Welcome to the July 2003 issue of the IU News. Our lead story this month reports on a number of recent presentations by IU Technology Architect Raymond Yee, who has been talking to audiences on campus and around the country about the ongoing development of the IU Scholar's Box, and how Internet technologies will increasingly make library, museum and other digital archives open and easily available to educators and the public. And, as usual, the IU News contains updates from campus offerings for professional development opportunities, and other news of interest to the IU community. The lead story is introduced on the IU Main page and printed in full below. Stories featured in this issue are:
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Developing IU's Scholar's Box
The Interactive University Project is currently prototyping a web-based suite of tools that will enable faculty, K-12 teachers, students, and the public to create, manipulate, annotate, and save and share personal collections of digital learning and cultural material. These collections, comprising objects gathered from multiple digital repositories, are intended for use in University and K-12 classrooms, as well as other more informal educational settings.
The working name for this developing suite of web tools is The Scholar's Box. The Scholar's Box is designed to emulate the teacher practice of gathering, collecting, saving, and sharing reusable resources for creating supplementary teaching materials, and is intended to function similarly for an individual collection of digital materials and resources. It is conceived and designed to address important interoperability issues at the intersection of four key information technology domains: digital libraries and repositories; educational technologies and learning management systems; web syndication and portal technologies; and desktop applications and structured content authoring tools.
The design and development of the Scholar's Box are based on research data and experience gathered from IU pilot projects during several years of work with K-12 teachers and scholars. The IU believes the functionality proposed in the Scholar's Box will be of value to faculty, students, and educators who increasingly want to use and share expanding archives of digitized resources available in libraries, research museums, and other important cultural repositories.
Recently, Raymond Yee, IU's Technology Architect, has presented to audiences around the country and locally, explaining the technologies and capabilities being built into the Scholar's Box. These presentations have given visibility to the IU's implementation of education technologies, and provided instant peer review and valuable feedback from other professionals working in similar or related areas.
On Tuesday, June 17, Yee spoke at UC Berkeley's WebNet monthly meeting. Along with featured speakers Kalle Nemvalts and Scott Hacker, they addressed the general topic of "The Use of RSS and other XML Formats for Content Distribution." XML, the next-generation of HTML, is commonly assumed to be the standard way information will be exchanged in environments that do not share common platforms. Yee's talk emphasized that a number of key XML formats are available for implementation, and explained how using these formats in the educational, library, and technology worlds can allow content to be reused and recontextualized. Yee looked specifically at how cultural heritage materials and scholarly works in digitized form can put in the hands of teachers and scholars for use in research and the classroom.
In April, at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, in Santa Clara, Yee presented a prototype of the Scholar's Box and emphasized that making content available is only the first step in sharing knowledge. A key goal of the Scholar's Box is to break down and expose large silos of data. Ease of handling – and re-handling as malleable, reusable pieces that can be put together with data of different types and sources – is a must. The O'Reilly talk explored how emerging technologies of the "second generation Web" increase the flexibility and reusability of content stored in digital libraries and educational software, enabling content to be shared across software platforms.
Later in April, at the Coalition for Networked Information Task Force Meeting in Washington, D.C. and again in May, at the Digital Library Federation Forum in New York, Yee spoke on the topic "Enhancing Interoperability between Digital Libraries and Educational Technology via XML Crosswalks". The presentation addressed a major barrier to the exchange of digital content: the lack of interoperability among software systems and repositories from different domains. Yee talked about how the IU has been exploring how to enhance semantic interoperability through the use of XSLT-based crosswalks between key XML formats.
Chancellor Berdahl Lauds Supreme Court Affirmative Action Decision
On June 23 the Supreme Court narrowly upheld the admissions policy of the University of Michigan law school. It was the Court's most important ruling on the subject of affirmative action and diversity since the landmark Bakke decision in 1978, involving an applicant to medical school at the University of California. The Bakke decision rejected rigid quotas but recognized race as a "factor" in admissions. The decision in the Michigan case allowed minority applicants to be given an edge, but did not allow for an undergraduate admissions system based on the allocation of points. The June 23 rulings were interpreted as reinforcing the Bakke decision.
The widely followed case, and much anticipated decision, were welcomed by a majority of colleges and universities throughout the country. UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl issued a brief statement which began, "I applaud the decision to reaffirm Bakke," and further commented on the "importance of a diverse population of students and faculty in the education process." Here is Chancellor Berdhal's complete statement.
Richard Atkinson, President of the University of California, also issued a statement of gratification as a supporter of affirmative action. You may read more information about the position of the University of California and the state of California regarding the Michigan case, here.
