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The admissions folks at my public university report that they regularly see prospective student email addresses like beerbashbabe@___ . And the parents know — in some cases it’s Mom or Dad who writes the email address on the form at the open house. --drj50

Dear Students With Unprofessional E-Mail Handles: Your Professors Notice

Recent Posts

Students Watch Lecture Videos in Fast Forward | Comment [9]

If Vice Chancellor Didn't Send E-Mail Message Endorsing Obama, Who Did? | Comment

A New Satellite Opens Its Eye and Sees Kutztown University | Comment

In Win for Publishers, 'Textbook Torrents' Piracy Site Shuts Down for Good | Comment [8]

Tech Therapy: Why Can't Librarians and IT Departments Just Get Along? | Comment [20]

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October 15, 2008

Students Watch Lecture Videos in Fast Forward

Some professors report that when their students are reviewing class materials, the students speed up online recordings of lectures and zip through hour-long presentations in as little as 30 minutes. Sure, their professors sound like chipmunks. But the students say they can absorb the information faster than the professors deliver it.

The latest academic to note the trend is Jan Philipp Schmidt, manager of the Free Courseware Project at the University of the Western Cape, in South Africa. “At the University of Taiwan, students watch calculus lectures between 1.6 and 2 times faster than they were recorded,” he wrote on his blog, Sharing Nicely, summing up comments he had heard at the recent Open Education Conference in Utah. Someone from a university in the Netherlands reported that students like to play videos at double speed, he wrote, “and someone from MIT said the same was true for users of MIT OpenCourseWare.”

In an interview with The Chronicle earlier this year, Al Ducharme, assistant dean of distance and distributed learning at the University of Central Florida, said that many students there speed up lecture videos so that they can watch a 50-minute lecture in about 35 minutes. “The information is coming so slowly, but students today can absorb the information much faster,” he said.

Should professors consider speeding up their acts? —Jeffrey R. Young

If Vice Chancellor Didn't Send E-Mail Message Endorsing Obama, Who Did?

Where a top administrator seems to endorse a presidential candidate in an e-mail message to students and then denies having sent that message, suspicions of hacking follow.

Elizabeth City State University, in North Carolina, is investigating “the possibility of an unauthorized use” of its e-mail account for Jean M. Sims, vice chancellor of human resources and payroll, according to a written statement from the chancellor, Willie J. Gilchrist.

The Daily Advance, a local newspaper, reported that a message appeared to have been sent from Ms. Sims’s account on September 16 urging students to support Sen. Barack Obama for president. “If you can’t register two voters, talk to two people who may be on the fence, or a McCain supporter, and sway them to become an Obama supporter,” the Advance quotes the e-mail message as saying. “Barack the vote!”

Ms. Sims has denied sending the message.

“Elizabeth City State University does not endorse any particular candidate running for public office,” said the chancellor. “There was no official effort sponsored by the university to promote a candidate.”

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign conducted a similar investigation last month when someone sent an e-mail message criticizing fraternities and sororities to every account at the institution. The message appeared to have come from the university’s chancellor. —Sara Lipka

A New Satellite Opens Its Eye and Sees Kutztown University

A detail of the GeoEye-1 photograph of the Kutztown U. campus. (GeoEye image)

A brand-new commercial satellite with a high-resolution camera snapped its first picture last week — a view of Kutztown University, in Pennsylvania, from 423 miles up.

The new satellite, GeoEye-1, was launched last month and cost $502-million. Although it is sponsored by Google, which will use its images in Google Maps and Google Earth, the satellite’s main customer will be the U.S. government’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, according to Wired Science. The satellite’s cameras are capable of picking up items as small as about 16 inches across, but a government rule will prevent GeoEye from selling such detailed images commercially. The company will, however, be able to market images showing items as small as about 20 inches across.

