TAD Consortium March 2000 Information Update 4
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CONTENTS
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NEWS/TRENDS
--- Internet can help women
achieve their rights
--- Avoiding WWW (What Went Wrong)
--- Researchers Find Link
Between Sleep and Learning
ANNOUNCEMENTS
--- Greenstar solar-powered community
centers
--- Open Source Streaming Alliance
ONLINE RESOURCES
--- Language teacher websites
--- New IDML Web site launched
--- USAID website for Democracy
and Governance (DG) sector
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HighWire Press Announces Free Access to over 130,000 Articles Free Online Full-text
Articles
PRINTED AND OTHER RESOURCES
--- SAIDE Resource Centre : Selected
Abstracts
ARTICLES
--- The Gatorade Fallacy
By Bob Heterick And Carol Twigg
--- PFIR Statement on Spam
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NEWS/TRENDS
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Internet can help women achieve their rights
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, March 8: Various speakers highlighting the role of the Internet at a panel discussion on "Women on the Web" said that the Internet can effectively be used to empower women in every field.
The discussion was organised by the British Council in connection with the International Women's Day that was celebrated in the city, as elsewhere around the world, on Wednesday.
Terming the Internet as a democratic medium they said that it could be used for promoting ideas, publishing, communicating support groups and e-commerce start ups. They said that the most amazing thing about the power of the web was the fact that all contributors were equal no matter where in the world they lived and whatever their age, religion or race.
They said that majority of the new Internet accounts in Asia were of women. They said that in a conservative society like Pakistan where sometimes movement of women is controlled by the social or cultural restrictions or due to other factors they could remain in touch with the world through the Internet.
They said it was the most inexpensive and effective way to communicate nationally as well as internationally and said there were numerous sites which catered to the information needs of women.
They said that with the Internet the women can schedule their domestic and professional work -24 hours a day and seven days a week- conveniently without compromising on either of the two.
Responding to a question, they said the Internet facility was available to a few urban centres in the country and a vast majority of women living in rural areas were still deprived of this facility. But then, the rural women's priority was to get clean water, electricity and other basic civic amenities. The Internet would follow in due course of time, they added.
To another question, that said like all other media, the Internet was also being exploited and misused by 'sick' people and a number of sites also had pornographic content but there is a way to block such sites so that children cannot access them.
Sindh Education Minister Anita Ghulam Ali, Jehan Ara, Anila Weldon, Rabia Garib, Samina Khan, director of the British Council Richard Hardwick and others also spoke on the occasion. A large number of teenagers -mostly students- actively participated in the question answer session.
APP adds: Jehan Ara, director of Enabling Technologies, in her remarks said the potential of the Internet was not being fully exploited by the people in our country.
Sindh Minister for Education, Prof Anita Ghulam Ali, remarked that women had greater ability to communicate compared to men. She said many women were now using the web and new terms were being developed each day, citing an example she said previously there were bookworms, now there are 'webworms.' She said it was unfortunate that a lot of people could not afford computers.
Earlier, in his welcome address, the director of the British Council said "Women on the Web" is intended to provide an upbeat view of the opportunities the Internet could provide to the country, particularly women.
He said the global knowledge revolution will allow leap- frogging to take place. We have already seen this happen in the developing world, and mobile telephony was one example of it. This would equally be true in the case of the Internet.
http://www.dawn.com/2000/03/09/nat3.htm
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AVOIDING WWW (WHAT WENT WRONG)
Source: I-NetBridge
Israeli firm's testing tools help minimise costly Internet failures as e-firms lose millions of dollars' worth of business due to downtime. Last month about 100 000 eager customers deluged Sony's Internet site with advance orders for the new Playstation2 games console. Overwhelmed with 60 000 hits from around the world, just one minute after online orders began at midnight, the servers running the Playstation.Com site crashed. Red-faced Sony officials conceded that demand exceeded expectations thirtyfold. Such problems are commonplace on the Web. Predicting how many users will access your site is difficult. To complicate matters, there are malicious attacks such as the recent bombardment of fake requests sent to eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon.com, which resulted in denial of service. "E-commerce is business critical. When the service is down, you lose revenue," warns Ronen Lamdan, product marketing manager at Israeli and US software testing firm Mercury Interactive. According to market research firm Forrester, companies like eBay, Cisco, Dell, Amazon.com and E*Trade have lost millions of dollars' worth of business because of downtime. "Because the Internet is public, your dirty laundry is now publicly available. Customers will be the first to notice problems," says Uri Agmon, Mercury Interactive's vice-president for international operations. An inability to cope with a large, uncontrollable volume of users and poor performance are the major problems. According to another research firm, Jupiter Communication, 46% of users have on at least one occasion been driven to alternate sites because their preferred site failed. Zona Research adds that up to US4,35bn in e-commerce sales may be lost due to unacceptable download times. So what can aggressive dot-coms or traditional bricks and mortar firms moving on to the Internet do? Because of the speed at which business is now done, they cannot delay launching new products or services on the Internet because they need lengthy software testing cycles.
