Welcome to the May 2004 issue of the IU News. The lead story this month reviews recent presentations by IU staff about Scholar's Box development, and the related issues of "interoperability"—specifically, enabling connections between educational technologies and digital libraries and repositories. In April, the IU was a participant at the Task Force Meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information in Alexandria, Virginia, and at the Forum of the Digital Library Federation in New Orleans. Read more about the Scholar's Box, and how IU work is helping shape development of tools for scholars, teachers and students that will open up easy access to numerous existing and emerging storehouses of information and knowledge. Other May stories include campus updates about fall enrollment and budget issues, links to OP ED pieces about education, a story about baseball and blogging, a link to an encyclopedia of educational technology, and the updated list of upcoming events and opportunities for professional development, both on and off campus. The lead story is introduced on the IU Main page and printed in full below. Stories featured in this issue are:
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Scholar's Box Presentations
The IU continues development of the Scholar's Box: a collection of tools that enables users to gather resources from multiple digital repositories, and from them create personal and themed collections, and other reusable materials, that can be saved, shared, and accessed for teaching and research. When fully operational, the Scholar's Box will enable the easy integration of digital learning objects into curricula, and will interoperate with other common user tools.
In April IU team members traveled to the Spring 2004 Task Force Meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and to the Spring Forum of the Digital Library Federation (DLF), to present some of the latest Scholar's Box developments. While these two organizations are distinct, with separate missions and constituents, they share an interest in assessing and identifying standards and "best practices" for digital collections and network access, as well as a focus on initiatives and services that expand access to resources for scholars and to online collections for use in teaching, and, in general, the enhancement of teaching and learning through information and educational technologies.
These areas of interest are central to Scholar's Box and IU work as well. The two meetings provided opportunities for the IU to explain the challenge and context of developing a Scholar's Box environment that connects digital libraries, educational technologies, personal information spaces, and social software, while showcasing progress in Scholar's Box work and related IU partnerships.
At the CNI Task Force Meeting, the IU and the California Digital Library (CDL) gave a joint presentation. Joined by the CDL's Peter Brantley, IU's David Greenbaum and Raymond Yee talked about and demonstrated the current version of the Scholar's Box, and reported on the CDL/IU collaboration during this development process. The presentation began with a discussion of the current need for tools that will "help content flow," and the IU's effort address this need with tools that enable content and collections to flow into teaching and learning practices. The Scholar's Box Project is working to make it easier to:
- Gather digital cultural objects from many sources;
- Collaboratively create themed collections of research and learning materials that may be shared;
- Build personal collections of digital objects;
- Integrate digital primary sources into teaching and learning products;
- Interoperate with other common end-user and institutional tools to manipulate and present digital objects.
The presentation also showcased the current Scholar's Box capabilities with a demonstration, and concluded with an outline of the CDL's expectations and frameworks for development of tools and environments that will:
- Permit faculty and students to discover, access, and use information from a diversity of sources;
- Allow for user-customized needs and preferences;
- Ensure that the digital products can be captured, managed, and shared.
In a second presentation at CNI, which was repeated a few days later at the Spring Forum of the Digital Library Federation (DLF), IU's Greenbaum teamed with Dale Flecker, from the Harvard Library, and Leslie Johnston, from the University of Virginia Library, in a report on initiatives higher education might take to lower the barriers to use of the large and growing body of digital resources held in a variety of repositories, with a goal of enabling and promoting interoperability. (Interoperability: the ability of different types of computers, networks, operating systems, and applications to work together effectively, without prior communication, in order to exchange information in a useful and meaningful manner.)
In fact, the IU has been part of a working group, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the DLF, to investigate how to enhance access to content and foster use of emerging digital repositories. The group includes members from Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Columbia, and the Universities of Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, as well as Mellon supported initiatives such as JSTOR, and ArtStor.
The report, an outcome of Mellon support, included a set of use-case scenarios and a discussion of digital repository services needed to make digital content usable by learning applications. Much current work is being done to make the most effective use of digital content in teaching, and it has become clear that learning applications need to be able to easily interoperate with digital repositories so that teachers and students can discover, access, view, quote, adapt, and evaluate appropriate learning material. Unfortunately, many data sources have not been designed to interoperate with other repositories or with learning applications. And it was to address and investigate these needs that the Mellon working group was convened and set to work.
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An Emergence of Tools for Digital Research
As the Interactive University Project's work on the Scholar's Box continues to explore the challenges of interoperability between digital libraries and other repositories with desktop and web-based tools, there is much discussion and development in the Higher Education and commercial worlds about the kinds of tools and standards needed for widespread implementation and adaptation of Scholar's Box-like functionality.
Increasingly, universities and libraries want to find ways to provide public access to vast digital archives, and also provide user tools to gather digital resources from multiple sources in order to create personal collections and new content that can be reused and shared with others.
