New Bookmarks
Year 2001 Quarter 3:  July 1-September 30 Additions to Bob Jensen's Bookmarks
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

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For the July 1-September 30, 2001 Additions and Summaries scroll down this document 
For the other editions in the archives go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm

For the full set of Bob Jensen's Bookmarks go to http://www.Trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm
    (The full set is never up to date with the latest additions to my New Bookmarks.)

Click here to go to Bob Jensen's home page http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

Choose a Date for Additions to the Bookmarks File

September 21, 2001      September 14, 2001         September 7, 2001

August 24, 2001            August 10, 2001              August 03, 2001      

July 27, 2001                July 20, 2001                   July 13, 2001   

Scroll down this page to view this week's new bookmarks. 

For earlier editions of New Bookmarks, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

 Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
This search engine may get you some hits from other professors at Trinity University included with Bob Jensen's documents, but this may be to your benefit.

Whenever a commercial product or service is mentioned anywhere in Bob Jensen's website, there is no advertising fee or other remuneration to Bob Jensen.  This website is intended to be a public service.  I am grateful to Trinity University for serving up my ramblings.

September 21, 2001

Quotes of the Week

America is not like a blanket--one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt--many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.

Henry M. Jackson

---

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.  I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid.  The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning.  I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed.  There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me.  I find it hard to take in what anyone says.  Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in.

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
As quoted in the Parker Chapel Sunday Bulletin on September 16, 2001

---

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

President Roosevelt's D-Day Prayer (June 6, 1944) --- http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/fdr-prayer.htm 
You can also listen to this prayer as broadcast to the world by radio if you have audio playback on your computer.

---

O beautiful for heroes proved 
in liberating strife,
who more than self their country loved,
and mercy more than life!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
confirm thy soul in self-control,
thy liberty in law.

Verse Two of O Beautiful for Spacious Skies
Words: Katherine Lee Bates (1859-1929), Music: Materna
From the closing hymn that my wife and I simultaneously choked upon in Parker Chapel,  September 16, 2001

If you have audio on your computer, PLEASE, PLEASE click here --- http://www.doubtlessdesigns.net/ 

Bob Jensen has some thoughts for the future at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JusticeAppeal.htm 

Included are my short essays on presidential leadership and prayer.

Included is a very frightening interview with terrorist expert Stephen Sloan on "What Future War Looks Like"

Included is a very frightening message from Tamim Ansary about what Bin Laden really wants --- it might surprise you  and make you change the way you think about alternatives for the U.S. and its allies.

For the above documents, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JusticeAppeal.htm 

A Free Book
Year 2000 Financial Reporting Developments:  Financial Reporting and Accounting, Financial Executives International, 2001 --- http://www.fei.org/teleconf/materials/2000_year_end_frd.pdf 

This is a nice summary of new standards and rulings.  Much of the information that is free in this book must be purchased from other sources.

• FASB's Proposal for a New Agenda Project  --- http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/fasb/project/intangibles.pdf 
  DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION ABOUT INTANGIBLE ASSETS NOT RECOGNIZED IN FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
  

Bob Jensen's threads on intangibles can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory.htm 

Wow Learning Site of the Week --- http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/learning/ 
The Alfred West Jr. Learning Lab Revolutionizing Learning in the Global Information Age

The Alfred P. West Jr. Learning Lab is Wharton's development center and experimental laboratory to explore new approaches to learning. The Learning Lab develops technology-enhanced educational materials to explore new paradigms for learning and instruction.

The products developed by the Learning Lab engage students in real-world exercises that challenge them to apply principles they've learned across multiple disciplines.

The Learning Lab draws on the creative expertise of faculty leaders and industry professionals to experiment with new methods of learning throughout the School's degree and non-degree programs. The Learning Lab Advisory Board brings together a distinguished group of industry leaders to help shape the goals and mission of this project.

Army University Access Online --- http://www.adec.edu/earmyu/earmyu.html 
This five-year $453 million initiative was completed by the consulting division of PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC).  Twenty-four colleges are delivering training and education courses online through the U.S. Army's e-learning portal.  There are programs for varying levels of accomplishment, including specialty certificates, associates degrees, bachelor's degrees, and masters degrees.  All courses are free to soldiers.  By 2003, there is planned capacity is for 80,000 online students.  The PwC Program Director is Jill Kidwell --- http://www.adec.edu/earmyu/kidwell.html 

The PwC e-Learning Network includes best-in-class providers of online education programs, educational services, technology components and services, and project management that will help to ensure the Army’s success in delivering distance education programs to soldiers. Our network members are not only market-leaders in their respective industries, they are also experienced at working together to deliver integrated solutions to customers. Key members of our Network include PricewaterhouseCoopers; Online Degree Program Providers; the Council on Academic Management; Learning Technology Providers; and Infrastructure Support. Each of these is described below.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP (PwC): Leading the team and serving as the single point of contact and integration contractor will be PwC. To eArmyU, PwC brings what we believe to be unequaled experience in managing large, global, and complex programs; acknowledged expertise in technology development and implementation; unequaled experience designing and implementing leading e-business and e-learning initiatives; the leading higher education/e-learning strategy practice in the industry; and extensive success performing in the military environment—the exact combination of capabilities eArmyU demands.

Online Degree Program Providers: PwC’s 29 higher education partners have delivered more than 3,000 online courses to more than 250,000 students. Each of our higher education partners is described in the table below. In addition to these institutions, PwC will be adding additional online degree program providers to the PwC e-Learning Network, such as the University of Massachusetts.

Council on Academic Management: This Council is comprised of leaders from the higher education community including historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), and Tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) . The Council will assist in establishing the framework— standards, policies, and quality assurance procedures—for selecting and managing higher education partners, thereby ensuring that leaders from the higher education industry play a prominent role in the Army University Access Online initiative. Members of this CAM include the Michigan Virtual University, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), EDUCAUSE, America Distance Education Consortium (ADEC), the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), and University of Wisconsin Academic ADL Co-Lab, among others.

Learning Technology Providers: The PwC e-Learning Network includes Blackboard and Saba, two of the leading providers of online tools, learning platforms, and learning management systems. With unmatched market penetration and demonstrated ability to work effectively in an integrated environment, Blackboard and Saba provide an exceedingly stable platform from which to deliver AUAO programs. Combined with PeopleSoft, the PwC e-Learning Network will provide a solution that provides a comprehensive, integrated technical solution for AUAO.

