E-mail Tree Will Assist Teachers of Science
This item has been picked up by a number of news outlets on the U.S. west coast. Essentially, science teachers in California will create an "email tree' to share news and information about their subject. What's interesting is the use of the treee structure, with 300 "key leaders" coordinating points of contact. More...

Beyond the Box: How Will Television Evolve? If you thought the furor over Napster was something, wait until it hits the world of video. "If you want to see the future of television, go out and buy a TiVo," agreed Thomas McGrath, executive vice president of the Viacom Entertainment Group. More...

Computers Keep School, Parents in Touch
School administrators considering the use of the internet to communicate with parents might want to look at this example from Montana. More...

Canadian Students put Wireless Learning to the Test
A consortium of post-secondary institutes and companies from the educational publishing and technology sectors have signed a contract to launch a mobile learning pilot program at two Canadian institutions during the 2002 fall semester, Seneca College and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT). More...

High-Stakes Testing for Dentists??
Intended to be funny, this item goes overboard a bit ("His face had turned red, and from the way he was clenching and unclenching his jaws...") but the message is sound and the analogy useful: just as we would not evaluate dentists based on the number of cavities their patients have, so also should we not evaluate teachers based on their students' test results. In each case, too many factors are beyond their control: some parents don't send kids to the dentists until it's too late, for example, some eat candy and sweets, and some live in areas without flouridated water. More...

The Jack Principles
This item dates from 1997 and is directed toward teachers using interactive television, a technology on the wane. It is illustrative, though, because it lists a set of principles for "drawing the user into the pacing of the program." In my mind, these principles describe exactly the opposite of what teachers in an online learning environent should be doing. "Give the user only one task," suggests the document. Limit the number of choices they have. Make sure the user knows what to do at every moment. More...

How Object-Oriented Programming Started

It came up in a discussion yesterday so I did a quick search. For your enjoyment and edification. More...

3 Administrators Debate How Technology Is Changing the Faculty's Role
More stuff from last week's NLII in San Diego, this time from the Chronicle. Three administrators - Vicki Suter, Sidney A. McPhee, and Carl F. Berger - deate the impact of technology on traditional institutions. More...

Middleware

Index page for a number of Internet 2 presentations and resources related to middleware. I think your best bet is to review the papers here with an eye to anticipating a range of new applications. More...

Streaming Media Middleware is more than Streaming Media
This paper forms the basis of a CAMP presentation (see below) from the conference this week and is much more rewarding than the skimpy PowerPoint presentation (and conference organizers should perhaps think about posting real papers on conference web sites rather than slide shows). More...