For the full story go to: http://www.inet.co.za/ng2/index.html
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Taken from Ed.Net Briefs - March 13, 2000
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RESEARCHERS FIND LINK BETWEEN SLEEP AND LEARNING
Scientists have discovered a new link between sleep and memory that seriously challenges the wisdom of skimping on time spent sleeping. According to the study, published in "The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience," experiments show that when people learn a new skill, their performance does not improve until after they have had more than six and preferably eight hours of sleep. Skills and even new factual intelligence may be less important than a good night's sleep in forming many kinds of memories. According to Dr. Carlyle Smith, a professor of psychology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, this is the first study to show that humans have a sleep window for learning and memory. The research has important implications for institutions such as universities and the military, that often train people amid long bouts of sleep deprivation. More sleep might actually help improve performance.
Sandra Blakeslee
For Better Learning, Researchers Endorse 'Sleep on It' Adage"
The New York Times, March 7, 2000, D2
(http://www.nytimes.com)
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Greenstar is placing self-contained, solar-powered community centers in remote locations around the world. Each center has health facilities, including telemedicine, a classroom complete with distance learning equipment, and a business center, through which we will operate ecommerce in native cultural products. The solar array powers the unit and also purifies water for 2,200. Ecommerce is the revenue stream that pays for the facilities and brings wealth into the community. One of the main lines of product will be "digital culture" products, such as music and art, that can be duplicated and transported effortlessly, making the transaction highly efficient. The community will eventually own all these social services and a revenue stream that preserves culture by giving it market value.
You may also reference the following pertinent documents:
http://www.greenstar.org/introduction.htm
Frequently Asked Questions
http://www.e-greenstar.com/faq.htm
Digital Culture
http://www.greenstar.org/digital-culture/
E-philanthropy
http://www.greenstar.org/e-philanthropy/index.htm
Business model
http://www.e-greenstar.com/business.htm
http://www.greenstar.org/manifesto.htm
Music and Art Samples
http://www.e-greenstar.com/Music-Sample/index.htm
http://www.e-greenstar.com/PK-artwork/
Greenstar people
http://www.greenstar.org/pressroom/braintrust.htm
http://www.greenstar.org/people.htm
http://www.greenstar.org/bios.htm
Premium Partners program
http://www.e-greenstar.com/premium-partner/
Who participates
http://www.e-greenstar.com/premium-partner/info.htm
A sample page
http://www.e-greenstar.com/EarthDay/
A form to fill in
http://www.flashbase.com/forms/PremiumPartners
The legal basis
http://www.e-greenstar.com/premium-partner/agreement.htm
Thank you,
Paul Swider
Greenstar
swider@earthlink.net
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Open Source Streaming Alliance - Now!
Streaming on the Net has started to be almost the necessity of any Internet savvy organization -- imperative is to send, and even better stream, as much audio and video content as possible. The full agenda is to send a rich multimedia content and reach the global audience, delivering a message through a clear sound or crisp video, of course with the minimal cost.