Why Kutztown? “When we opened the camera door at noon on October 7 and looked down on the Earth 423 miles below, the school was underneath us,” said Mark E. Brender, GeoEye’s vice president for communications and marketing, in an e-mail message to The Washington Post. “It is truly our first image.” —Lawrence Biemiller

October 14, 2008

In Win for Publishers, 'Textbook Torrents' Piracy Site Shuts Down for Good

A popular online directory of pirated textbooks for download has closed shop for good, despite a recent taunt from its founder that he would continue to operate in defiance of threats of legal action by publishers.

The site, Textbook Torrents, came to the attention of publishers after being featured in a Chronicle article in July. Since then, publishers pressured the site’s founder — an anonymous college student who goes by the online name Geekman — to close, but he had refused, calling his site an act of “civil disobedience” meant to make a statement about the high cost of textbooks. Just last month Geekman told The Chronicle that he planned to find a way to keep the site up permanently.

But it appears that Geekman yielded to the pressure last week. He replaced the site with a statement noting that it is closed for good. “I would be lying if I claimed that the concern of legal action wasn’t a major factor in the decision,” he wrote in the statement. But he said the effort of maintaining the site was also a factor. “I am at heart an activist, a crusader for the underdog,” he wrote. “When I see something that I believe is wrong, I do what I can to fix it, if only in some small way. I believe this is what Textbook Torrents has stood for, and what we have done.” He called for others to set up similar pirate sites to fill the gap.

The blog TorrentFreak first noted the site’s demise last week. Jim Groom, an instructional-technology specialist at the University of Mary Washington, points out on his blog that the site’s popularity raises questions about the future of textbooks. —Jeffrey R. Young

Tech Therapy: Why Can't Librarians and IT Departments Just Get Along?

The latest edition of Tech Therapy covers the differences and similarities between library and IT staff, and discusses why these two groups can’t get along.

The differences? Start with gender: Librarians are stereotypically female, and IT staff members are stereotypically male. Libraries have a long tradition, while IT departments are relatively new. Libraries are very mission-driven, IT departments less so.

But the similarities are striking. “There are three major industries that refer to their customers as ‘users’: IT, libraries, and illicit drugs,” says Tech Therapy’s co-host, Warren Arbogast. Going deeper, both IT staff members and librarians often feel like second-class citizens on campuses. Both groups inhabit a rapidly-changing work environment. Both have insecurities about the future of their professions.

Unlike most Tech Therapy episodes, this episode does not end with any grand conclusions or answers. Give us your thoughts on the differences between IT departments and libraries, and why there is a rift between these two groups. —Scott Carlson

Need a Network Connection for Wednesday's Debate? That'll Be $650

When John McCain and Barack Obama meet at Hofstra University tomorrow night for this year’s final presidential debate, they’ll be doing a lot to pep up the Long Island economy. Wiring up the reporters and bloggers who will cover the debate from the campus is a major undertaking, to say nothing of feeding everyone.

For starters, the university’s media rate card offers a combination Internet-and-telephone package for $650, including both wireless and hard-wired network connections. Renting a laptop computer costs $250, a laser printer is $550 (supplies included), and a high-speed copier runs $1,650 (including paper). Add on another $15 for an outlet strip to plug everything in.

But bloggers won’t want to work standing up, of course — a four-foot table is $44 ($51.50 for the eight-foot version), and padded folding chairs are $11 each. A mini-fridge? That’s another $150.

For those doing more than just writing, the university has additional offerings. A parking place big enough for a network production trailer and a work trailer costs $3,500 (electrical connections included). A camera platform inside the hall is $6,000, but a stand-up spot outside is cheap at $350. A six-by-eight-foot interview space in “Spin Alley,” in the media filing center, is $400.

TV folks will be happy to know that decorative plants are available for $52.50 each, and mirrors for $26. Need a tent? The university recommends Ace Canvas and Tent. And catering? Available through the university’s dining service, which can even provide glatt kosher menus. Have your company credit card handy. —Lawrence Biemiller

U. of Michigan Students Use Bluetooth to Help Blind and Seeing Pedestrians Roam Cities

A mobile computer that reads wireless transmitters, allowing blind people to navigate a city, could serve seeing pedestrians as well, students at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor say.

