EDUCATION NEWS DIGEST #14

DISTANCE LEARNING NEEDS COPYRIGHT RELIEF
Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) are
sponsoring a bill that would ease copyright restrictions on
content used as part of distance-education programs. The
Technology Education and Copyright Harmonization Act (TEACH)
would allow educators to include film, music, and other media
clips in online courses without having to pay licensing fees,
an expense that has caused some distance-education programs to
restrict their Web-based offerings. At the University of
Maryland University College, for example, which has 70,000 online
students, educators had to pull a film course because acquiring
the necessary licenses for film clips would have taken too long
and cost too much. Gerard Heeger, president of the school, said
the present copyright restrictions are "an increasingly untenable
wedge between content in the classroom and at a remote location."
A lobbyist for the publishing industry warned that changes to the
current law could lead to increased piracy of copyrighted
materials. (Reuters, 13 March 2001)

A CAMPUS CONNECTED
The University of Minnesota-Crookston (UMC), once a small
two-year school with an uncertain future, has turned itself
around. The university's progress started in 1994 when a grant
from IBM enabled the establishment of an instructional
technology center where faculty members learn about software
and computer-based instruction techniques. UMC introduced a
program of comprehensive laptop computer and Internet use for
all students and instructors, making technology omnipresent
in the classroom. Students in the classroom can sit at their
laptops and view slides and presentations or take quizzes
electronically, and can stay in touch with their professors
and each other through e-mail and chat rooms. UMC is now a
four-year school with more students than it can house on
campus, and professors say employers find the school's
graduates more attractive due to their experience in the
pervasive computing environment. "On campuses where there is
ubiquitous communication...education is much more continuous,"
explained Wake Forest University vice president and former
provost Donald Brown.
(Wall Street Journal, 12 March 2001)

RESEARCHERS BUILD A FAST WIRELESS NETWORK FOR REMOTE INLAND AREA
Scientists from the University of California at San Diego and San
Diego State University are working to link remote research sites
and tribal reservations in the eastern part of the county to a
wireless high-speed Internet connection. The $2.3 million
project, funded by the National Science Foundation, runs over
solar-powered wireless transmitters and is considered
revolutionary in its application of technology to real-life
situations, said Ramesh Rao, director of the Center for Wireless
Communications at UC-San Diego. He said putting technology to
work to solve problems such as this is indicative of a maturing
sector. Although the solar-charged batteries are limited in
snowstorms or at night, the wireless solution goes far beyond the
single phone line that many remote research sites and communities
have access to in this infrastructure-barren region. For example,
the Pala Learning Center community library, serving the Pala
Indian Reservation, will receive a link, replacing the one phone
line that has frustrated many students wanting to use the Web.
(Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 12 March 2001)

LET'S STAY TOGETHER
Many institutions of higher education are turning to the Internet
to keep in touch with alumni, offering graduates customized Web
portals for their class, school-branded e-mail addresses, and
alumni directories. 1to1 Magazine predicts that colleges and
universities that offer such alumni resources will rise to
nearly 20 percent by the end of this year. At the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, for example, the Alumni Association's
site has drawn a third of the institution's 30,000 alumni to
register. Princeton's TigerNet alumni site has garnered
participation from about 25 percent of its alumni, and some
undergraduates have even begun registering for the site before
they graduate, officials report. For alumni, the sites offer an
opportunity both to maintain friendships and to network. For the
institutions themselves, the sites are a way to keep close tabs
on alumni addresses, keeping fundraising solicitation lists
current. The sites are also a unique form of viral marketing.
Observers note that the sites themselves do not generate much
revenue, but colleges and universities seem less concerned about
having a profitable site than about maintaining strong alumni
relationships, which can lead to long-term financial gains.
(1to1 Magazine, March 2001)

SCHEDULE EARTH PARTNERS WITH LEARNING 
NETWORK
Schedule Earth, a guide to professional development 
events and courses, has partnered with consumer-
education source Learning Network, to distribute its 
content. Event schedules, conferences and courses will be 
featured on the Learning Network Web site in the 
professional development section, which is designed for 
individuals who want to enhance professional skills, 
continue education or further their career growth. The 
courses will be offered in four career categories: Business 
Managers, IT Professionals, Educators and Human 
Resource Professionals. Schedule Earth 
(www.ScheduleEarth.com) is based San Francisco; and 
Learning Network (www.learningnetwork.com) is based 
in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

E-LEARNING EXPO ANNOUNCES NEW KEYNOTE
Dennis Bonilla, Vice President, Oracle University
will present, "e-learning - An Imperative when Becoming 
an e-Business," on Friday at 10:00 am at the Washington 
Convention Center. Oracle University, the second largest 
provider of IT education, has undergone a large e-learning 
transformation over the last year. In Bonilla's 
presentation, you will discover the changes in all aspects 
of Oracle University's business - the delivery models, 
development processes, business practices, infrastructure 
- all of which contributed to $1 billion plus savings as part 
of Oracle's e-business transformation. If you haven't 
registered to attend the e-learning Conference & Expo in 
Washington, D.C. this April, visit 
http://www.elearningexpos.com today!