At the desktop level, for example, Apple's iLife suite of tools has already demonstrated how integration of desktop tools and personal collections can support the user's creation of albums, music, and movies. Currently, a number of proposals and projects are emerging that point to a growing network of similar initiatives with the central goal of enabling users to move into the realm of digital gathering, creating, and sharing, The following two lists briefly highlight several new and emerging projects and products:
Higher Education
- At the Digital Library Federation's Spring Forum 2004 in New Orleans, UCLA's Curtis Fornadely, Digital Library Architect, and Howard Batchelor, Project Coordinator, presented Toward a User-Centered Digital Library, in which they discuss how libraries are in a time of transition and need to make library collections more usable.
- Brad Wheeler of Indiana University, Bloomington, recently presented the Twin Peaks Navigator (Powerpoint), a demonstration addressing the need integrate functionality between course management systems and digital libraries for faculty and student use.
- At Penn State the Lionshare project, lead by Mike Halm, aims to "facilitate legitimate file-sharing among individuals and educational institutions around the world. By using Peer to Peer (P2P) technology and incorporating features such as authentication, directory servers, and owner controlled sharing of files, LionShare promises secure file-sharing capabilities for the easy exchange of image collections, video archives, large data collections, and other types of academic information."
- The University of Texas at Austin has launched Utopia, a "new initiative designed to open the University’s doors of knowledge, research, and information to the public."
- The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) project at Tufts' Academic Technology department "provides faculty and students with flexible tools to successfully integrate digital resources into their teaching and learning. VUE provides a visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information, and an OKI-compliant software bridge for connecting to FEDORA-based digital repositories. Using VUE's concept mapping interface, faculty and students design customized semantic networks of digital resources drawing from digital libraries, local files and the Web. The resulting content maps can then be viewed and exchanged online.
Commercial Products (with some descriptive phrases from the developers)
- The Night Kitchen's aim is to "provide tools to change the future of desktop publishing," an example of which is TK3, "both a new format for multimedia electronic documents and a flexible, easy assembly tool for making them."
- Net Snippets is an Internet Explorer toolbar with a "drag & drop interface. Net Snippets enables the aggregation of selective information and entire files including PDF, MS Office files, Emails, Video and Audio from the web or from your local PC into your Net Snippets folders right inside the browser. Every Snippet is saved along with its source information and other metadata such as personal comments, level of relevancy and keywords."
- Onfolio "is a PC application for collecting, organizing and sharing information you find online. Fully integrated with Microsoft Internet Explorer and Office, Onfolio has tools for capturing a wide range of content including links, text snippets, images, web pages, and documents."
- ContentSaver bills itself as a web information manager, "both an Internet Explorer Add-on and an office style application at the same time: With the additional toolbar and the extended shortcut menu in Internet Explorer, you can easily gather material during your Internet research. Later, you can view and organize it in ContentSaver, a MS Outlook-style application . . ."
- YellowPen is another web-based research manager and organizer that includes online storage and the ability to collaborate and share resources.
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Y-PLAN Students Present at Oakland City Hall
The Y-PLAN Project (Youth — Plan, Learn, Act, Now), has worked with high school students in West Oakland for the past five years, providing them with opportunities to participate in, and understand, urban planning and design. Each year the project's focus changes—responding to redevelopment needs within the community.
"The goal is to get local youth involved in the development and vibrancy of their own community, sort of a living classroom," said Deborah McKoy, IU's Research Coordinator and Director of the Cities and Schools Project in UC Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning.
This year's students have worked in two areas: youth visions for the new commercial space on Seventh Street, and a cultural history project to identify West Oakland's social movements, identities and culture. They will present their proposals and plans before the Oakland City Council at City Hall on May 4th, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., in Hearing Room 3, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza.
Read the Oakland Tribune's account of this year's Y-PLAN work here.
Read about past Y-PLAN work and awards here and here.
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Campus Bids Chancellor Berdahl Farewell
In June UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl will step down from the post he has held since his appointment on March 6, 1997. Berdhal's successor has not yet been named.
Last month, at the University's Charter Day celebration on April 15, a Berkeley campus ceremony in Zellerbach Hall honored Chancellor Berdahl and his wife Peg for their seven years of leadership and service.
An article in the Berkeleyan describes the Charter Day accolades, which included two hours of tributes to the Berdahls from faculty, staff, students, and members of the city of Berkeley community. Speaker after speaker thanked and praised the chancellor for, as one of them said, “courage and compassion that have sustained Cal through tragedy, terror, and war.”
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Paul Gray presented the Chancellor with the Berkeley Citation, saying that Berdahl would be remembered “for his humanity, as a wise person with integrity, humor, and thoughtfulness.”
