National Archives on Google Video

Condensed from a February 24 press release on the NARA website:

"...announced the launch of a pilot program to make holdings of the National Archives available for free online. This non-exclusive agreement will enable researchers and the general public to access a diverse collection of historic movies, documentaries and other films from the National Archives via Google Video as well as the National Archives website.

The pilot program undertaken by the National Archives and Google features 101 films from the audiovisual collections preserved at the Archives. Highlights of the pilot project include:

• The earliest film preserved in the National Archives holdings by Thomas Armat, "Carmencita - Spanish Dance," featuring the famous Spanish Gypsy dancer,1894

• A representative selection of U.S. government newsreels, documenting World War II, 1941-45

• A sampling of documentaries produced by NASA on the history of the spaceflight program

• Motion picture films, primarily from the 1930s, that document the history and establishment of a nationwide system of national and state parks. Included is early footage of modern Native American activities, Boulder Dam, documentation of water and wind erosion, Civilian Conservation Corps workers, and the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority. A 1970 film documents the expansion of recreational programs for inner city youth across the nation.

The National Archives and Google are exploring the possibilities of expanding the on-line film collection and making the Archives extensive textual holdings available via the Internet."

Creating A Faculty Website

This morning I presented the "Creating A Faculty Website" workshop - thank you to all who took the time to attend. If you were unable to be there and would like to view the PowerPoint presentation, visit the IRC Archived Presentations site and download either the PDF or Flash version.

For the .swf file to run, you must have Macromedia FlashPlayer v6.0 or later installed on your computer (Macromedia FlashPlayer can be downloaded free here). For the .pdf file to run, you must have Adobe Reader installed on your computer (Adobe Reader can be downloaded free here).

Subscription Feeds

You may have noticed those links on the right listed as "Subscription Feeds".

So what are these and how can you use them?

All Blogs and Podcasts, as well as many other web content pages, have an associated feed that "sends out" its content to users who subscribe to it. It's similiar to a listserv or mailing list, except that it is entirely web based, not email based.

The IRC Blog has a feed of http://ircathcc.blogspot.com/atom.xml. Please note that this link is an XML/RSS file (The technical specs of a web feed) and is not readable by ordinary web browsers. But you can use this link to subscribe using numerous available services. I am going to talk about three of these below, but there are certainly others.

Yahoo allows you to add feeds to your http://my.yahoo.com page which is available free with a Yahoo account. This is an excellent place to read all of your blogs and news in one location. We
have a direct link to use this service on the right.

Google has 2 free services that allow you to manage and read your feeds. They are Google Homepage and Google Reader and we also have a direct link to their services on the right. They are both very good, with Google Homepage being a personal favorite of mine.

Last on our list, but probably the most impressive service so far, is Bloglines. This free service from ask.com, is in my opinion, the easiest and cleanest method for reading and navigating
your desired web content. If you attended the February 21st Brown Bag Lunch, I presented a small demonstration of how it works. I have been using it for only a couple of weeks, but I am already wondering how I ever "read" the web before this was around.

I hope this helps you understand Feeds, or RSS Feeds as you may see them called. They are becoming a more important and integral part of the web community. In a future posting, I will talk about Podcasts, which is another feed based system of content delivery.

Online Journal Articles

This post is an addendum to Christel's Brown Bag Lunch posting.

In her posting, there is a link to an online journal article that is accessed through one of our Library's Online Database providers. If you are viewing this off of the HCC Campus, you will need a library card number. These are available at the Library's Circulation Desk.

The Online Databases are great resources that can be found here. If you want to link to any of these for use in your classes please contact IRC personnel and we can help you with the proper linking.

Brown Bag Lunch

Monday Feb. 20th and Tuesday Feb. 21, we began our "brown bag lunch" series. We covered some interesting topics, did some venting, even discussed the pros and cons of yoga and kickboxing for stress relief. It was interesting that both days faculty addressed classroom discipline issues, attendance policies and students' attitude and expectations. Apparently this issue is not unique to HCC. Sharon Stowers mentioned an article in the New York Times yesterday : To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It's All About Me
Sharon also shared the "Have coffee with your instructor" idea: she has a weekly office hour in the student center for general discussions. Apparently it is very successful and quite a few students come. Maybe it's for the cookies she brings or the extra credit points.

Other topics covered:

• Blogging: how to use blogs in the classroom and how to create them. Rick Smith demonstrated "Bloglines" a "FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content".
  
• Making effective use in online conferences, specifically involving students to answer their peers' questions.
• Using midterm surveys to get a feel for how the class is going: what activities did the students like/dislike.
• Gerry Yeager reported on the ITC conference she attended in Savannah

Greg Priebe found an interesting web site that collects people's grocery lists. So far, there is a collection of 1000 lists. This could be an interesting topic for sociology classes. Take a look at The Grocery List Collection

The next brown bag lunches are scheduled for:

• Monday, March 27: 2:15pm-3:15pm
• Tuesday, March 28: 12:45pm - 1:45pm

Suggestions for topics are welcome.

Upcoming events in the IRC: See IRC calendar

• Feb. 23: Grant Writing clinic
• Feb. 24: Creating a faculty web page (please sign up at http://www.harford.edu/Department/HumanRes/training/training-new.asp?OID=61)

In March, we will also begin a 5 week online workshop in WebCT for instructors planning to develop an online or hybrid course

If you are planning to use WebCT in your Face-to-face classes, come to a "WebCT lite" session.

Hope to see many of you at the next brown bag lunch.

You may comment on any entries in this blog. Just click on "comments" and enter your thoughts.