EDUPRISE TO LAUNCH ONLINE GRAD SCHOOL 
Eduprise Inc., a provider of e-learning services for 
educational institutions and businesses, is working closely 
with Hamline University to launch a Graduate School of 
Education online program by summer 2001, with other 
Web courses to follow by 2002. "Up until now our online 
program has consisted primarily of Web-enhanced 
courses developed by faculty utilizing a variety of tools, 
primarily HTML," says Jerry Greiner, Provost of Hamline 
University. The company is addressing the human 
challenges of implementing technology in Hamline by 
scaling the training and instructional design support that 
they provide their faculty. Eduprise Inc. 
(www.eduprise.com) is based Morrisville, N.C.; and 
Hamline University (www.hamline.edu) is based in Saint 
Paul, Minn.

U. OF PHOENIX SPENDS MILLIONS ON E-LEARNING ADS
For-profit University of Phoenix has spent more than a 
million dollars on national television advertising 
campaigns to lure students to its online classrooms. 
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the 
advertisements show students transported from dull 
classrooms to their own wired homes. Distance-learning 
officials predict that television ads for online courses will 
soon become the norm. "University of Phoenix Online 
might be ahead of others in the use of a TV ad campaign, 
but with distance learning now a multibillion-dollar 
global industry, others will quickly employ the medium," 
said John G. Flores, executive director of the United 
States Distance Learning Association (www.usdla.org), a 
nonprofit group that promotes distance education. 
University of Phoenix is based in Phoenix and can be 
found online at www.phoenix.edu. 

E-LEARNING IN CHINA
Gilat Communications Ltd., a provider of blended e-
learning, and Campus Online Limited, an educational 
application service provider, will offer e-learning to 
greater China through the Campus Online Distance 
Learning Solution. The partnership taps into the growing 
corporate learning market in the region. According to 
U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, the global corporate learning 
market is expected to grow to over $46 billion by 2005. 
The companies' venture has a number of features, which 
include instructor control of many content choices, real-
time interaction with students and an all-in-one 
assessment environment. Gilat (www.gilat.net) is based 
in McLean, Va.; and Campus Online 
(www.CampusOnline.org) is based in Hong Kong.

ENDNOTE SOFTWARE NOW AVAILABLE ON RENTAL BASIS
e-academy and ISI ResearchSoft recently announced that EndNote
4.0, a bibliographic management software product, is now avail-
able as part of e-academy's digital distribution system. Students
and faculty across the U.S. and Canada will now be able to "rent"
this software application for 6 months or a year rather than pay-
ing the full retail price for a perpetual license. Through the
new e-academy temporary license program, students will be able to
use the full version for six months at $29.95, or for one year at
$49.95. The program covers all higher education institutions
across North America. Those who wish to purchase the software
can download it directly from the e-academy Web site at
http://www.e-academy.com. An EndNote PDF manual is included with
each purchase.

ECOLLEGE RELASES CAMPUS AUTHOR TOOL
eCollege, an eLearning software and services provider, recently
announced the availability of its Campus Author tool, enabling
administrators to change and update their online campuses in
real time, without any knowledge of HTML. The tool is already
being used by 12 institutions. Campus Author is another use of
eCollege's Visual Editor tool that has already been implemented
in its course delivery system and adopted by faculty to edit
and format online courses. Campus Author provides administrators
24x7 access to and control of their eCollege-powered online
campus, whether the institution uses the company's CampusPortal,
Premium Campus Gateway, or Campus Gateway. Using the tool,
administrators can view their edits in a preview mode before the
changes go live.

CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION BECOMES KNOWLEDGE ON DEMAND
Virage, Inc., a provider of software and services that enable
video for strategic online applications, recently announced that
the University of Arizona is using the Virage Internet Video
Application Platform to provide searchable streaming video of
select courses at a university Web site. The initiative, which
is part of the university's Virtual Adaptive Learning Archi-
tecture (VALA) research grant and the Faculty Center for In-
structional Innovation (FCII), demonstrates an improved method
of capturing, containing, and circulating information within
academic institutions. Under the initiative, professors have
the option of videotaping classroom lectures and streaming the
video content in a searchable online format from a University
of Arizona Web site, where students can then search for spe-
cific course material and review lectures at any time. The
university is currently streaming 8 classes and plans to
expand the technology into the new integrated learning center
when it opens for the Spring 2002 semester. In addition to
university classroom activities, the project is also archiv-
ing programs from the local PBS affiliate including a daily
news program.

HARCOURT, GOREADER TO OFFER ELECTRONIC COLLEGE TEXTS
Harcourt College Publishers has completed a deal with e-book
companygoReader to offer electronic college textbooks. Harcourt,
a publisher of higher education textbooks, announced that the
titles will be available on goReader's portable electronic
device. The titles will first focus on business and science
textbooks, with plans to expand titles in the future to include
law and other graduate titles. The goReader device is designed
to replicate the traditional textbook but weighs less than five
pounds and holds more than 350 textbooks. The device also
features multicolor highlighting, note-taking, and bookmarking
on a 7.3-by-9.7-inch color screen.

MAKING THE GRADE
Home Depot CEO Ron Griffin complains that too many college
graduates who enter the corporate IT field have a good grasp of
programming skills but do not understand how IT should fit in
with a sound business strategy. The graduates lack customer-
relation skills and do not comprehend the importance of the
bottom line. However, Griffin is pleased with his latest batch
of IT recruits from the University of Alabama. During the course
of their studies, these students had to work with actual
businesses as part of the university's new management information
systems curriculum, which educators built with the advice of CEOs
such as Griffin. Many other universities are also giving their IT
programs a real-world flavor so that students learn not only how
to make IT work, but also how it can improve business
productivity and profit. Corporate donors gave $47 million to the
University of Nebraska at Omaha for the founding of its Peter
Kiewit Institute, an engineering and IT school. There, students
work with corporations such as Boeing and IBM, while well-known
CEOs visit and even teach courses. Pennsylvania State University
launched a new program, the School of Information Sciences and
Technology, in 1999. Students not only learn IT skills but also
are exposed to important legal and social issues facing the IT
sector today. (Computerworld, 19 March 2001)

UNIVERSITY PLANS A NEW NETWORK TO MEET MANY NEEDS
Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada, has announced plans to
build a $3.9 million Internet-protocol network to provide voice,
data, and video through a single standard. The university will
install 1,900 Internet phones that will be able to receive both
e-mail and voice-mail messages. The phones will have a
3.5-inch-by-2.75-inch screen to provide limited Web browsing as
well as scrolling text messages from the university. Students
and faculty will be able to connect to the new network from their
PCs and, using special software and a headset, conduct phone
conversations over their computers. Lakeland officials envision
students using the network to collaborate on "group-learning"
projects and say the university's new technology center for
computer-science, distance-learning, and other concentrations,
due to open in 2003, was a major impetus to construct the new
network. (Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 22 March 2001)

SCHOOLS GET AN ONLINE WISH LIST
An established San Francisco hardware store and a Bay Area Web
site have teamed together to create a "wish list" for schools and
nonprofits. After signing up for the program on the Craigslist
Web site, teachers simply browse through Cole Hardware's catalog
and pick out items they need in the classroom. Those in the
community can then log on, select a school or organization, view
their list, and make donations or purchase needed items.
According to a posting on the site, the project is in response to
needs the sponsors saw. "Our focus is on the small, the local,
the stuff we know in our gut helps people out," the posting
states. The wish list program has signed on more than 200
schools and nonprofits and received over $10,000 in donations
since launching in February.
(Wired News, 19 March 2001)

INTERNET2 CROSSES THE BORDER
California Gov. Gray Davis and Mexican President Vicente Fox this
week will officially inaugurate a new broadband network between
research universities in the United States and Mexico. The new
network will open Mexican universities to Internet2, the network
of 180 U.S. universities that provides downloading and streaming
at high speed and quality without any interference from the
commercial Web. Officials on both sides of the border say the
new network will allow for a wide range of collaborative research
projects and information sharing among more than 200 universities,
including the 30 institutions that are part of CUDI, Mexico's
research and education network. Several organizations are now
asking for proposals for collaborative projects to be hosted on
the combined networks. However, one critic of the program, Gary
Chapman of the University of Texas, is worried that Mexican
institutions may not be able to participate as fully as those in
the United States. He points out that, whereas many U.S.
institutions have very powerful computers at their disposal,
many Mexican institutions have nothing more powerful than
high-end PCs. (Wired News, 21 March 2001)

WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD
Researchers at Cornell University recently conducted a study to
see if students' use of laptops in wireless-computing programs
influenced their results in class. The researchers wanted to see
if widespread claims that access to laptops in and out of the
classroom improves students' performance. The study followed two
classes, one in communications and one in computer science. The
study found that grades in the computer science course fell with
increased browsing time during class. In the other class, which
focused on how the Internet aids communication, increased in-class
browsing saw an increase in grades. Comparing browsing outside of
class, students in the computer science class saw little change in
their grades with increased browsing, while grades for students in
the communications class went down as their browsing increased
outside of class.
(Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 21 March 2001)

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW
Educators in the western part of Colorado will have a new
distance-learning option this July when the Colorado Western
Slopes Distance Education Project debuts. As John Sluder, chair
of the communications technology department at Mesa State
College/UTEC, explained, the project will bring "broadband, high
speed, real-time interactive distance learning to outlying rural
areas." In many of the areas to be served by the project, the
mountainous terrain makes landlines impossible or prohibitively
expensive. The project will allow educators to receive training
in technology topics, which they will then use to teach their
students, again using the project's technology. The project
will also become part of the Western Slopes Consortium for
Excellence in Learning (WestCEL), a group of Colorado school
districts, community colleges, vocational schools, and four-year
colleges that provide courses in topics from nursing and childhood
development to advanced mathematics and foreign languages.
(Presenting Communications, March 2001)

SENATE BILL WOULD EXTEND 'FAIR USE' CLAUSE TO ONLINE EDUCATION
A recently introduced Senate bill called the Technology Education
and Copyright Harmonization Act (TEACH) would let educators using
distance-learning materials in digital formats use various
copyrighted material without getting permission from the content
owner. The bill modernizes the Copyright Act of 1976 for the
digital age, updating the fair-use distance-education provisions
contained in the original legislation. TEACH would scrap the
current requirement that learning must take place in a physical
classroom and would ensure that the distance-learning exemption
covers the temporary copies that must be created in networked
file servers to transmit content over the Web. The bill would also
change the current regulations to enable educators to display to
students "limited" portions of "dramatic" literature, music,
audiovisual, and sound recordings, as well as the total versions
of non-dramatic literature and musical works.
(eSchool News Online, 19 March 2001)

AT WASHINGTON STATE U., A STUDENT GOVERNMENT FOR ONLINE LEARNERS
Students in Washington State University's online education
program now have their own student government, making the school
one of the first in the country to have this. Student-affairs
officer Renee R. Smith said the online government fulfills all
the same functions as a traditional student government but with
"a distance spin on it." Meetings of the online Senate and online
committees are held in chat rooms, and all online students are
invited to participate. The president of the online government,
Lori A. Schaer, has online office hours once a week and answers
questions from online students via e-mail. She said the government
is essential for the online student population, many of whom have
questions about the very nature of their program. "A lot of our
students are a little bit older and just getting into using
technology," she said. The online government held a real-world
gathering last spring in Seattle so that students could meet with
advisers and career professionals. The online student government
has a budget this year of $58,800, which includes stipends for the
officers and salaries for the Webmaster and other developers.
(Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 March 2001)

ACCOMMODATING CELL PHONES, OTHER DEVICES COULD PUNISH EDUCATION
As the FCC investigates new ways to make room for the explosion
in frequency requirements for wireless devices such as cell
phones and pagers, some school districts fear that they may lose
out on large amounts of funding or be burdened with major new
costs. One proposal is the reallocation of spectrum currently
reserved for distance learning and videoconferencing for
students to customers of advanced wireless solutions. If that
were to happen, some communities could lose their educational
services completely. The FCC asked for comments in January and
received suggestions of using one to five of the current frequency
bands to make room for3G technology customers. One such band, from
2500 MHz to 2690 MHz, is used by the Instructional Television
Fixed Service (ITFS), a distance-learning technology, and by the
Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service, a fixed wireless
broadband service supported by commercial groups. ITFS licenses
can be obtained solely by K-12 and college-level institutions or
by nonprofit entities that offer educational programming for
schools and communities. However, experts maintain that ITFS affects
not just the institutions that hold its licenses but every school
located in the areas covered by the licenses.
(eSchool News Online, 12 March 2001)