• Blackboard is a premier LMS provider to the higher education industry with a user base of more than 2.1 million people globally.
• Saba is a cutting-edge provider of learning management systems and training and education programs and an active participant in developing SCORM-compliant systems. More than 50 Global 2000 companies and government agencies already use Saba to manage their education and training programs.
• PeopleSoft’s SA product is the market-leading information system for managing education support services. The product is being used or implemented by more than 450 institutions, including some of the largest and most complex universities.

Infrastructure Support: The PwC e-Learning Network will provide soldier-students with best-in-class hardware and software solutions.

• Compaq is the largest supplier of computing systems in the world. Compaq designs, develops, manufactures, and markets hardware, software, solutions, and services, including enterprise computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, communications products, and commercial desktop and portable products. The Compaq Presario and IJ600 printer will arm soldier-students with powerful weapons for succeeding in online education.
• Fiberlink will provide the largest number (8,000) of local-access POP connections available today. It consists of a network built on a multiple carrier backbone to maximize redundancy and ensure reliability, and a state-of-the-art technology platform that is scalable and flexible to meet any customer needs, now and in the future.
• Precision Response Corporation will provide world-class support to the soldier-students with a proven Help Desk services solution, which has been used successfully to deliver services to a broad array of enterprises and Government agencies, including AT&T, DirecTV, and IBM.
• Intel Online Services (IOS) will provide best-in-class Managed Hosting solution, providing all of the benefits of outsourcing: application management expertise, network skills, reduced time-to-market, and scalability to grow, while also enabling AUAO to maintain control of its applications.
• LESCO will provide extensive experience in providing effective logistics support, on-site technical support, program mentoring, and administrative services.
• TurboTec is a leading reseller of Compaq hardware.
• SMARTHINKING.com is a Washington, DC-based company that provides around-the-clock, person-to-person online tutoring and academic assistance for core courses and skills through the use of cutting-edge technologies. Carefully screened and rigorously trained e-structors™ currently offer real-time support in mathematics, economics, accounting, statistics and psychology. SMARTHINKING also offers an Online Writing Lab for all courses, Grammar and Brainstorming Help Desks, and independent study resources. SMARTHINKING currently serves over 50 colleges and universities across the nation.
• The BK Group offers a one source solution to meed the needs of today's Universities. Specializing in the unique requirements of DistanceLearning, The BK Group provides a variety of services ranging from online textbook sales to web development to course fulfillment and distribution.

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service offers Internet education opportunities. IRS employees who want to get ahead in the organization are heading back to the classroom - 21st century style. College level courses in accounting, finance, tax law, and other business subjects will be available on the Internet to IRS employees. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/46816/101 

For example, the IRS online accounting classes will be served up from Florida State University and Florida Community College at Jacksonville --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60881-2001May7.html 

"Online MBA programs grow in popularity," by Jerry LaMartina, Kansas City Star Online, July 15, 2001 --- http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/moneywise.pat,business/37749b46.714,.html 

In or out of the Kansas City area, you can earn an MBA in your pajamas if you want.

Online coursework, also known as "distance learning," is growing more common at many colleges and universities. Some offer a few courses online, but others offer entire degree programs with the computer as the classroom.

Richard St. Clair, regional academic director for Webster University in Kansas City, said the school was in its first year of offering online MBA coursework.

Webster offers its entire degree program online, St. Clair said. The curriculum reflects a typical MBA program with some additional electives.

About 14 students in the Kansas City area are getting their degree online. Between 250 and 300 students worldwide do online coursework at Webster, with 80 percent to 90 percent of those doing the entire degree online, he said.

"I'm teaching an organizational development course online, and I know the students better than I would in a traditional classroom," St. Clair said. "I have students from all over the world working on team-based activities for the class. Now that's a rich experience for the students."

Students in online programs tend to communicate more with each other and with the instructor, St. Clair said. Some people might think online coursework is sterile and isolating, but the human touch -- albeit virtual -- can be highly developed.

Webster administers exams online, too. If anomalies surface in students' work, he will call them to talk about it. Otherwise, the school relies on students' integrity to ensure that they are actually the ones taking the tests, St. Clair said.

Tuition for Webster's online coursework costs 10 percent to 15 percent more than for standard courses, while the online student's computer must have Windows 95 or 98 and at least a 120 mHz processor, a 28.8k modem and 32mb of RAM, he said.

Another area school, Keller Graduate School of Management, has been offering its entire MBA online for two years and partial coursework even longer, said Mike Haverty, regional manager.

Tuition at the Kansas City school costs about 35 percent more for online courses than for traditional ones, Haverty said. Students must go to a school center or an other location that is proctored to take exams.

David Overbye, director of curriculum for Keller, agreed that the social and intellectual interaction among students and instructors was greater with online courses. Students communicate in online forums or "threaded discussions." Online students have more time to think and prepare researched, substantiated opinions than do students in traditional classrooms, Overbye said.

Randy Womack of Prairie Village finished his MBA with Keller in April. Womack owns a home-based business called Firehouse Window Cleaning and has a bachelor's degree in electronics from the DeVry Institute of Technology.

He completed about a quarter of his coursework online and said it provided a good change of pace from traditional class settings.

"Online you ended up with a lot more reference materials," he said. "In class I'm not too shy about speaking up," but for the shy student online classes help ease anxiety, he said. He also communicated more with his online instructors than with those for traditional classes.

"I think it lends itself to flexibility," Womack said. "The deeper you want to dig, you can."

Erik Gordon, director of MBA programs at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business, said the school had offered an entire MBA online for two years. About 40 students have participated each year, Gordon said.

Students must go to campus once at the end of each term for exams. They also meet fellow students, their professors and the next term's professors, who give introductory lectures on their classes. Regardless of where they live, the school requires this on-campus meeting. Prospective students should weigh the cost before they decide to start the program, Gordon said.

Tuition for Warrington's online MBA costs three times as much as its standard MBA program, as does the school's weekend executive MBA program. Gordon acknowledged the greater cost but said students tended to view an MBA as an investment in their futures.

"We've done it for two years now. We've found that students figure out how to jell as a team, and their feedback to us is that they think they've had a great team experience," even better than the experience of students in traditional settings, he said.

The downside of the online approach is the hard work, time and money needed to develop strong courses, Gordon said. The school has its own team of technology developers that creates courses with customized features to make communication among students and instructors as effective as possible, and it is expensive.

"Students don't want classes in which instructors simply post lectures on the Web," he said. Students must have the ability to collaborate while doing their coursework, because MBA curricula -- and the work world -- are so dependent on teamwork, he said.

Not all area MBA programs have an online component.