The distributed set of audio/video streaming servers world wide, exchanging streams through multicast and splitting technology could provide a public domain channel for non for profit and non wealthy organizations and individuals a necessary channel for effective and global streaming, without interruptions and "net congestion" errors. Idea is very simple: when a user requests a content from one of the servers in the network, he/she gets redirected to the closest server relative to the Internet bandwidth topography. So, if a user from New York wants to listen to radio from Belgrade, he gets seamlessly connected to a server in US, which on the other side requests a stream from server in Amsterdam, being provided by one stream from Belgrade. In that way, multiple users from US do not create multiple connections to the low bandwidth server behind the infrastructural terror in Serbia. Examples are numerous, but the basic idea is clear, generate as less redundant traffic protocol for streaming, and enable low bandwidth environments to rely on solidarity in streaming from the better situated sites. That will create a diversity of content, and enable global accessibility for all voices.
The technical part of the idea is already implemented in real Network's Real Broadcast Network, bringing together a set of distributed RealMedia servers and major global telco providers. Implementation functions very well on the pure technical level, but...it relies on the Real Media standard, specifications and details are patented by Real Network, hence unknown to the rest of the world. In their promo text RN states "Our sophisticated network technology and management ensures high-quality and reliability, allowing you to focus on what's important-your site and its content",[1]. The meaning is that user(s) worldwide should be relieved from the boring questions letting The One And Only Broadcaster to deliver their content, regardless of the method and the cost. What brings us to the second painful point of RBN -- the cost. Without further elaboration, I will just cite the RBN's "Special Offer" page, [2], starting with: "Enjoy worry-free Webcasting from RBN for as little as $9,995."
The alternative solution, at least in delivering audio content is available and not very difficult to conceptualize. MP3 standard has reached incredible popularity, combining the quality of sound and open source approach. Collective intelligence of code creators worldwide, has produced numerous tools: encoders, rippers, and streaming servers - mostly like freeware software, available to everybody free of charge. Moreover, open source standard has put MP3 in a perfect position of total platform independence; any machine that has a computer chip can play a MP3 file: from PalmPilots to mainframes through stand alone devices. Servers are also available, look for example [3] or [4].
On the infrastructural side, things look also very good. The number of non for profit groups and individuals world-wide have established Internet servers with significant - or more precise with sufficient bandwidth - to create a mighty network of streaming servers. (For global distribution of the Internet bandwidth and traffic, see [5].)
So, there is just one step needed: the will and awareness for creation of the flexible and global network of distributed MP3 streaming servers. The servers might just agree to exchange streams, and establish a protocol for redirection of users. Al elements are here, available now, and it looks appealing toenable a guerilla radio from who_know_where to be as loud on the Net as it could be. Doesn't it?
[1] http://www.realnetworks.com/rbn/about.html
[2] http://www.realnetworks.com/rbn/promos.html
[5] http://www.internettrafficreport.com
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ONLINE RESOURCES
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Here is a collection of language teacher websites:
http://eleaston.com/methods.html#TeacherWebsites
And I have my own language teaching website:
Eva Easton
eva@eleaston.com
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New IDML Web site launched today, March 8, 2000.
The IDML Initiative is a multi-agency effort to create an XML-based standard for the markup and exchange of international development information. Bellanet has been involved in IDML since the beginning, and we designed the IDML web site to meet the needs of partners in the Initiative.
The new IDML web site is designed to be a participatory workspace for anyone who wishes to share or exchange content related to using XML for development information.
Content can added to the following sections of the web site:
NEWS - post an event, announcement etc.
LINKS - share links that may be of interest to people working with XML in the international development sphere. DOCUMENTS - Upload an article from your computer, or you point to a document residing on another web site. DTDs - IDML and other relevant DTDs. CONTACTS - We encourage users of the site to share their contact information. PILOT PROJECTS - An area for sharing information about pilot projects. MEETINGS – This section is for meetings related to XML in the international development context. Documentation from previous IDML meetings has been posted here.
To add content to one of the above sections of the site click on one of the section titles from the side bar menu. Within each section you will see a link which allows you to add content to this site. Once the content has been added to the site, it will be queued for posting by an administrator. The purpose of the administrative queue is strictly to filter out advertising, general spam etc.
Please send us your feedback about the site to:
* XML, the Extensible Markup Language, is a set of rules used for computer processing of electronic documents containing structured information. It is an open standard adopted by the W3C, the governing body of the World Wide Web. Implementation of XML promises to improve the management and exchange of online information.
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The U.S. Agency for International Development recently launched its new external website for the Democracy and Governance (DG) sector. This site contains a wide array of online publications, links to other democracy organizations, and in-depth, country-level information on USAID's democracy and governance programs worldwide. The site is located at http://www.info.usaid.gov/democracy.
For additional information, please contact Cheryl Sparks at USAID's Center for Democracy and Governance. (phone: (202) 661-5828; email: csparks@usaid.gov)
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From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/.
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HighWire Press Announces Free Access to over 130,000 Articles Free Online Full-text Articles
http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl
Press Release
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/00/000301highwire.html
HighWire Press
In yet another major step forward in the provision of free scholarship online, Stanford University's HighWire Press (last reviewed in the February 16, 2000 _Scout Report_) has announced that publishers of the science, technology, and medicine journals it hosts now provide free online access to the full text of more than 137,000 articles. This makes HighWire "the second-largest free full-text science archive in the world - and the largest in the life sciences - with three entirely free journals, 51 journals offering free back issues and 32 offering free trial access." Please note that the availability of back issues and length of the free trial period vary widely by journal. Users can consult the site for a list of participating journals, the back issues they offer, and the ending date of the free trial period. Click on the journal's name to access the articles. As an additional service to users who subscribe (as individuals or through their institution), some journals offer "toll-free linking" of articles, which allows users to access the full text of related articles from other journals whether or not they subscribe to those journals. [MD]
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PRINTED AND OTHER RESOURCES
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SAIDE Resource Centre : Selected Abstracts
No.2/2000
Distance Education
An Argument for the Application of
Copyright Law to Distance Education by Tomas A Lipinski. In: American Journal of Distance
Education vol.13, no.3, 1999 pp7-21.
This article presents a legal analysis of the application of copyright law to distance
education environments, particularly as it applies to Web based instruction and the
construction of electronic reserves, or so-called virtual libraries. The author argues
that revision of copyright law to allow for the reproduction, display and performance of
works in these settings is consistent with national policy and existing and developing
copyright law. The dangers of moving towards a schema of universal or compulsory licensing
of information products and services are also explored. Final, the author suggests several
possible components that new legislation or "fair use" guidelines might include.
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Bridging courses by distance education for overseas-trained professionals migrating to Australia: Practical and viability issues by Terry Evans and Paul Northcott. In: Distance Education: An International Journal vol.20, no.2, 1999 pp205-219. This article discusses the issues concerned with using distance education to help provide bridging courses for overseas trained professionals migrating to Australia. Often such courses are specialised, have small enrolments and are required on demand by the recently arrived migrant. Therefore, there are significant practical and viability problems to be expected for the providers of such courses. The article draws on work from a 1997 study of the potential and viability of distance education bridging courses for overseas-trained professionals migrating to Australia. The study was commissioned and funded by the National Office of Overseas Skills Recognition, of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, under its Evaluations and Investigations Program. A discussion is provided of the particular problems encountered in the provision of on-campus courses for students whose locations, schedules and circumstances are quite diverse. However, whilst distance education provision might seem a reasonable solution to such problems, for some professions there are particular practical matters concerning such provision. A key issue addressed is conceptualizing the viability of developing and providing such courses through distance education, and how this may help distance educators view the viability of other small "boutique" courses in distance education
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Distance Education Practice: Training and Rewarding Authors by Hilary Perraton and Charlotte Creed. London : DFID, 1999.
Many educational institutions are developing or expanding programmes of open and distance learning (ODL forthwith), mainly for students off-campus. All face difficulties in ensuring that teaching materials of the right quality are developed and produced on time. Part of the solution to the problem lies in training and part in the policies and management structures that will encourage the timely development of good materials. This report examines aspects of these solutions in two separate but complementary enquiries : the first centres on the training of course development staff in open and distance learning; the second on rewarding the writers of course material for open and distance learning. In both enquiries the authors focus mainly on developing countries. They identify the distinction between single and dual-mode institutions as a critical factor in the analysis of the data.
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Establishing Competencies and Curricula for the Distance Education Expert at the Master's Level by Mohamed Ally and Dan O Coldeway. In: Journal of Distance Education, Spring 1999, vol.14, no. 1, pp75-88.
