There is no doubt teachers need students to teach. Strangely enough, the converse is not as obvious because we find ourselves debating about the pros and cons of computerized instructors.
We know there are a few specialists who use their creativity and skill to ‘train’ machines. Yet, we don’t think of computer programmers as teachers or trainers. After all, we teach or train people whereas we program machines. But the difference between teaching and programming is more than just the stylistic pairing up of a verb with the matching object. Continue reading ‘MYTH OF SISYPHUS — Can Machines Replace Humans, Part 3′
Archive for May, 2003
Publishing has long been a business devoted to ink and paper. It has been an industry driven by the concept of the book as a physical form or construct. The textbook publishing industry has promoted not only the development and sale of the physical object, but has contributed heavily to our models of teaching and learning using books. Continue reading ‘Publishers and eTextbooks — The Potential of Commercial Digital Libraries’
This is by no means a complete list - it is more a list of “My Favorites”, the sites that I turn to again and again when searching or browsing for complete book texts online.
Internet Public Library Books at IPL.org. The IPL does not actually host online texts, but instead provides a searchable collection of links to online texts at other sites, currently 20,000 titles included. It is also browsable by Dewey Decimal Classification System. The project is sponsored by the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service. You will also find lots of other useful materials here, including a detailed world newspapers listing. Continue reading ‘Online Texts Extravaganza’
Okay, back to yesterday’s topic: the fact that university students are often much more aware of the university bookstore than they are of the university library. They get books for their classes in the bookstore - with library books in second place, a temporary and often individual appendage to the books required for classes. As a result, for many faculty members, the availability of books - books that are in-print, books that are affordable - is a major factor in drawing up the syllabus for a class. When I taught my Mythology-Folklore class in a traditional classroom setting, I relied heavily on inexpensive Dover Books which provide some excellent folklore titles at a low cost. Still, I knew students were not especially happy about this - the Myth-Folklore class at OU is a general education course, so the students often had no particular interest in acquiring these books, no matter how cheaply, and the bookstore was also unlikely to buy them back since every teacher had a different reading list for this course. Continue reading ‘Reading More by Reading Less: Reformatting Digital Texts For Your Students’
The excitement surrounding digital library projects is palpable - take a look at some of the materials about the FEDORA project and you’ll see why (I especially recommend this article “The Fedora Project: An Open-source Digital Object Repository Management System” - a great overview of the technology and standards, just on the edge of comprehensibility for us mere mortals; it’s great stuff). New (or at least new-ish!) technologies like XML and SOAP are allowing digital libraries to make enormous advances. The question I would like to ask is what are teachers going to be doing to make use of these new opportunities? How are we as teachers going to make sure that these digital libraries function not just as enormous research repositories, but also as something vital and transformative for how our students learn? Continue reading ‘Teaching With Digital Libraries’
MYTH OF SISYPHUS — Can machines replace humans, Part 2
Can machines replace humans? Most people would emphatically say no, at least not yet, covering up their disconcertion. But there are already people fearing for their jobs, fearing a machine will replace them as soon as such a machine becomes available, sooner or later. The real life examples of such replacements are not sufficient evidence to justify this fear, as we have seen in Part 1. We should have independent reasons for believing that machines could eventually do every type of work that humans can do. But the prevailing human vision about the future of machines is the opposite of the aforementioned fear and is found in almost all futuristic, science fiction movies. It is the vision that machines could eventually take on necessary tasks that people are not interested in, at least not for long periods of time, because their repetitive and tedious nature robs us of valuable time and energy we could invest in more creative and/or more pleasant pursuits. In addition, these machines would outperform humans in their assigned tasks. This vision represents the genuine human desire to live a better and fuller life. Continue reading ‘MYTH OF SISYPHUS — Can Machines Replace Humans, Part 2′
When one thinks of 3D visualization centers, one usually thinks of the multi-million dollar centers found in the military, petroleum industry, major hospitals and research centers, engineering, and architectural firms. They take a lot of money, time and resources. Unfortunately, they scream instant obsolescence. Many universities, conference halls, and municipal centers have early versions of these big rooms, loaded with projection equipment, screens, and dated hardware. They were great at the time. Now they are incompatible with everything. The entities who made the huge investments are finding that they are quickly losing their clients and markets to new 3D visualization centers.
However, that may be about to change, due to: Continue reading ‘3D-Visualization Centers: On the Verge of a Breakthrough’
I wrote my dissertation using WordPerfect 5.1, so please forgive me if I wax nostalgic just a bit here. WordPerfect Office 11 is out and touting itself as the alternative to Microsoft Word we’ve all been waiting for.
Now, haven’t I heard that somewhere before? Continue reading ‘In with the New, In with the Old — WordPerfect 11 Provides Insight for Keeping up with Our Users’
Economic and Political Stabilization with Low-Cost Web Enhancement
Key Players: joint operations between nations, regions, military-civilian groups, businesses and non-government organizations
This is a step-by-step approach to a low-cost way to quantum-leap the efficacy of community mobilization efforts, and to assure that joint operations (multi-national or military-civilian) achieve immediate results. Continue reading ‘INTO UTOPIA: Rebuilding Broken Safety Nets’
Effective Stabilization Requires Technology-Enhanced Teamwork
Roles
– Team initiatives (invited by “at-risk” host country): implementation, training, curriculum and materials development, security technology and procedures, culture briefings, language and geographic briefings / training for non-host country team members Continue reading ‘Technology-Enhanced Stabilization Initiatives for “At-Risk” Countries’
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