Wendy Acker, MBA director at Avila College, said Avila offered online courses in some undergraduate programs but not for its MBA students.

"We have certainly discussed the possibility," Acker said. "But I couldn't visualize us offering our entire degree program online. We're a fairly small, liberal arts college." Avila does not have the resources to serve that niche, she said.

John Suter, administrator of Park University's MBA program, said Park also did not offer online courses for its MBA students -- for now.

"I imagine to stay competitive we're going to have to," he said.

Nicolas Koudou, director of Park's MBA program, agreed. The university intends to create online courses in the program, although the cost of doing it could be prohibitive. In the meantime, he recognizes the value of the traditional classroom setting.

"In the classroom, my students tell me that businesses need interaction of the traditional sort," he said.

Bob Jensen's related documents on this topic can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 
In particular, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm 

From Syllabus News on September 18, 2001

Internet Enables Collaboration of Ohio Schools

The Internet will be one of the key tools enabling three Ohio colleges and universities to form a partnership to broaden their educational offerings to local students. The University of Akron, Cuyahoga Communication College District and the Cuyahoga Valley Career Center last week unveiled a partnership to coordinate courses at times and locations that are more convenient to eligible students, as well as agreements on sharing facilities and transfering credits. "The new partnership provides area students with accessible, affordable quality education at their convenience, both in terms of time and location, including courses via the Internet," said Dr. Jerry Sue Thornton, Cuyahoga Community College president. "Today's lifestyles demand this flexibility." For more information, visit http://www.uakron.edu  .

Choices are Not So Great for Many Women
More women are going online to seek an education. But technology isn't freeing modern women already working two shifts -- it's adding a third shift in the home, according to a new report --- http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,46689,00.html 

While more women such as Olmstead are going online to take courses, for many of them it means juggling a full-time job and family or homemaking responsibilities with a heavy course load, which is for some equivalent to a "third shift," according to a recent report by the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

"In this respect, technology hasn't freed more of women's time, (it has) only created a third shift in the home," said Cheris Kramarae, the author of the report and an AAUW Educational Foundation scholar-in-residence.

The notion of a third shift isn't new. But the online distance education boom has changed the dynamics.

"Even before distance learning, there was a third shift for women in education," Olmstead said. "Online education gives it another dimension. It makes it more personal. It allows women more flexibility to make a third shift any time of day or night they need it."

Researchers surveyed 500 men and women through online and in-person interviews. The majority of those surveyed were over 25 years of age and female.

The third shift isn't unique to women, but it's "more predominant," Olmstead said.

"Women are simply on the cutting edge of a problem that will increasingly confront all workers, regardless of sex or of their responsibilities in the home," agreed Pamela Haag, director of research for the AAUW's Education Foundation.

Women face a great deal of conflict trying to schedule learning time around their family responsibilities, a tension that men experience to a lesser degree since they are less likely to be the main caregivers, Haag said.

Online learning eliminates many obstacles to education for both men and women; by cutting childcare and commuting costs, allowing more flexibility to fit in courses, and letting students spend more time at home.

Many older women who were surveyed said they feel more comfortable in the virtual classroom than in traditional on-campus classes, where programs are often geared toward younger students.

But online education also introduces new challenges, such as hidden costs to wire computers and a lack of face-to-face interaction with faculty and other students.

Other Wired Links

MIT Cheered From a Distance
April 5, 2001

The Quest for E-Knowledge
Feb. 5, 2001

E-Learning Is Good; Now What?
Dec. 20, 2000

Publishers Yearn to E-Learn
Sep. 18, 2000

Online Schools Mean Business
Aug. 18, 2000

Online Learning's Long Curve
June 12, 2000

A Top-Drawer Education Online
Feb. 11, 2000

Setting Their Site on Education
Feb. 11, 2000

See also: 
Women Face 'Third Shift' Online
Distance Learning Yet to Hit Home
E-Learning Is Good; Now What?
Online Schools Mean Business
It's time to go Back to School
Move on up with Women in Tech

Bob Jensen's related documents on this topic can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 
In particular, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm 

Student loan announcements in the aftermath of September 11 --- http://www.salliemae.com/ 

The topic of many conversations among our students these days is the economy. Many of our Seniors are wondering about the job market and their place in it. While the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) has reported an expected 19.7% decline in overall hiring this year, there is good news as well. “Overall, 30% of employers responding to the NACE survey plan to cut back on their college hiring for the 2001-02 college hiring year, while 30.1% plan to increase their college hiring, and 39.9% expect to maintain their college hiring at the same level as last year.” For more detailed information, check out the full article at http://www.naceweb.org/press/display.cfm/2001/pr082701.htm  At Career Services, we are assisting students and developing our recruiting program here on campus. In fact, the on-campus recruiting season begins October 9^{th and concludes November 16th.}

While the schedule is subject to change, currently we have 16 employers scheduled to come to campus to meet our students. Many more employers are contacting our office regularly to post job opportunities for our students. For Seniors graduating in May, it is vital they start their job search now. Those graduating in December should be actively searching now as well.

Students interested in participating in on-campus recruiting should:

1. Get connected to eRecruiting, our web-based recruiting and job listing management tool by coming by or e-mailing Career Services CareerServices@Trinity.edu .

2. Complete their profile and upload their resume and cover letter in the eRecruiting system. (Complete instructions are given at the time of registration.)

3. View the “Calendar” in eRecruiting and watch for companies coming offering opportunities they are interested in pursuing.

4. Apply on-line using eRecruiting and their resume and cover letter will be bundled and sent electronically to the employer. (Deadlines are two weeks before the scheduled on-campus interview date.)

5. Students selected for an interview will be contacted directly by the employer and allowed to sign up for an on-campus recruiting time.

We invite you to look at the eRecruiting system. If you are interested, please contact me for a user name and password that will allow you access to the system.

Lastly, while many of our students will participate in on-campus recruiting, others are considering graduate school as well as employment opportunities not supported by on-campus recruiting. I would welcome the opportunity to assist them as they move forward with their plans.

We would appreciate your assistance in notifying students about these opportunities or referring your students to our office.

Thank you for your commitment to our students.

