CIT Infobits is an electronic service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ITS Center for Instructional Technology. The Center's staff offers monthly, nicely annotated citations for journal and magzine stories about information and instructional technology. The June 2005 issue index offers a good indication of their focus:

• Personal Digital Libraries
• eLearning and the Structure of Higher Education Institutions
• Principles for Supporting Cyber-Faculty
• Clickers in the Classroom
• Update on Videoconferencing Options
• Recommended Reading

Infobits, published by the Center for Instructional Technology at UNC Chapel Hill, has a number of interesting bits in the May issue. The issue points to a piece (in pdf format) by Walt Crawford, "Books, Blogs & Style" (Cites & Insights, vol. 6, no. 7, May 2006) that meditates on how medium affects message. Crawford, a senior analyst at the Research Libraries Group, publishes this free online journal of "libraries, policy, technology and media." 

Inside Higher Education gives a good digest of "The State of Open Source Software," a report recently published by Rob Abel for the Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness (A-HEC). Abel's report draws on a survey of more than 200 higher education officials  responsible for software selection at a range of  institutions. According to the report, two-thirds said they have "considered or are actively considering” using open source products; only about a quarter of institutions are implementing higher education-specific open source software. Inside Higher Education quotes Kenneth Green,  founding director of the Campus Computing Project, as calling the mindset toward open source "affirmative ambivalence.”

 Editor's note: URL has been updated to show proceedings from the conference. 9/3/07

International HASTAC Conference
 "Electronic Techtonics:  Thinking at the Interface”
April 19-21, 2007

HASTAC ( "haystack”—Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) is now soliciting papers and panel proposals for "Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface,” its first international conference. The interdisciplinary conference will be held April 19-21, 2007, in Durham, North Carolina, co-sponsored by Duke University and RENCI (Renaissance Computing Institute). Details concerning registration fees, hotel accommodations, and the full conference agenda will be posted to http://www.hastac.org as they become available.

Highlights include a keynote address by John Seely Brown (The Social Life of Information), a talk by legal theorist James Boyle (co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Creative Commons, and Science Commons), a conversation among leaders of innovative digital humanities projects led by John Unsworth (chair of the ACLS "Cyberinfrastructure and the Humanities and Social Sciences” commission), and a presentation by media artist and research pioneer Rebecca Allen. The conference will also include refereed scholarly and scientific papers, multimedia performances, an exhibit hall of innovative software and hardware, plus tours of art and scientific installations in virtual reality, learning-game, and interactive sensor space environments.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Six sessions will be devoted to panels with refereed papers on spects of "interface” spanning media arts, engineering, and the human, social, natural, and computational sciences.  Panels will be topical and cross-disciplinary; they will be comprised of papers that are themselves interdisciplinary as well as specialized disciplinary papers presented in juxtaposition with one another.
 
Deadline for Proposals:  December 1, 2006.

DNA Stream offers a player that delivers a "TV experience" via the Internet. It's similar to Joost, which I mentioned here earlier along with others. What makes it unique is that it is flash-based and doesn't require the downloading of a client. It also uses much less bandwidth than Joost.

The site offers English and Spanish videos. Click on a flag icon at the top right to toggle between offerings in the two languages, or select one of the two links below.

http://www.adnstream.tv/ (Spanish)
http://www.dnastream.tv/ (English)

Richard Gunderman of Indiana University's School of Liberal Arts asks hard questions about how faculty may allow debate (more light than heat) to interfere with the more important work of encouraging dialogue, which he characterizes as more heat than light. While some of us may take issue with Professor Gunderman's notions of truth and beauty, and the possibility of 'genuine conversation,' the essay (the second of a three part series that the Center of Inquiry at Wabash College ran within its Liberal Arts Online monthly publicaction) rings true when one thinks not only of the changing nature of classroom discourse, but also of how certain technologies, in particular email, tend to interfere with more nuances, and often result in misunderstandings and conflict. Is it the technology or the general culture that is causing this decline?

Ithaka promotes innovation in higher education by helping pioneering initiatives to thrive. Leaders of new not-for-profit projects, and their funders, must navigate a challenging path from early-stage funding to long-term viability. At the same time, long-established institutions are finding that they must fundamentally rethink the way they serve their constituents in a changing world. Ithaka supports entrepreneurial leaders in higher education with a range of services.

Research Services
Our research group works to understand how new technologies are changing higher education and how colleges and universities can best manage these changes. Its work is guided by an advisory committee of community leaders, and it is presently emphasizing three areas of interest: