_ .......................................................... __ __ __ __ __ __ web's eye view | | /| / /| | /| / /| | /| / / May 22, 2000 | |/ |/ / | |/ |/ / | |/ |/ / Maricopa Center for |__/|__/ |__/|__/ |__/|__/ Learning & Instruction .......................................................... http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/eye/ .......................................................... The freshest bag of URLs is ready for pickup at http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/eye/bag/curr.html Help us refill by dropping interesting sites into: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/eye/bag/drop.html AlertBox(es) ============ Finally Some Progress in Internet Client Design The Alertbox for April 30 is now online at: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000430.html Napster, IE 5 for the Mac, and Yahoo FinanceVision introduce specialized Internet user interfaces beyond the standard page viewing that had been unchanged since Mosaic. The Alertbox for May 14 is now online at: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000514.html A new Poynter Institute study confirms Web content studies from 1994 and 1997: plain headlines work best; users hunt for info, often ignore graphics, and interlace sites. News from EDUPAGE ================= EDUCATION REASSESSED IN WORKER SHORTAGE DEBATE The high-tech industry, complaining of a severe labor shortage, is reconsidering the importance of a four-year college degree for certain types of IT workers. Four-year universities are often unable to keep up with rapidly changing technology. As a result, lobbyists and recruiters are turning to community colleges and for-profit schools, which seem to be more flexible and less expensive than traditional schools, says Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America. Industry observers say some technicians and support staff do not need the same level of education as software developers, for example. (EE Times Online, 4 May 2000) WEBUCATION Online education may be the next big thing. Education now competes with medical care as the biggest single industry in the U.S., and many people are beginning to invest in online universities and adult education. Established universities are looking to the Internet to widen their reach without having to expand their physical plants. Some investors think online education could benefit from good management practices and the application of multimedia techniques. Foreign students could benefit especially from online education, making higher education and technical training another U.S. export. UNext CEO Andrew M. Rosenfield says developing nations need better educated and trained people, but they cannot afford the infrastructure or the teachers required. Education is not a commodity product, but it can still be profitable. Business education in particular will not necessarily have to compete on price, as Corpedia's Alexander Brigham points out; companies want prestige and are willing to pay for it. It is also easier to market to businesses than to consumers, and online education can be a powerful perk in the tight job market. Education is becoming a life-long activity for some, and the Internet is the most efficient means of delivering this product. (Forbes, 15 May 2000) CREATING MORE WOMEN CODERS The number of women receiving computer science degrees continues to fall, even as the demand for high-tech workers rises. Women earned 37 percent of bachelor's degrees in computer science in 1984, and the number has since fallen to 28 percent. Girls often turn away from technology as teenagers, making it difficult to attract them to computer science in college. Only 17 percent of high school students enrolled in advanced placement (AP) computer science courses are girls. In an effort to spark the interest of high-school girls in computing, Carnegie Mellon University is training teachers to encourage girls to sign up for AP computer science classes. While helping 250 AP computer science teachers make the transition from Pascal to C++, Carnegie Mellon and the Washington Research Institute used the opportunity to stress the importance of gender issues in the classroom. During the seminars, instructors advised the AP teachers to focus on meaningful computing and to avoid strictly number-crunching activities. With educators changing their teaching styles, participating schools have reported a rise in the number of girls enrolled in AP computer science courses. (Wired News, 19 May 2000)