Becky Spurlock
Director, Career Services
Trinity University
715 Stadium Drive
San Antonio, Texas 78212
210-999-8321 office     ^{210/999-7493 fax}

Accountants:  Making a career switch or moving to a new location? Check out the AccountingWEB CareerZONE where employers can post jobs, and resumes can be shared. This global employment resource has something for everyone. http://accountingweb.careerbank.com/ 

I thank Dan Gode for calling my attention to the following article.
"Two years ago, learning portals popped up across the Internet’s landscape. Today, many are buried in the dot-com rubble. What happened?" by Kim Kiser, Online Learning --- http://www.onlinelearningmag.com/new/sept01/cover.htm 

By the spring of 2001, learning portals had started to implode like so many of the dot-coms that came before them. Among the casualties were Headlight.com, which initially provided learning to small and medium-sized businesses; Acadio, which targeted professionals; EduPoint.com, which started out serving consumers, then switched to corporate clients; TrainSeek.com, which also targeted corporations; and consumer sites HungryMinds.com (bought by IDG Books, which adopted the name) and FreeEdu.com, to name a few.

What went wrong? For one thing, consumers weren’t as starved for knowledge as the founders of these companies had hoped. “The idea of ‘If you build it, they will come’ hasn’t quite been the case,” says Dave Egan, one of the founders of Billerica, Mass.-based TrainingNet, now Thinq. “As individuals, we’re not likely to go to Thinq.com or HungryMinds.com on a Saturday morning and find learning — especially if we know full well that we could go back to work on Monday and have that course paid for by the corporation.” Egan adds that less than one percent of his company’s revenues came from consumers.

Corporations were wary of the portal model, too. Michael Lodato, vice president of market development for DigitalThink in San Francisco, which provided content to several portal companies, remembers going on sales calls with TrainingNet in the early days. “We would walk in, and the client would say, ‘TrainingNet, why do you have to be in the picture? What value do you bring to the table?’ All I could see in the first iteration of portals were massive libraries with very little advice on what you should do with them,” he recalls.

And because many portal companies failed to help buyers make intelligent choices about which courses best met their needs, they failed to create demand for the content — and brought little revenue to the organizations supplying it. “If you [as the content vendor] have 300 courses inside a portal with 60,000 choices, how often are you going to generate revenue in that environment?” Lodato asks.

Companies like DigitalThink also found it took more work than they expected to offer courses through a portal. “It costs money to get your stuff over to these people. Then you have to have alliance managers working with them and accounting people watching over it,” Lodato says. DigitalThink, which initially signed on with about 50 portal companies, got “nothing of any significance” from most of the relationships, he says.

Tom Brown, vice president of sales for the Americas for NETg, a Naperville, Ill., company that sells IT-related courses, saw similar results. NETg currently has courses listed on several portals, including Thinq’s, KnowledgePlanet’s and Click2learn’s. “The revenues we got out of the portals in 2000 was minimal,” Brown says. “Out of all the portals combined, it was in the low six figures.”

Investors also soured on the idea, as they watched Internet companies of all kinds failing to live up to their expectations. By the spring of 2000, TrainSeek.com and Headlight.com were among the portal companies looking for additional funding to carry them forward until they became profitable. “In the summer of 2000, you couldn’t do second-round financing for a dot-com, even if it was in the training and education space,” says Lloyd Singer, CEO of LearnCom, a suburban Chicago firm that has been buying up training video and other content companies. At press time, LearnCom was trying to purchase TrainSeek’s Web site and customer base.

Not all companies that boasted about their portals two years ago have fallen on hard times. Some have lived through the shakeout — and now downplay the fact that they were ever associated with the portal model.

For the most part, those that survived — and, in some cases, thrived — did so by changing their business models or distinguishing themselves early on. TrainingNet (now Thinq) emerged as an early leader after aggressively pursuing relationships with content providers and assembling what may be the largest online listing of courses, books, audio tapes and videotapes. (Today, their catalog, which isn’t easy for the casual Web site visitor to find, has upward of 500,000 products, including more than 4,000 online courses.)

In addition to selling courses to individuals and building learning portals for other corporations, Thinq acquired a learning management system and businesses that specialized in marketing, technology and consulting in the United States and United Kingdom. “The whole idea of marrying content, management structure, technology and services seems to be the magic elixir corporate clients are looking for,” says Egan.

Investors seem to agree. This spring, Thinq received $20 million in fourth-round financing from CIBC Capital Partners and Mellon Ventures, bringing the two-year-old company’s total financing to $66 million.

Click2learn, which dropped the dot-com from its name and no longer has a link to its course catalog on its Web site, also differentiated itself in several ways. Before launching its portal, the company was well-known for its course authoring software. It also had a learning management system — a feature few portal companies could offer in 1999. Says consultant Hall: “They were one of the first to have a portal, but their other businesses were able to sustain that model.”

Kevin Oakes, president and CEO of the Bellevue, Wash., company, admits that corporate customers haven’t bought large volumes of off-the-shelf courses from the portal the way he originally hoped. However, he explains, one reason Click2learn, which works with some 50 content companies and has nearly 10,000 offerings in its catalog, has had some success with its portal business was because they could create both hosted and behind-the-firewall learning sites for corporations.

“The difference between our model vs. Headlight or TrainSeek is that our whole business wasn’t built on the ASP (application service provider) content aggregation model,” he explains.

Learn2.com is another company that’s hanging on after changing its name and business model several times. Originally known as 7th Level, the company first targeted consumers, then corporations, government agencies and small businesses with everything from courses on Access 2000 to free tutorials on how to hang wallpaper. They also sell courses on CD-ROM and video through retailers such as CompUSA.

Learn2.com, whose stock was dropped from the NASDAQ in early August because of its low price, recently signed a merger agreement with E-Stamp Corp., a dot-com that has foundered in its attempts to sell postage online and later supply chain management software. If approved by shareholders later this year, the merger will give Learn2.com an infusion of cash to repay its debt and, its owners hope, stimulate growth. But analysts aren’t optimistic about the company’s future. “The cash will take them through a few more quarters,” says Weggen. “But they have too many lines of business and are in too many markets.”

Weggen and others believe the tectonic movements that caused the shake-up in the portal market haven’t ended, and that the lessons from last century’s learning portals will become the bedrock for learning systems of the future.

“Bringing together courses from multiple publishers is only part of the game in terms of what it takes to serve the corporate market,” says Scott Mellen, co-founder of the defunct Headlight.com. “That’s only part of the challenge training managers deal with when confronted with trying to provide skills for their employees. They want the whole suite of functionality that’s important to business. And I think a lot of things that happened with learning portals are helping build this ultimate thing.”