In the last decade considerable attention has been directed toward issues to do with graduate education at a distance. In addition, concerns over the competencies and expertise required of those working as distance educators or in distance educational organizations has also received attention. Beginning in early 1993 a collaborative inquiry initiative was undertaken among staff in the Centre for Distance Education at Athabasca University, Canada, in an effort to identify the competencies required of master's level experts in distance education. A competencies analysis, curriculum plan, and eventually courses were developed for a master's level program in distance education. This article reviews this development phase and describes the recent work done to revalidate these competencies and curricula for a distance education expert at the master's level. The competencies are then clustered in four skill sets, and basic procedures for developing a taxonomy of cognitive/performance levels and an analysis of content/curricula for distance educators are described. Finally, the implications of this work for other programs and efforts in this important area are outlined.
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Quality-Interactivity Relationship in Distance Education by Guglielmo Trentin. In: Educational Technology vol.40, no.1, Jan-Feb 2000 pp17-27.
This article discusses the complex weave of elements that can help define the term "quality" in distance education. The basic assumption is that quality is not synonymous with excellence, but rather indicates the management of a continuous process aimed at bridging the gap between the expected effect (what ought to be learned) and the actual effect (what has been learned). Achieving such a result demands frequent interaction between all the components in the process. Interaction is imperative if the quality of the process is to be raised: interaction with materials, between students and their tutors/teachers, and among all the participants.
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Higher Education
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Changing Relationships between Higher Education and State by Mary Henkel and Brenda Little. London: Jessica Kingsley, 1999.
Examining the patterns of change in relationships between higher education systems and the state throughout Europe, the contributors explore the main theoretical and policy options available to policymakers, and the issues they raise for governments, institutions and academics. The book covers the following themes: the funding of higher education; the impacts of quality assurance and evaluation; higher education and graduate employment; managing diversity in higher education systems; the impact of change on the internal structures of higher education institutions.
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Technology Enhanced Learning
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Capacity Building for IT in Education in Developing Countries ed. By Gail Marshall and Mikko Ruohonen. London : Chapman Hall, 1998.
Many of the development ideas in information technology within developing countries are reflections from more developed countries. Because of this, it is important that new ideas are shared with developing countries, and that new ideas also incorporate the needs of these countries who will eventually use them. This volume examines the needs, practices, experiences, peer support and accessibility of resources, both human and technical, for information technologies in developing countries. It describes the experiences of different countries in capacity building for IT in education, and provides strategies and action plans for expanding IT in education. The main themes presented in the book are: experiences from a variety of national policies, strategies and initiatives; IT tools for teaching and learning at all levels; the role of professional and vocational bodies in IT use; IT as a teaching subject; IT tools for educational administration and support; building physical resources, skills and knowledge as well as access to those resources in developing countries, and; action plans for proposed projects at local and national levels.
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Comparing Web, Correspondence and Lecture versions of a second-year non-major Biology course by Michael Collins. In: British Journal of Educational Technology vol.31, no.1, 2000 pp21-27.
A comparison of correspondence and Web versions of the same course indicated that, although the students were very satisfied with the Web version, the correspondence section achieved the higher mean final scores in three of the four semesters while the Web course achieved the higher mean score in only one semester. A literature search indicated that there are very few studies which compare the relative successes of Web-based courses and traditional (lecture) courses as this present study does. In addition most of these other comparative studies are based on only one offering of the Web-based course, whereas the present study evaluates the Web-based course over four semesters.
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Is online delivery less costly than print and is it meaningful to ask? By Alistair Inglis. In: Distance Education: An International Journal, vol.20, no.2, 1999 pp220-239.
The costs of shifting from print-based to online delivery are examined in relation to the three principal rationales that are commonly advanced to justify such a shift : saving costs, improving quality, and increasing access. The projected costs of converting an existing print based subject to online delivery are analysed. Based on this analysis, it is argued that, at least in the Australian context, it is difficult to justify the shift to online delivery in terms of cost saving alone. Rather, such a shift needs to be justified in strategic terms. A possible strategic rationale for shifting to online delivery is articulated.