The students have developed Talking Points, an urban-orientation system, to give users context about their surroundings.

“If it caught on, this would be an effective way to tag the whole world,” Jason Stewart, a master’s student at Ann Arbor, said in a written statement. “Anyone with a reader could use it to find out more information about where they are.”

The system’s mobile computers, about the size of paperback books, read Bluetooth tags — on city landmarks and other points of interest — and convey information visually or aloud. Members of the Talking Points community can edit that information, which is stored in an online database.

The project is similar to others — including one at Carnegie Mellon University — but Michigan says its use of Bluetooth, voice-command software, and user-generated content sets Talking Points apart. —Sara Lipka

October 13, 2008

Computers Getting Better at Disguising Themselves as Humans

Computers are becoming increasingly skilled at disguising themselves as humans in text-based conversations, according to the results of an artificial intelligence competition Sunday at the University of Reading.

One machine, Elbot, tricked 25 percent of judges into thinking he (or she?) lived and breathed. Elbot’s accomplishment inched computers closer to passing the Turing Test, where computers that surpass the 30 percent threshold are considered to be “‘thinking’ and, therefore, could be attributed with intelligence,” according to Alan Turing, who created the test in 1950.

Before the five-minute conversations, judges were not given information on whether the “individual” they were communicating with was a human or a machine. According to Kevin Warwick, a professor in the University of Reading’s School of Systems Engineering, judges scored all machines—even those distinguished as computers—as having conversational abilities between 80 percent and 90 percent. Each of the five machines fooled at least one judge. —David DeBolt

Political Cartoonist Works With University to Create Educational Site About U.S. Elections

A playful new Web site built by scholars at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County uses political cartoons to explain the U.S. Electoral College and give facts about each state’s political history. Called USDemocrazy.net, the irreverent site is targeted at a high school audience. But it is also designed to get a chuckle out of anyone following this year’s presidential race.

The hub of the site is a hand-drawn map of the United States, with each state renamed to offer a glimpse of its culture (California is called “Dude,” for instance, and North and South Dakota are labeled North and South Blizzard). Clicking on the states’ names reveals almanac-style information about each one, along with a political cartoon (California’s is a drawing of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger holding up Ronald Regan and Richard Nixon, two former presidents who hailed from the state). There’s also a “Loony-O-Meter” that gives a one-to-five rating of how odd a state’s politics are, though many of the states have not yet been rated.

Most of the drawings were done by Kevin Kallaugher, who goes by the name Kal, and who is the political cartoonist for The Economist. Mr. Kallaugher is an artist in residence at the university and worked with its Imaging Research Center to create the Web site.

“Cartoons are often used in textbooks and school texts to digest the world in a way people can understand and is inviting,” said Mr. Kallaugher in an interview on Friday. The goal of the site, he said, is to “use humor and use cartoons to enunciate the complex world that we live in and the government that we have.”

One goal of the site seems to be to keep political cartoons relevant in the Internet era. In the foreword to his recent book of political cartoons, Mr. Kallaugher writes that “the future of newspaper cartoons is dimming.”

“Recognizing that reality, I am one of those political cartoonists looking to embrace the Internet and the moving image as a future source of satire,” he wrote. —Jeffrey R. Young

Dear Professor, Students Want to Chat With You

When asked what kind of educational technology they wanted most, students—replete with iPods, laptops, and social-network pages on Facebook—say the thing they don’t have and wish for most is an online chat with their professors.

In a survey released today by CDW-G, the technology vendor, 39 percent of college students say they want regular online chats with faculty. The surveyors contacted 401 students to get this information.

The students are likely to be disappointed, according to the report. Only 23 percent of IT staff surveyed—there were 301 of them—said their campus offered that kind of electronic faculty-student contact.—Josh Fischman

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