For the rest of the article, go to http://www.onlinelearningmag.com/new/sept01/cover.htm 

Bob Jensen's "dark side" threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm 

Wow Classroom Innovation of the Week
"A Hassle-free and Inexpensive Way to 'Videotape' Class Lectures," by Rene Leo E. Ordonez, EDUCAUSE Review, September/October 2001, pp. 14-15 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm.html 

Overcoming the Video-Production Dilemma

There is a way to overcome these difficulties without investing too much money in equipment and without relying on professional video personnel. Digitizing lectures can be done using screen-capture software called Camtasia. This software is a screen camcorder (Camtasia Recorder) and a video-production tool (Camtasia Producer) rolled into one. Camtasia Recorder acts like a video camera, capturing everything that is on the computer monitor, including mouse movements and clicks, plus it records audio using a microphone. Originally marketed for use by computer-training experts for commercial purposes (e.g., developing professional-looking video instructions and video-based trouble-shooting, enhancing paper-based and online documentation, and documenting the use of custom or commercial software applications), Camtasia Recorder can be used in combination with a digital pen and tablet as a classroom technology. Instructors can use it to record lectures, complete with notes and narration.

Camtasia Producer is a nonlinear editor that can produce standard Audio Video Interleave (AVI) files or streaming formats. When used together, the recorder and the producer create crisp, sharp, exact images of screen activity. The quality of the digitized screen images is far superior to that of the video image projected by regular video-produced tapes. This excellent video-image quality is a result of a unique video codec (compressor/decompressor) used by Camtasia.

---

A Firsthand Experience

The experimental hybrid class was a success from a delivery standpoint. In a comparison of the midterm scores of the students in the hybrid class with the scores of the students in another section taught in the traditional method, the students in the hybrid class performed just as well as the students in the traditional class. This suggests that the students in the hybrid class were not disadvantaged by not being physically in class for the lectures, the digitized lectures apparently provided a comparable substitute. Further, this hybrid class format seems to work well for the distance learning population or the nontraditional students who cannot make every in-person lecture.

The students in the hybrid class relied heavily on the digitized lectures to keep up with the class material. They felt that having the digitized lectures not only allowed them to be "in" the class but also helped them get through the class successfully. Surprisingly, a number of students expressed preference for the digitized lectures over the regular lectures. One student commented: "The digitized lectures were invaluable, particularly since we covered so much material in a single class session. It was enormously helpful to be able to replay lecture material and visually see the material you were presenting at the same time. Personally, I would have been lost without the aid of the AVI files." Another student loved the flexibility provided by the digitized lectures: "It gave me the freedom to study, take the quizzes and tests on my schedule...the CDs were a godsend, without them I would have been lost." An unintended, and unexpected, positive result from the use of the digitized lectures was the higher-than-normal end-of-term student evaluations I received from the class--my highest in thirteen years of teaching the course! I could surmise only that the digitized lectures contributed significantly to my more favorable student evaluations in the hybrid class.

The results from the experimental and innovative approach to creating and packaging class lectures are being reviewed in considering possible expansion to other core courses in the business degree program of the School of Business. In fact, due to the success of the hybrid, digitized-lecture course, a grant to develop complete hybrid curricula for business statistics and operations management classes (both are core courses in the business degree program) was awarded. The refined hybrid courses will feature the digitized lectures as the primary means of delivering class material, which will be made available mainly on the Web via Blackboard. These courses will be offered in the Business Degree Completion Program starting in the winter 2002 term.

---

The Digitizing Process

Digital recording of lectures can be done either within the confines and comfort of an office or within a live environment, during a classroom lecture. Classrooms that are equipped with LCD projectors are ideal for live recording. The raw digitized lectures can then be cut, spliced, and fused using the audio/video editing software bundled in Camtasia. The final digitized lectures can be burned onto a CD-ROM for mass distribution or can be stored in a file server for Internet or Intranet anytime access. The final product can be produced in various formats, playable using popular media players such as Windows Media Player and Real Player. Digitized lectures saved as AVIs result in the best-quality screen-capture images and audio out-puts. The downside is that they hog storage space. A one-hour lecture can easily eat up as much as 50 MB of disk space. If file size is a concern, as it will be if the files are intended for Web access, they can be produced using formats such as Microsoft Advanced Streaming Format (ASF), Microsoft Windows Media Video (WMV), or RealNetworks RealMedia (RM). A digitized lecture file produced in any of these formats can occupy as little as 5 percent of the space required for the same file produced in AVI format.

For the remainder of the article, go to http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm.html 

The Camtasia Website is at http://www.techsmith.com/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on capturing video from computer screens are at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#Video1 

Wow Technical Innovation of the Week
"Better Networks: Look to Nature," by Katie Hafner, The New York Times, September 13, 2001 --- http://www.nyt.com/2001/09/13/technology/circuits/13ANTS.html 

Indeed, applying the study of ants to complex engineering problems is something of an intellectual trend. The topic drew attention at a recent international conference on artificial intelligence in Seattle. It has been discussed in a variety of scientific journals. And a new book by Steven Johnson, "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software" (Scribner), points to ant behavior as a way to further, among other things, understanding of the World Wide Web.

What makes ants worth studying, if not emulating? For one thing, they exhibit something called swarm intelligence. That is, the teamwork of social insects is decentralized. Individually, an ant's actions are primitive, but collectively, they result in efficient solutions to complex problems like finding the shortest route between the nest and a food source.

The key to ants' efficiency is their ability to lay down trails in their communal travels with a chemical called pheromone. Over time, those trails result in a system of routing. The lesson, in short, is follow the pheromone.

So to build better data networks, researchers are creating what might be viewed as artificial ants: small pieces of software that travel through a network depositing artificial pheromone (pronounced FARE-uh-moan) as they seek optimal routes.

"By bending the rules of behavior, you can increase the performance of the system while keeping the spirit of what the ants do," said Vincent Darley, an ant-behavior specialist and research scientist in the London office of BiosGroup, a company based in Santa Fe, N.M., that develops science-based software, routing and marketing strategies for corporations.

Bending the rules can involve giving the ants a memory and enabling them to retrace a particularly good route so that they can mark it with extra pheromone — something that real ants do not do.

"Throw a bunch of virtual ants into the cities and each tries to build a route," said Éric Bonabeau, a physicist and network engineer who has studied ants and data networks and is the chairman and chief scientist of Icosystem, a consulting company in Cambridge, Mass.

Marco Dorigo, a professor of computer science at the Free University of Brussels, has borrowed the ant approach to solve a classic puzzle in mathematics called the traveling salesman problem. The challenge is to find the shortest route connecting many different cities — a priority not only for sales forces but also for systems delivering people, parcels or packets of Internet data.

As the number of cities involved increases, the difficulty of the problem can increase exponentially. Just a dozen cities present billions of possibilities. Apply ant behavior to the traveling salesman problem, however, and solutions start to present themselves.