Berdahl reflected on his accomplishments, but did not refrain from mentioning those areas in which he wished he had been able to make more progress. After sadly noting that, for the first time since California instituted its Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California would not be able to guarantee admission to all eligible students, he repeated a passage from Hannah Arendt that he had included in his inaugural address:
Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token to save it from the ruin which, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing the common world.
Read the entire article about Chancellor Berdahl, by Bonnie Azab Powell, in the Berkeleyan.
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Update: UC Budget Issues For 2004/2005
The economic downturn has had a significant impact upon the state's finances that has resulted in a decrease in the level of state funding available for the University of California.
In his 2004-05 state budget proposal, the governor proposed UC fee increases of 10 percent ($498) for resident undergraduates and 40 percent ($2,088) for resident graduate academic students. Nonresident tuition also would increase 20 percent. Most professional school fees would increase substantially as well; the governor's proposal did not specify fee levels for these schools, but proposed that state support for them be reduced by an average of 25 percent.
The proposed student fee increases are part of a series of budget cuts anticipated for UC — including cuts in freshman enrollments, research, outreach, administration, and many other programs — to help address the large state budget deficit.
In a letter to University of California students and parents, dated March 16, UC President Robert Dynes stated:
The University is doing all it can to take a balanced approach in addressing budget shortfalls-no program will be immune from the effect of these reductions. Our campuses are making every effort to absorb budget cuts in a way that preserves the quality of the instructional program for our students, However, cuts to our existing resources alone cannot make up the deficit in state funding we are experiencing.
For more, and current, information about the California budget situation and its effect on the University, visit this page.
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UC Berkeley Fall 2004 Admissions Snapshot
Figures released by UC Berkeley officials on April 20, 2004, show that 8,887 high school students from across the state were offered admission. This group represents a talented and high-achieving pool of potential UCB students. But the figures released also show what officials call "disappointing" data on underrepresented students offered admission to Berkeley.
The number of underrepresented students has dropped at most campuses in the University of California system. While university officials cannot explain this drop, associated factors include a drop in applications; state budget cuts along with proposed student fee increases; actual cuts in funding for outreach; and, overall, a more competitive pool of student applicants.
At UC Berkeley, statistics also suggest there were fewer offers of admission to students from low-income families. This group typically attends lower performing high schools. Financial aid data show more than a 10 percent drop in admitted students who qualified for federal Pell grants. There also was a 13 percent decline in admitted students who qualified for the federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants that are reserved for students with exceptional financial need.
Read more about this year's UC Berkeley freshman admissions here.
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Berkeley Professor David Kirp on Wealth and Higher Education
UC Berkeley Professor of Public Policy, David Kirp has recently published a book that explores the influence of the marketplace on institutions of higher education. Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education relates, as its publisher Harvard University Press states, "stories of marketing incursions into places as diverse as New York University's philosophy department and the University of Virginia's business school, the high-minded University of Chicago and for-profit DeVry University. He describes how universities 'brand' themselves for greater appeal in the competition for top students; how academic super-stars are wooed at outsized salaries to boost an institution's visibility and prestige; how taxpayer-supported academic research gets turned into profitable patents and ideas get sold to the highest bidder; and how the liberal arts shrink under the pressure to be self-supporting."
In a piece that lends significance to the admissions statistics discussed in the article above, on April 30, 2004, Kirp wrote, on the New York Times editorial page,
Yet another string of studies confirms what any high school senior or parent who has just weathered the college admissions mating dance already knew — it's a cutthroat competition where money matters more than ever. Teenagers from wealthy families are beating out middle- and working-class youngsters, both at top private colleges and flagship state universities whose historic mission of broad access is receding into memory. The trend means that "smart poor kids," as the educator Terry Hartle bluntly puts it, "go to college at the same rate as stupid rich kids."
Read Kirp's entire NYT editorial, "And the Rich Get Smarter", here.
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Nearing "The Claps Of Civilization?"
By Jaime O'Neill
I have been writing about student ignorance for more than 20 years. The first piece I wrote on the subject appeared in Newsweek, and it prompted lots of media attention, including a segment on "60 Minutes.'' The media attention helped fuel the "cultural literacy" movement that swept education circles during the late '80s and early '90s.
Once all of the symposia had been conducted, the seminars completed, the papers written, and the meetings held, it turned out that nothing whatsoever was done to institute reform, or to restructure curricula. Educational bureaucrats were not able to come to a conclusion as to what a baseline knowledge might be, what cultural heritage might be worth imparting to the average high school grad.
