Instructional & Media Services at Dickinson College

linking search results with Google+ was like Microsoft bundling Internet Explore with Windows

Market strength in one place being used to leverage sub optimal products in another.

It's time to tell both Google and Bing that we want to decide for ourselves, thank you very much, if content is credible, instead of their making those decisions for us, decisions made behind hidden -- and suspicious -- algorithms.

he Anti-Google: Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO)

essentially a straightforward, hyperlinked collection of professionally-produced, peer-reviewed bibliographies in different subject areas—sort of a giant, interactive syllabus put together by OUP and teams of scholars in different disciplines

"You can't come up with a search filter that solves the problem of information overload," Zucca told Ars. OUP is betting that the solution to the problem lies in content, which is its area of expertise, and not in technology, which is Google's and Microsoft's.

the move to Facebook -- which lacks a specific tool for blogging within the network -- may have contributed to the decline of blogging among young adults and teens

“Microblogging and status updating on social networks have replaced old-style ‘macro-blogging’ for many teens and adults,”

Motion pictures on DVDs that are lawfully made and acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System [CSS] when circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use in the following instances: (i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students; (ii) Documentary filmmaking; (iii) Noncommercial videos. [Note: the term "motion picture" does not solely mean feature films—for the Library of Congress, it refers to "audiovisual works consisting of a series of related images which, when shown in succession, impart an impression of motion, together with accompanying sounds, if any." Hence, the term includes television, animation, and pretty much any moving image to be found on DVD.]

the longer explanation from the Library of Congress specifies that circumventing CSS on a DVD is only justified when non-circumventing methods, such as videotaping the screen while playing the DVD or using screen-capture tools through a computer, are unacceptable due to inadequate audio or visual quality. But nevertheless, this ruling greatly expands who can use ripping software to clip DVDs for academic and transformative use, including a range of derivative works like remix videos and documentaries.

Now, no matter your discipline, you (or your technological partners) can do what I've been doing for the past three years: assemble a personal (or departmental) library of clips to access for class lectures. Now we can expand the use of those clips to embed in conference presentations, public lectures, digital publications, companion websites or DVDs to include with print publications, or other innovative uses that had otherwise been stifled by legal restrictions. For me, having a hard drive full of video clips on hand enables a mode of improvisation not available with DVDs—if discussion shifts to talking about an example of a film or television show that I've ripped a clip for another course, I can instantly play it in class even without planning in advance by bringing the DVD. Think of the conference presentations you've seen where a presenter fumbles over cuing and swapping DVDs—with a little bit of planning, clips can be directly embedded into a slideshow to avoid awkwardly wasting time.

a site that wants to look at the intersection of productivity, technology, and pedagogy in higher education

showing that the barrier of entry to this new stuff is lower than it seems

One hundred percent of this stuff we bring into our own classroom. If the slogan for software development is to eat your own dog food, we are always eating our own dog food. These are our assignments, our best practices.

According to Gloucestershire College, in England, Facebook and other social-networking Web sites can do more than provide a platform for vacation photos, favorite quotes, and status updates; they can help reduce dropout rates, the BBC reports.The media-curriculum manager at the college, Perry Perrott, says that with the advent of social media, students have been better at keeping in touch with faculty members, which has lead to a “significant improvement in retention.”After seeing how popular social-networking sites were with students, Mr. Perry says the college decided to embrace the technology as a cost-free way to further engage the campus.