In Dr. Dorigo's model, the pheromone deposited along the longer routes evaporates, leaving the links to the greatest number of short routes most densely covered with the chemical. When the artificial ants go out again, they rely on tables storing information about the amount of pheromone on each link.

Dr. Dorigo has found that repeated trips result in progressively shorter overall trips. Such work is directly applicable to data networks, especially the Internet, where traffic is highly unpredictable. Because the artificial ants in such a model are constantly exploring different routes, a host of alternatives surface whenever a particular route goes out of commission.

For the rest of the article, go to http://www.nyt.com/2001/09/13/technology/circuits/13ANTS.html 

The Internet was criticized for buckling under user demand and failing to provide help and information following Tuesday's terrorist attacks. On the contrary, it sparkled. It was merely a matter of knowing where to look --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46766,00.html 

Wireless video just got a lot easier with the XCam2, a video camera that can transmit LIVE COLOR video up to 100 feet. The XCam2 integrates a color analog video camera and 2.4-GHz transmitter into a single device that is smaller than a golf ball. You can add multiple cameras and scan between the cameras like changing channels on your TV! Exceptional quality and ultimate control for$79.99 --- http://www.x10.com/home/offer.cgi?!LND9,../yahoo_vcrcommandhtml_30.htm 
For reviews, see http://www.x10.com/products2/vk45a_press.htm 

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• Create home videos Supervise your children 
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• Add up to 16+ cameras to system. 
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• XRay Vision, for viewing your camera over the Internet or on your PC at home. 
• XCam2 WideEye, same as XCam2 except with 120º degree range of view. 
• VCR Commander, for recording ONLY the action whether you're home or away

More on Wireless Video
"Ultrafast wireless technology set to lift off," CNN.com, August 30, 2001 --- http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/08/30/ultrafast.wireless.idg/index.html 

The Chaos Computer Club was set to celebrate its 20th anniversary this week when terrorism broke out. Members are pleading with patriotic hackers not carry out vengeful cyberattacks --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46868,00.html 

Security experts expect a tidal wave of hacker activity once the U.S. military retaliates for last week's terrorism, although cyberattacks weren't launched right after the disaster --- http://www.interactiveweek.com/article/0,3658,s%253D1825%2526a%253D14547,00.asp 

Ziff Davis Coverage of Terrorist Attacks

Diesel Generators Still Powering Lower Manhattan Telecom

Update: Microsoft's Flight Simulator Reworked After Attacks

Sysadmins Bolster Cyberdefenses

Motherboard, Component Shipments Still Delayed By Air Ban

For the Tech Industry, It's Not Business as Usual

Terrorist Attack Plays Havoc With Communications

Carriers Race to Reconnect Stock Exchange

Disaster Recovery

Ban Crypto, Cripple Commerce

Tech Firms Aid Relief Efforts

Microsoft VP Details Relief Initiatives

Chain e-mails, stock buyback plans and potential trading halts are among the strategies employed to discourage panic selling as U.S. stock markets prepare to reopen Monday --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46874,00.html 

"Rally Around Economy, as Well as Flag," by Scott Norvell, Fox News, September 17, 2001 --- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34378,00.html 
Thanks to Debbie Bowling for forwarding this link.

In a memo to employees earlier this week, Ellen Beswick, Editor and Publisher of Virginia-based Intelligence Press, Inc., raised the rallying cry. She beseeched her colleagues to take "the one extremely powerful action that any American can take right now to stem the losses and get us back on track." She told them to buy something. Anything. A stock. A television. A five-year supply of toothbrushes. Whatever.

We should all follow Beswick’s lead. The best signal we can send to those who would bring us to our knees is a Dow graphic on Monday poking through the top of the chart — not unlike a giant middle finger.

Hans Nordemann, president of Norquest Capital, said it best on Fox News Channel Friday morning. "We need to go forward and show what we're made of," he said. "We need to show them that they can wound us, but we’ll come back stronger, not weaker. That’s an enemy to be fearful of: an enemy that comes back stronger."

So instead of staying home this weekend, go out. Take someone to a movie. Go out to dinner. Buy your kid a new toy, or your lover a knick-knack. If you can’t get out, buy something online. Send flowers to your mother. Order that book you’ve been meaning to buy.

And when the market opens Monday at 9:30 a.m., plop a couple buy orders on the table at Schwab or Morgan-Stanley. It doesn’t have to be much. Buy 10 shares of EMC or, better yet, 20 shares of Espeed, a spin-off of Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm that lost hundreds of its workers on Tuesday.

Each such act, no matter how seemingly minor, sends a message to those who would revel in our demise. It sends the message those who died this week — and are sure to die in the struggle now confronting us — did not, and will not, do so in vain. It sends the message that this country and its economy, a country of the people, by the people and for the people — to borrow one of our greatest phrases — shall never perish from the earth.

In a response to Tuesday's terrorist attacks, the Senate votes to unleash Carnivore on the Internet. FBI and other police will be able to do electronic wiretaps without court orders --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46852,00.html 

After I forwarded the above information about Carnivore, John Howland sent the following reply in a personal message to me. I thought it would be of interest to many of you to tune into how complex communications are becoming. The U.S. is not dealing with an uneducated and ignorant enemy (although some of their would-be pilots and suicide dupes appear not to be the brightest bulbs in their armies of terrorists). I am referring here to an applicant to one of our flying schools who threw down a bunch of money and told the flying school admissions officer that he only wanted to learn how to fly the plane in the air. He had no interest in learning how to take off or land.

The really scary enemies are the ones who are smart enough to con their ignorant friends into suicide while they go on living and are also smart enough to get around Carnivore.

Reply for John Howland, Professor of Computer Science at Trinity University

Carnivore is ineffective on encrypted communications such as pgp, ssl, kerberos, etc., so civil liberties need not be attacked by same since such encryption is available (freely) to all computer users. When Bin Laden discovered that his satellite phones were being listened in on by US intelligence he moved to pgp encryption over the internet and on removable disk media which was physically transported.

Reply from George Wright [geo@LOYOLA.EDU] 

Bruce Schneier had some cogent commentary on such things: ----- Calls for increased security began immediately. Unfortunately, the quickest and easy way to satisfy those demands is by decreasing liberties. This is always short sighted; real security solutions exist that preserve the free society that we all hold dear, but they're harder to find and require reasoned debate. Strong police forces without Constitutional limitations might appeal to those wanting immediate safety, but the reality is the opposite. Laws that limit police power can increase security, by enforcing honesty, integrity, and fairness. It is our very liberties that make our society as safe as it is.

