awards local children who design sites for
| nonprofit groups, and the Technology Association of Georgia looks
| for Web sites by and about Georgia high school students. (PC
| World Online 06/03/99)
 
| RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES TEAM UP TO CREATE A 'PORTAL' FOR ONLINE
| EDUCATION
| Fourteen prominent schools are collaborating to provide a central
| Internet site listing their distance learning courses.  The
| participating schools, public and private, are members of the
| Research I division of the Carnegie Classification.  The site
| will be organized by the University of Washington to provide a
| central directory for distance learning courses offered by
| Research I universities.  Online students will earn a degree from
| a member school.  The participating schools are: Massachusetts
| Institute of Technology; New York University; Pennsylvania State
| University; Stanford University; University of British Columbia;
| University of California at Berkeley; University of California at
| Los Angeles; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;
| University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; University of North
| Carolina at Chapel Hill; University of Pennsylvania; University
| of Texas at Austin; University of Washington; University of
| Wisconsin at Madison.  All other Research I schools are welcome
| to participate. (Chronicle of Higher Education Online 06/10/99)