Thus it is that none of my students knew where or what Appomattox was. Thus it is that Hiroshima and Auschwitz are slipping from national consciousness. Thus it is that not a single student could identify Robert Frost, arguably the greatest American poet of the last century. Thus it is that students leave high school without an interest in the wider world they inhabit. Last year, just as we were in the process of invading Iraq, one of my students thought that Al-Jazeera, the Arab news network, was "Ben" Laden's brother, Al.
Lately, with the weather warming, I have seen students wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Voting is for old people." Given their lack of knowledge of history and current events, perhaps it is no tragedy that a majority of young people don't bother to vote. But what happens to a democracy when so many people opt out, when fewer and fewer people bother to inform themselves of what is being done in their names? Can a connection be drawn between a know-nothing electorate and a know-nothing president? And what kind of nation presumes to export democracy by force of arms, and then fails to practice that system of government within its own borders?
Read the entire article by Jaime O'Neill from the San Francisco Chronicle's Insight section, April 25, 2004.
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Baseball And Blogging Are A Perfect Match
By Josh Levin, from Slate.
Baseball and blogging are a perfect match. Each day of the 162-game season brings a new torrent of information—another round of at-bats, boneheaded managerial moves, minor-league games, and scoreboard dot races—that requires instant analysis. There's also a huge body of baseball knowledge on the Web, ready to be mined for cross-referential links: local papers, statistical encyclopedias, analytical clearinghouses, other baseblogs. For fans living far from their favorite team, and without the time or inclination to order MLB Extra Innings, a dedicated blogger is local color—a friend who can't help but complain about the local TV announcers and a beat writer who doesn't lard his copy with boring player quotes.
Read the entire article about baseball and blogging here.
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An Encyclopedia of Educational Technology
Supported and developed at San Diego State University, The Encyclopedia of Educational Technology (EET) is a collection of short multimedia articles on a variety of topics related to the fields of instructional design and education and training. The primary audiences for the EET are students and novice to intermediate practitioners in these fields, who need a brief overview as a starting point to further research on specific topics. Authors are graduate students, professors, and others who contribute voluntarily. Articles are short and use multimedia to enrich learning rather than merely decorate the pages.
Browse or use the EET here.
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Upcoming Events
Summer 2004 Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP) courses for teachers. This summer join colleagues from throughout the Bay Area to learn in programs that are teacher-centered, interactive and collaborative. Explore and question, write and revise, read and discuss – recharge your batteries by learning with other teachers. All BAWP summer programs are led by BAWP Teacher-Consultants who are experienced classroom teachers with special expertise in the teaching of writing. Check out this summer's course listings and dates, and find a link to a registration form here.
Also from BAWP this summer, Young Writers' Camps will offer students the time and opportunity to explore their writing interests, discover their strengths and learn more about the craft of writing. The camps provide in-depth writing instruction, structured writing workshop time, flexibility in writing assignments, and daily opportunities to share writing with peers.
Through the camps, students discover the conditions and habits needed to write their best and grow in their confidence and skill. Students are encouraged to continue as writers independently and apply these skills and habits to carve out time to write in and out of school.
This summer program offers a unique opportunity for students entering grades 4 to 8 to develop their writing talents. Under the guidance of experienced UC Berkeley/Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP) Teacher Consultants, students will have a chance to grow as writers. In an atmosphere that is optimal for young writers, students will become better writers in the process of practicing their craft.
For more information and to get a registration form, click here.
The Regional Oral History Office (ROHO) at the University of California, Berkeley is offering a one-week advanced institute on the methodology, theory, and practice of oral/video history. This intensive workshop will take place at the Townsend Center for the Humanities on the UC Berkeley campus from the afternoon of Sunday, August 15, through Friday, August 20, 2004. The institute will be led by Richard Cándida Smith, Director of ROHO and Professor in the Department of History at UC Berkeley, with two distinguished visiting scholars: Luisa Passerini, Professor of History at the European University in Florence, Italy, and Ana Maria Mauad, Professor of History and Coordinator for the Laboratory of Oral History and Iconography, at Universidade Fluminense Federal, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The institute is designed for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, college faculty, and independent scholars who use oral history interviews as part of a research project. This institute is geared, as well, to community historians and others who are engaged in oral history work on an on-going basis.
See ROHO details and registration information here.
The Office of Resources for International and Area Studies (ORIAS) now has summer offerings listed at its website. These include:
Check the links above for more information about these ORIAS related offerings..
A Bridge to the Future: Technologies to Connect the Campus. Syllabus2004 is a conference for administrators, IT professionals and faculty who want to explore the application of information technology in higher education institutions and discover how new media are best integrated into the teaching and learning process.
In its 11th year, the conference features a day on the campus of University of California, Berkeley. With ample opportunity for networking, attendees will be encouraged to exchange views on the issues and challenges pertinent to teaching and administration in today's technology-enhanced environments. Visit one of the links above for details and registration information.
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