In times of crisis it's easy to disregard these liberties or, worse, to actively attack them and stigmatize those who support them. We've already seen government proposals for increased wiretapping capabilities and renewed rhetoric about encryption limitations. I fully expect more automatic surveillance of ordinary citizens, limits on information flow and digital-security technologies, and general xenophobia. I do not expect much debate about their actual effectiveness, or their effects on freedom and liberty. It's easier just to react. In 1996, TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed in the Atlantic. Originally people thought it was a missile attack. The FBI demanded, and Congress passed, a law giving law enforcement greater abilities to expel aliens from the country. Eventually we learned the crash was caused by a mechanical malfunction, but the law still stands. ----- His full message is available at <http://www.counterpane.com> , including pointers to...

Senate Amendment 1562, adopted Thursday, will expand Federal wiretapping powers: 
<http://www.cdt.org/security/091101response.shtml/> 

Calls to ban encryption: 
<http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html>  
<http://www.msnbc.com/news/627390.asp> 

Re-emergence of Carnivore: 
<http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46747,00.html>  <http://latimes.com/business/la-000073542sep12.story> 

Erosions of civil liberties are coming: 
<http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46784,00.html> 

Other essays: 
<http://www.crypto.com/wtc.html>  
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wtcattack/message/93>  
<http://www.cdt.org/security/cdtstatement.shtml> 

Geo

Reply from Dennis Beresford, former Chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board

Bob,

The SEC has taken certain emergency action to help the markets deal with the crisis in New York. A copy of its press release is at: http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2001-91.txt 

One of the actions states that purchases of treasury stock won't violate pooling of interests accounting. That would only apply to transactions initiated before July 1, 2001, as the new FASB Statement prohibits pooling from that date on.

Another of the actions allows accounting firms to do bookkeeping work for companies whose records were destroyed in the World Trade Center area without that being a violation of the new independence rules.

It's interesting that even accounting and independence rules are affected by the national emergency.

Denny

The heightened focus on cutting-edge security technologies offers hope of a safer society but also raises questions about technological feasibility and the loss of personal freedoms. http://cgi.zdnet.com/slink?140366:2700840 

safe.millennium.berkeley.edu --- http://safe.millennium.berkeley.edu/ 

This site is a service for everyone who may have been near the terrorist attacks on September 11 and their family members and friends. Our thoughts and emotions are with you all, and we only hope that this can provide some measure of help in these difficult times. Thank you for your many messages of support.

This site now pulls data from the following other sources:

Friends and Family Status Database Greater New York Hospitals Association (changes merged every 30 min) Prodigy's "I'm Okay" Registry (changes merged every 30 min) NY.COM Survivor Registry Bill Shunn's Check-In Registry Cantor, Tradespark, eSpeed Emergency Info Center (changes merged every 30 min) Alumnae and Alumni of Vassar College (changes merged every 30 min) Please submit reports on anyone you have spoken to or heard from who may have been near the incidents. There may be many concerned relatives and friends looking for them.

Bob Jensen has some threads on terrorism at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JusticeAppeal.htm 

Civil liberties watchdogs fear that Tuesday's attacks will result in Americans trading in freedoms for security measures that may not be all that effective anyway --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46784,00.html 

When a radio conglomerate compiles a list of potentially offensive songs that stations might not want to play, civil liberties advocates and artists cry foul --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46925,00.html 

See also:
A Thorn in Hollywood's Side

For Your Information 

A new virus has been discovered. W32/Nimda@MM is a mass-mailing worm, which spreads via open shares, Microsoft Web Folders and emails. The email attachment name seems to be limited to Readme.exe and uses the icon for an Internet Explorer HTML document. You can read about the virus at 
http://vil.nai.com/vil/virusSummary.asp?virus_k=99209#top . 

As always do not open any attachments through email unless you are expecting them. The Exchange Mail Server will not be effective in catching the virus because it is an executable file. So please exercise extreme caution. If you have any questions or problems regarding this please feel free to give us a call at 7409 or email us at helpdesk@trinity.edu . Thanks.

Trey Dunn Trinity 
University Information Technology Services User Services Support Tech I 
715 Stadium Dr. San Antonio, Tx. 78212 
phone : (210) 999-7498 email: Trey.Dunn@Trinity.edu  
http://www.Trinity.edu/jdunn  Visit the ITS web site at http://www.Trinity.edu/ITS 

 

Tax Cuts Won't Hurt the Surplus By R. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers The Wall Street Journal, 08/22/01 Page A16

ARTICLE URL: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB99843889210000000.djm 

RELATED ARTICLE The Outlook By Greg Ip, The Wall Street Journal, 08/27/01 Page A1

ARTICLE URL: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB998858675658835975.djm 

Message from Lana Kadoshnikov [sk133@csufresno.edu] 

Dear Participants:

The 13th Asian-Pacific Conference program has been posted to our conference web site at www.craig.csufresno.edu/conasia . We would like to bring your attention to the following items:

Please check your name and title of your paper on the program. If you have any corrections, contact us by fax (559) 278-7336 or e-mail at ali_peyvandi@csufresno.edu  or benjamin_tai@csufresno.edu .

Please bring 25 copies of your paper for distribution at your session.

If you have not sent your hotel reservation forms, please do so as soon as possible. Please see our web site 
( www.craig.csufresno.edu/conasia  ) if you need a registration form.

Please ensure that you obtain a visa to enter Brazil. We suggest you apply for a tourist visa. Please refer to our web site for visa information and application form.

Please refer to our web site periodically for updated information.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

P.S. If you do not attend the conference, please disregard this message. 

Thank you.

Ali Peyvandi Benjamin Tai Conference Co-Chairman Conference Co-Chairman

"The Joy of Text," The Economist print edition, September 13, 2001 --- http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=780694 

What are the implications of text messaging for “third-generation” mobile phones?

BETTER late than never. After a five-month delay, the world’s first commercial “third-generation” (3G) mobile-phone service is to be launched on October 1st in Japan by NTT DoCoMo, the country’s main mobile operator. Elsewhere, 3G remains a distant dream. But mobile-phone users in many countries (although few in America) already use another data service, more primitive but hugely popular: text messaging. Hence a question for would-be 3G operators outside Japan: is “texting” the bridge to the future, or an alternative?

The lucky Japanese will now enjoy both versions of the future. Not only are they keen on texting. In addition, subscribers to DoCoMo’s new 3G service, which has been available to 4,500 trial users since May, will be able to gain access to the Internet at far higher speeds than they can with DoCoMo’s present technology, already the world’s most advanced mobile-Internet service.