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Strategic Evaluation of the Impacts on Learning of Educational Technologies: Exploring Some of the Issues for Evaluators and Future Evaluation Audiences by Don Passey. In: Education and Information Technologies vol.4, no.3, pp223-250.
The United Kingdom (UK) is not alone in its decision to move forward in major ways with technological provision in schools, and has had the experience of a wide range of evaluation studies conducted over many years on which to base its planning. The author argues in this paper that neither this basis nor the methods used will necessarily equip all future needs and requirements when planning and implementing such provision, because of the shifting contextual flux in which developments are taking place, particularly regarding the fundamental position of education within society. The author considers issues facing those involved in the strategic evaluation of educational technologies, when meeting future demands.
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Web-based Training by Colin Steed. Aldershot, UK : Gower, 1999.
Web based training is becoming one of the most important tools for trainers and courseware developers. The ability to deliver training and learning online to an individual's desk offers enormous flexibility for the organization as well as the employee, cost and time savings, and the opportunity to keep pace with constant changes required for today's organizations to remain competitive. The author explains how trainers can use self-paced, online learning to develop and train employees and improve their performance. He outlines the benefits and drawbacks of web based training, looks at the cost considerations, and examines the elements that make up a programme. There is coverage of what is currently available on the market as well as in-depth case material drawn from organizations that have already begun to use the technology. Using step-by-step procedures, and assuming no technical knowledge this book aims to help readers design their own web based training strategy.
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Vocational Education & Training
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VET in the Learning Age: The Challenge of Lifelong Learning by Peter Kearns et al. Leabrook, South Australia: NCVER, 1999.
The purpose of the project was to assist policy makers and the community to understand and deal with the challenges facing the VET sector and associated areas of education in the transition to a Learning Society. The study involved the following objectives: To clarify the concept of lifelong learning in the current socio-economic context of VET, and to elucidate the implications for a range of stakeholders with an interest in VET; To consult stakeholders on the identified needs and current situation, in order to establish what is being done in relation to these needs, and to identify strategies to progress lifelong learning. These objectives had the following associated research questions: What changes, if any, are required in VET in response to the pressures for lifelong learning? What does a capability for lifelong learning involve, and what are the implications of this concept for the main stakeholders in the VET system? What is being done now to progress lifelong learning, and what gaps exist? What strategies are needed to progress a lifelong learning capability in the VET system? The study is in two volumes with the second focussing on the overview of international trends and case studies.
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ARTICLES
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Taken from The Learning MarketSpace
Copyright 2000 by Bob Heterick and Carol Twigg.
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THE GATORADE FALLACY by Bob Heterick and Carol Twigg
One of the hot topics swirling around higher education today is, who owns online courses and course materials? The AAUP says it's the faculty; the AAU says it's the university. The battle lines are being drawn.
The Chronicle of Higher Education is doing yeoman service in fanning the flames of controversy. Here's a sample of what we mean: "Professors and university administrators are jockeying for control and ownership of fundamental elements of teaching--course materials and the courses themselves. For centuries, professors have prepared lectures, organized readings, and created exams without worrying about who owned them. But now the growth of distance education and the widespread use of multimedia course materials have convinced some administrators and faculty members that they're sitting on gold mines: It might be possible to package college courses and sell them over the Internet or on disks."
Those who have strong views on this subject appear to be driven by a belief that there is, indeed, gold in them thar hills. When eminent figures in higher education like Teachers College president Arthur Levine start talking about the "Hollywoodization of academia" and predicting that faculty members with popular online courses will have academic agents and appear on the Jay Leno show, the nature of the intellectual property conversation changes considerably.
If Arthur Levine is correct (and perhaps even if he is not), colleges and universities and their faculty members seem poised to go to the mat on the ownership issue. Two recent developments illustrate this digital divide, one which has the potential to be a more serious problem for higher education than the question of pc ownership.
The first confirms the idea that celebrity faculty members may find new markets for their courses and personally reap the benefits, both professionally and financially. Arthur Miller, a well-known Harvard University law professor, is supplying videotapes of his lectures to the Concord University School of Law, an on-line institution. Harvard officials say he is violating university policy by providing course material to another law school without permission.