UC Berkeley Summer Student Journals
An American diplomat in Paris; researching the effects of the oil business in Angola; looking for justice and reconciliation in post-genocide Rawanda; and marketing family planning in India—these are the issues covered in reports from UC Berkeley students who are spending a summer abroad working on projects that germinated in academic work in their chosen field of study here at home. Each of the students—Puneet Kakkar in Paris; Kristin Reed in Angola; Radha Webly in Rawanda; and a group of five, Amit Sinha, David Plink, Julie Earne, Mona Gavankar, and Dhruti Patel in India—is sending back journal entries through the summer that are posted in a weblog format at the UCB Newscenter.
Visit these sites to follow the project development and individual experiences in each of these countries as Cal's graduate and undergraduate students share their work and observations in regular web updates.
Updates from CLAS, BAWP and ORIAS
The Center for Latin American Studies
There is still time for K-12 teachers to participate in the CLAS Summer Institute, July 21 through 23. During two and a half days of meetings, topics relevant to 10th and 11th grade history and 12th grade economics curriculum standards will be discussed. The institute is free and open to all, registration is required. Enrollment is limited to twenty-five. Applications are available online, or by calling 510-642-2162.
Explore these questions: Has NAFTA brought us any closer to “fair trade”? What have been its successes and failures? How have they been measured? By whom? The two faces of globalization will be explored. Participants from different sides of the NAFTA debate will analyze how free trade has affected Mexico and U.S.–Mexico relations and speculate about where it might lead in the future.
The Bay Area Writing Project
It's not too late to register for some of the BAWP summer programs. Here's what you can expect from the 2003 Summer Young Writers' Camps: The Bay Area Writing Project’s (BAWP) Youth Writing Camps offer students, elementary through high school, the time and opportunity to explore their writing interests, discover their strengths and learn more about the craft of writing. The camps provide in-depth writing instruction, structured writing workshop time, flexibility in writing assignments, and daily opportunities to share writing with peers. Through the camps, students discover the conditions and habits needed to write their best and grow in their confidence and skill. Students are encouraged to continue as writers independently and apply these skills and habits to carve out time to write in and out of school.
Visit the BAWP site for daily updates from the Young Writers' workshops, where recent student writing is featured.
Registration is open, though some programs may be full, for offerings in July and August in the Summer 2003 Teacher Series, and, as noted above, there are several rich opportunities for students in the 2003 Summer Young Writers' Camps. Visit these sites for more information about the 11 courses offered for teachers – including courses in grammar, theory, English language acquisition and literature and composition – plus the many offerings for young writers at sites in Albany, Fremont, Larkspur and Walnut Creek.
Office of Resources for International and Area Studies
ORIAS once again offers a week-long summer institute for high school teachers. This summer's topic is Religion in World History 2003. Conflict in the Muslim world and the U. S. War on Terrorism have highlighted the urgency of understanding the role of religion in current international relations. But the topic is not new to educators. Religious practices have defined and sustained social and political identities throughout history. The 2003 ORIAS summer institute for teachers will focus on the role of religion in world history. During a week of meetings with university scholars and mentor teachers we will discuss topics relevant to the 6th, 7th and 10th grade world history curriculum standards. ORIAS Summer Institute for Middle and High School Teachers. July 28 - August 1, 2003.
Pencils Down, Technology's Answer To Testing
As educators face the new federal requirement to test all 3rd through 8th graders annually in reading and mathematics, states are experimenting with new ways of using technology to evaluate the abilities of students. Increasingly, states and school districts are turning to computers to do the job. But is this the best or fairest way to meet the stipulations of the No Child Left Behind Act? In a special report, Education Week on the Web presents a number of different articles and tables of information that take a look at how education and technology forces are converging to expand the use of computer-based testing. The report also raises questions about this new mode of assessment. Read this extensive report here.
State of Maine Seeks Exemption From Education Mandates
Recently Maine became the first state to seek an exemption from provisions of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Though New Hampshire and Hawaii have also raised objections to certain stipulations of the NCLB law, Maine is the first state to have its request rejected. On June 5, 2003, Maine sent a resolution to Congress and the Bush Administration asking them to either exempt Maine from the federal measure or fully fund the cost of complying with it.
Controversy has arisen about testing requirements in the NCLB law, and, in addition, compliance for states has been made more difficult because promised funds have not been provided by administration budgets. Read two reports from Maine, in the Portland Press Herald, and at MSNBC online. In addition, there is more information in this story from Education Week.
