Archive for: September 2005
§ ¶EndNote Alternatives
Macintouch has a discussion of alternative bibliographic software. The discussion is biased towards Mac OS, but there is some interesting discussion of cross-platform issues.
§ ¶ICLS Proposals Due November 1
Here’s the full mailing and call for proposals for ICLS 2006, which will be held June 27 to July 1, 2006, in Bloomington, Indiana.
Indiana University is hosting the Seventh International Conference for the Learning Sciences June 27-July 1. The Learning Sciences takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of learning, cognition, and development in real world contexts. All who are interested in the study of learning in context and the design of learning environments are invited to participate in ICLS 2006. Consistent with the 2006 theme Making a Difference, we particularly seek proposals on research that examine the scalability of learning environments and the impact on educational policy and learning theory. Please visit http://www.isls.org/icls2006/ for more details.
Note the November 1, 2005 deadline for submitting proposals for papers, posters, symposia, and innovative sessions. That deadline will be here quickly, so please do begin your preparations to submit a proposal. Also note the separate deadlines for the NSF-sponsored doctoral consortium (March 1, 2006) and pre-conference workshop (January 15, 2006).
If you have questions, email ICLS2006@indiana.edu.
We look forward to seeing you in Bloomington in 2006.
Tom Duffy, Conference Chair
Sasha Barab, Ken Hay, Dan Hickey, Conference Co-Chairs
§ ¶Katrina's Impact on Schools
EdWeek is collecting stories on hurricane Katrina’s impact on teachers, students, and schools.
The school year for the 70,000-student New Orleans district has been decimated by the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Follow this constantly updated Education Week series as we cover the effects on schools, districts, and states affected by the resulting floods.
§ ¶QuickTime 7 for Windows Released
Apple officially released QuickTime 7 for Windows yesterday (requires Windows 2000/XP), and also released QuickTime 7.0.2 for Mac OS X today. And, finally, there’s developer documentation for QT 7 for Windows. Time to get busy…
Update: spoke too soon. Documentation is out, but Apple hasn’t released the QT 7 for Windows SDK. Argh…
§ ¶Media-Savvy External Hard Drives
Hey, a new product category! It looks like a variety of manufacturers are starting to roll out what are basically external hard drives with a video out jack. (Here’s one example: the MG-25, reviewed here and here.) The drives come with embedded hardware that can play a variety of media formats — MPEG (1, 2 and 4), DivX, AVI, JPEG, MP3 — and output analog audio and video. That means you can copy those AVI movies your digicam takes from your computer to the drive via USB, and then unplug the drive from the computer, connect it your TV, and watch the videos there. It’s like a portable TiVo (well, except for the recording part).
Since I often advocate for QuickTime on this blog, I’ll point out that none of these devices can handle QuickTime movies. For those, you’ll need to wait for a video iPod. But one very nice thing about these devices, compared to a theoretical video iPod, is their cost. Because there is no built-in screen, these drives cost only about $50-100 more than “old-fashioned” external drives that lack multimedia support.