Mr. Miller disagrees, saying that because he doesn't teach at Concordia or interact with its students, he is not violating Harvard's policies. He says his arrangement with Concord is analogous to publishing a book or giving a lecture on television. Concord notes that Mr. Miller is one of several professors who provide course material to their law school but don't teach there and that Harvard is the first institution to raise objections.
The Arthur Miller case raises the question of whether universities will be able to hang on to the best of their professors in the years ahead if they restrict their ability to sell themselves and their courses to other providers. If a professor truly has "star quality," can the university realistically expect to own a piece of the action?
The folks at the University of Chicago and UNEXT.com seem to think so. And they think they can own more than a piece. UNEXT.com plans to use the faculty expertise of a number of select universities like Chicago, Columbia and Stanford to develop a series of business-oriented courses. UNEXT.com will sell the courses to multinational and overseas corporations, who will then deliver the courses to their employees worldwide.
Under the UNEXT.com business model, contracts make clear that the content going to the company comes from the institutions, not from any particular faculty member, and that the university, not the professors, will own the rights to any intellectual property that is developed. UNEXT.com pays the universities in return for receiving help from faculty members to produce courses or short lessons. The money goes to the universities, which will then compensate the participating faculty members under terms each institution devises.
According to the Chronicle, Chicago's provost Geoffrey Stone says that while no particular professor will be compelled to participate, the university will consider participation with UNEXT.com as part of business-school faculty members' teaching responsibilities, for which they will receive compensation or release time.
Hmmm . . . university professors as wage slaves. What would Karl Marx have to say about that?
Why would the University of Chicago take a position so at odds with academic tradition? It's that gold in them thar hills. The Chronicle quotes a Stanford official as saying, "Universities missed out on making money on textbooks. That's why they're signing. It's their way of getting a piece of the action." Ever vigilant to a flame-fanning opportunity, the Chronicle editorializes, "Should the privately held UNEXT.com go public, the participating universities would have the right to convert their royalties into stock, giving the institutions insider opportunities to capitalize on Wall Street's fever for Internet start-ups and for profit education companies."
Whatever you may think about economics professors trading quips with Jay Leno or the University of Chicago as the next amazon.com, the significance of these two cases goes beyond their particular instances. They are framing the debate over who owns online courses and course materials, not just for our medallion institutions but for virtually every college and university in the country. The result is an atmosphere of fear, anger and anxiety throughout higher education which, in our view, is destructive to the internal fabric of our institutions at a time when we need to pull together to meet our many challenges. What both have in common symbolically is that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Some argue that there's more to it than money, that issues of continued use of educational materials and offering courses at competing institutions are at stake as well. There is some truth in these assertions, but faculty have moonlighted at competing institutions for decades and continued use seems easy to resolve when there's no money at stake.
Before you form a committee to revise your intellectual property policies and before you start to draw lines in the sand, we suggest you take a long, hard look at the likelihood that courses and course materials developed at your institution will be the e-equivalent of Gatorade. Are we really going to look the faculty in the eye and say, "We used to let you own your course materials, but that was before we realized there was money to be made off them."
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PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
PFIR Statement on Spam
Greetings. One of the increasingly disruptive and costly forces on the Internet today is what has become known as "spam"--more officially called "UBE"--unsolicited bulk e-mail, or "UCE"--unsolicited commercial e-mail. Spam threatens to drown electronic mail users, and the Information Service Providers (ISPs) who host e-mail and other crucial networking capabilities, in a sea of unwanted electronic garbage.
The use of the word spam in this context, by the way, is probably coined from a segment of the classic "Monty Python's Flying Circus" TV series, where a group of boisterous Vikings repeatedly interrupt other characters by singing the praises of a famous canned luncheon meat. The term was originally applied to annoying messages on the Usenet netnews network and then made its way into the lexicon of the e-mail world.
There's nothing at all funny about e-mail spam. It's difficult to overstate the waste of money, time, and good will triggered by the uncaring organizations and individuals who generate this trash. While spam can focus on any product or service, it tends to skew towards promoting Internet porn sites, multi-level marketing scams, fake illegal cable TV descrambler plans, and one of the biggest categories of all, software and mailing lists for...sending out even more spam! Some spam is disguised to look as if the recipient has "accidently" received someone else's e-mail--which just happens to contain a useless stock pick, "secret" Web address to visit, or news about some "wonderful" product that just can't be missed.