GOING MOBILE
The University of Twente, in Enschede, Netherlands, is the
testing ground for a project dubbed M-poort that will create
the first common wireless standard in Europe designed to
support educational applications. Unlike many European
academic institutions, the University of Twente is willing to
work closely with businesses, particularly high-tech concerns such
as KPN, Ericsson, and Lucent Technologies, to have cutting-edge
technology. KPN has distributed free WAP-enabled mobile phones
to the university's 10,000 students, who are able to contact
teachers and fellow students and access such information as exam
grades. Services are presently provided by WAP-5, a company
founded by four students with seed money from the university, as
the larger companies wait for newer technologies that will allow
mobile phones to offer e-learning systems available for laptops
and personal computers. This could include the university's
Web-based e-learning software, Teletop, which is built on IBM's
Lotus Learning Space program. The university's departments are
working to make all classes available through the Teletop
software. (Wall Street Journal, 12 March 2001)

STUDENTS' INTERNET ACCESS SLOWS WHEN THEY COME HOME FROM COLLEGE
Broadband access has become so important to college students
that schools now consider high-speed Internet access to be a
selling point. Sweet Briar College in Virginia hails itself as
"the world's most wired women's college," and other colleges and
universities have sent out press releases and announcements after
being named to Yahoo! Internet Life magazine's "America's 100
Most Wired Colleges" list. College students do everything from
downloading songs to playing online games to chatting over the
high-speed connections that are available at their schools.
However, most students return to dial-up modems when they head
home to their parents. In fact, only 12 percent of the 100 million
Americans online have high-speed Internet access, according to a
survey released last month by the U.S. General Accounting Office.
Although broadband service has grown by 148 percent over the
last year, high-speed Internet access still is not available in
many rural and underdeveloped parts of the country.
(San Diego Union-Tribune Online, 13 March 2001)

COLLEGEBOARD.COM BUY STRENGTHENS ITS SAT BUSINESS
Collegeboard.com, the online arm of the non-profit College Board,
which owns the SAT college admission test, announced Wednesday
that it had purchased Sequitur, which makes software for
recruiting students. "Sequitur software will be another tool
we'll be able to sell to college admissions officers, and it will
complement what we already do," said collegeboard.com President
Richard Weingarten. The software should make the recruiting,
admission, and retention of students more efficient. The
purchase has won approval from the Education Testing Service,
which administers the SAT and is responsible for half of the $30
million invested in collegeboard.com since its launch in March of
last year. Collegeboard.com's acquisition comes amidst further
tightening in the market for online education services and
products. This week, LearningByte International in Minneapolis
said it would lay off 35 of its 180 employees, and Britannica.com
also announced layoffs this week, saying some 68 of 220 employees
could lose their jobs. (Reuters, 14 March 2001)

TEACHING OLD DOGS
With online courses and electronic textbooks becoming more
popular, academic publishers such as McGraw-Hill, Thomson
Learning, and Houghton Mifflin have been forced to find ways to
produce value-added digital content. The process is very costly,
requiring publishers to enable texts to be searched, read, and
sold digitally, and will likely not generate revenue for some
time, but the companies see no choice. McGraw-Hill has entered
the digital-content field with a subscription-based science and
technology service and has also produced a software product that
helps professors prepare class Web sites. Meanwhile, electronic
textbook sales could get a boost by giving students the ability
to buy only portions of a text, rather than the entire thing;
this recognizes the fact that many professors assign only part
of the textbook, but students currently must buy the entire book.
(Wall Street Journal, 12 March 2001)

TEXTBOOK PUBLISHER SEES FUTURE IN E-BOOKS
E-book firm goReader has inked a deal with Harcourt College
Publishers to provide college textbooks on its goReader e-book
reader. The device's screen is 7.3 inches by 9.7 inches, and it
weighs under five pounds. It can hold over 350 textbooks, each
of which will cost about 25 percent of its traditional textbook
price; the device itself will be priced between $400 and $500.
The first books to emerge from the Harcourt deal will be science
and business texts, with other graduate-level titles, including
law, to follow. The goReader device includes a digital-rights
management system to prevent textbook piracy. Industry analysts
are cautiously optimistic about the device's prospects, with
International Data analyst Susan Kevorkian noting that it is to
goReader's and Harcourt's advantage to bring as many e-book
titles to the market as quickly as possible. She adds that
goReader needs to strike deals with other publishers in order
to expand the reach of its market.
(Cnet, 14 March 2001)