The 3G handsets are as small and light as existing handsets, with the same vivid colour screens that are used to display e-mail messages, cartoon graphics and cut-down web pages. The most advanced model even allows users to make and receive video calls, using a tiny built-in camera. By next March, DoCoMo hopes to sign up 150,000 3G subscribers, most of whom are expected to be business customers.

Other mobile-phone operators, mainly in Europe, are burdened with debts incurred after they paid more than $100 billion for licences to operate 3G services, which will now launch many months behind schedule. Coverage may become available in some parts of Europe next year, but will not be widespread until 2003 at the earliest.

Even when 3G eventually arrives, it is not clear how operators will entice users to upgrade to it. The service they will offer will be far less versatile than DoCoMo’s. The performance of a 3G network depends on the density of its base stations. In Japan, density is relatively cheap to achieve. Not so in Europe, where cash-strapped operators are building sparse, “thin and crispy” networks. These will offer lower data-transmission rates than originally planned. So promises of video on 3G phones have been quietly dropped.

Murky though the prospects for fancy data services on 3G may be, mobile-phone users in Europe and Asia are already wildly enthusiastic (and profitable) users of a data service of a far more basic type. For there has been an extraordinary boom in text messaging, which allows users to send short, telegram-like messages of up to 160 characters from one mobile phone to another. The number of text messages sent each month has grown from a global 4 billion in December 1999 to 20 billion in December 2000, and it is expected to reach 40 billion by December 2001, according to figures compiled by Simon Buckingham of Mobile Streams, a consultancy based in Newbury, England.

U cd try 2 txt me Text messaging, known as Short Message Service (or SMS) in many parts of the world, is particularly popular in Europe (where 47% of Swedes and 39% of Italians use the service) and in Asia. In the Philippines, the use of text messaging as an organisational tool by protesters is even credited with helping to overthrow Joseph Estrada, the country’s then president, in January. But text messaging is almost non-existent in America, where it is used by only around 2% of the population, according to Gartner, a consultancy. One reason is that mobile phones are less popular in America than elsewhere; fewer than 40% of people have them, compared with more than 70% in parts of Europe. Besides, because PCs are cheap in America and local calls are free, Americans prefer “instant messaging”, a similar form of communication between Internet-connected PCs.

The success of text messaging is surprising given that it is fiddly to use a mobile handset as a keyboard—and that it costs an average of $0.10 to send a text message. But teenagers in particular have embraced “texting” largely because sending a message is cheaper, if more laborious, than making a voice call. The resulting torrent of messages has been an unexpected bonanza for operators. Text-message revenues now amount to over $3 billion a month, says Mr Buckingham, and they will exceed $5 billion a month by December 2002 (see chart). For some operators, text messages now account for more than 10% of revenue.

The rest of the article is at http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=780694 

"Term Paper Mills, Anti-Plagiarism Tools, and Academic Integrity," by Marie Goark, EDUCAUSE Review, September/October 2001, pp. 40-48 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm.html  

• Figures from around the country are drawing attention to the issues of cheating, plagiarism, and academic integrity:
  
• At the University of Virginia, 122 students were accused of cheating on term papers in introductory physics; half may face expulsion or loss of degrees awarded in earlier years. Footnote 1
  
• Cases of suspected cheating and plagiarism at Amherst College averaged five a year from 1990 to 1998 but increased to sixteen in 1999 and nineteen in 2000.  Footnote 2
  
• Reported occurrences of academic dishonesty at the University of California-Berkeley doubled between 1995 and 1999. Footnote 3
  
• In a recent survey conducted by Donald McCabe, founder of the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University, 72 percent of high school students reported one or more instances of serious cheating on written work, and 15 percent of students reported submissions of papers obtained "in large part" from a term paper vendor or Web site.  Footnote 4
  
• A study by the Center for Academic Integrity found that almost 75 percent of college students own up to some form of academic dishonesty.  Footnote 5
  
• At Penn State, despite the fact that faculty had discussed the consequences of cheating with 63 percent of the students surveyed, 17 percent of the students said they had cheated on tests and 44 percent said they had cheated on class assignments.  Footnote 6

The amount of cheating appears to be increasing. For example, at medium-to-large universities, the percentage of students who said they collaborated on assignments even though it was not permitted increased from 11 percent in a 1963 survey to 49 percent in 1993. For thirty-one small-to-medium institutions, unpermitted collaboration increased from 30 percent to 38 percent between 1990 and 1995.  Footnote 7

Furthermore, the ease with which information can be copied from the Web and the emergence of term paper vendors or "mills" on the Internet are likely adding to the growing problem of plagiarism. For example, a neuro-biology professor at the University of California-Berkeley found that 45 of 320 students in his class had plagiarized at least part of their term paper from the Internet. Nearly 15 percent of his students plagiarized even after they had been warned that he would use anti-plagiarism technology.  Footnote 8

In a recent survey commissioned by Knowledge Ventures, an education technology company, more than 90 percent of academic administrators and faculty interviewed said that academic integrity is an issue on their campus. Most were unable to pinpoint the extent of the problem, the source of the problem, or whether specific departments or student groups were more at risk. In addition, of those who stated that academic integrity is an issue, 83 percent said that it has become more of an issue over the last three to five years, primarily due to the use of the Internet as a research tool. Compounding the effects of the Internet are difficulties in providing violations and a reluctance to report violators.  Footnote 9

 

Term Paper Mills

Term paper mills existed long before the Internet. Companies who sell term papers have advertised on campus and in magazines such as the Rolling Stone for several years (Footnote 10).  With the advent of Internet technology, though, the number of places where papers are available has grown and the ease with which papers can be obtained has increased. Some of these Web sites are operations set up by students while others are for-profit ventures.

At term paper mills, students can directly purchase pre-written papers. Some sites offer free services or make money through advertising. Others act as an exchange--a student must submit a paper to get a free paper. Most term paper mills charge a fee, ranging from about $5 to $10 per page. Students may pay an additional fee for immediate e-mail delivery (e.g., $15). Other sites will write a customized paper for a much higher fee.

In most states, it is illegal to sell papers that will be turned in as student work (Footnote 11).  Thus many for-profit sites post disclaimers saying that the information should be used only for research purposes and should not be submitted as a student's own work. The companies will bill a student's credit card using an unrecognizable company name.

Experts estimated that more than 70 term paper mills were in operation in early 1998, up from 28 at the beginning of 1997 (Footnote 12).   There is no current estimate of the number of sites, although some lists of Int