Spammers compile the e-mail addresses for their massive mailings from many varied sources. It is unfortunately almost impossible for the average e-mail recipient to accurately determine the origin for much of the spam that they receive. Spam messages often have forged sender addresses and falsified message headers, and are frequently relayed in vast quantities through naive or careless third party sites, exploiting openings in the mail server software systems that were originally designed for a much more benign and cooperative networking environment.
The spammers frequently attempt to justify their abusive practices on First Amendment grounds, or by pointing to physical bulk mail advertising delivered by the postal service as a comparable situation. But it's the *sender* who pays the cost of delivering conventional mail (via postage fees), while it's the recipients and the service providers who foot the bill for spam, and these enormous costs in money and time end up being borne by *all* e-mail users.
Most reputable firms have quickly learned that sending out unsolicited commercial e-mail will result in many angry recipients who typically will have no reservations about making their displeasure known. There have been predictions from some quarters that e-mail marketing will be "bigger than banner ads" and that recipients will get used to it. There are certainly many who would dispute this view! Even firms who send e-mail solicitations to their "established" customers or visitors (perhaps after registration at a Web site) must tread with caution. If recipients feel that they never really opted-in for such mailings, or that they have no simple way to control them, they are likely to consider such messages to be simple spam, to be complained about and possibly reported to their ISPs just like all the rest.
Most ISPs will immediately cancel the accounts of users found to be sending spam, and sometimes charge penalty fees as well. Being involved in the generation or transmission of spam can also cause problems for entire sites, even for "accidentally" open mail relay sites who were not knowingly relaying spam messages. Sites found to be in the transmission path of spam may find themselves added to publicly accessible e-mail blocking lists. These lists are widely referenced to block all e-mail sent by or through offending sites.
It's certainly in the interest of all sites, however large or small they might be, to take proactive steps to assure that their mail systems are closed to unauthorized mail relaying, and for businesses and individuals alike to think long and hard before embarking on a spamming campaign.
Continuing technical and legislative actions will be needed to bring spam into some semblance of control. The latter course *is* controversial—there are concerns that poorly drafted legislation might cause new problems, or possibly affect categories of Internet speech that aren't truly spam—but spamming is intolerable in the long run. Both state and federal efforts have progressed to various levels, with some related laws already on the books.
A number of common spamming actions, such as the hijacking of third-party mail relay servers for spam transmissions, could potentially be prosecuted under other computer crime laws. However, as in the case of dealing with computer hacking (please see the "PFIR Statement on Hacking" - http://www.pfir.org/statements/2000-03-05), it's important that the punishment fit the crime, and that a naive individual spammer sucked in by a commercial spamming software pitch not be treated the same as the big money pros who actually drive the spamming machine.
Given the interstate and international nature of the Internet, none of these efforts at control will be easy, but until spamming is clearly illegal, even starting down the path to reasonable solutions is extremely difficult. We know for sure that self-regulation will never work in this case!
In the meantime, there are some things that individuals can do to try deal with spam. Some software packages will attempt to detect and delete spam as it arrives in mailboxes, but you still have to download it all, and by then much of the wasteful damage has also already been done to servers and ISPs. You may wish to contact your service provider and provide them with *full* headers from the spam messages. ISPs should have resources to help track down spammers' origins or can provide you with more detailed information.
Be warned though! Many spam messages ask that you send a reply to a specific e-mail address to be "removed" from their mailing lists. In general, you should never make such replies--they're often used only to verify valid e-mail addresses for future spam mailings! And perhaps most importantly, never, ever buy from a spammer. Responding positively to any spam, no matter how enticing it may make its pitch, only serves to help perpetuate the spamming specter.
Lauren Weinstein
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Telematics for African Development Consortium
P.O. Box 31822
Braamfontein
2017
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel: +27 +11 403-2813
Fax: +27 +11 403-2814
neilshel@icon.co.za
www.saide.org.za
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visit:
www.saide.org.za/tad/archive.htm
* For resources on distance education and
technology use in Southern Africa visit:
www.saide.org.za/worldbank/Default.htm
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