COURSE DESCRIPTION: The revolution in communication now emerging is no less significant in the history of education than the Guttenberg revolution which made possible the preservation and communication of ideas through books. The modern university is a legacy of that world, its fundamental tool the book and its heart the library where knowledge is stored and retrieved. But all that is changing as a new paradigm in communication promises to make obsolete both the book and the library. Papers once accessible only to scholars able to devote time and money to extensive travel can now be accessed with the click of a computer key. The intellectual resources of the world canbe as close as the computer screen, as accessible as the local news. And this is only one simple illustration of the kinds of changes we will see within the educational community early in the next century. The impact of the Internet on higher education is already profound; it will be transformative. As the book was the essential tool of the Guttenberg era, the computer will be the foundation of the new university. We may deplore it; we may ignore it; but we cannot wish it away. Demographers are beginning to speak of Generation I (for Internet) as the next significant wave of new students to hit higher education. Consisting of those students who have been socialized from infancy with computers as part of their daily reality, these techno-youngsters will have little patience with a generation of teachers who are unprepared either to understand or to utilize the technology through which they commonly communicate. There may be no room in higher education in the next generation for those who insist on maintaining their computer illiteracy. In this course we will combine some aspects of a traditional seminar with hands on experience in multi-media and web construction.

Reading and discussion will focus on some of the cultural issues that rise from our transition into a digital world. We will read Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital as an Introduction to the digital world. Written in 1995, Negroponte's text is still stimulating, but it also demonstrates how rapidly the digital world is changing as we will see in daily use some technologies he visualized as happening sometime in the future. In this part of the seminar we will also discuss (and speculate on) the impact of digital technology on the future of teaching in the humanities generally and American culture particularly. I will use the listproc to share with you articles appearing on-line or in print that open up issues fruitful for discussion. You are also encouraged to share information you may encounter that is relevant to our purposes.

A second part of our mission will be to experience the WWW as a research tool by exploring a variety of on-line resources, including discussion groups, data banks available through the library, on-line museum and library resources, and significant web pages for sites at which American culture is being studied or preserved. Sites will be analyzed in terms of clarity of purpose, quality and quantity of information, effectiveness of design, and similar criteria. As an aspect of searching for on-line materials, we can consider the type, function, and effectiveness of the major search engines in an effort to enhance the quality of our web searches.

The third part of our work, creative projects, will consist of (1) a personal web page (2) an individual example of hypertext scholarship, and (3) participation in a team effort to design and create a web site. For these efforts you may either compose your own html code, or use one of the popular html editing programs such as Claris Home Page, available in the computer lab. More details on these projects later. We will attempt to accommodate all computing skill levels in this class. More advanced users will serve as resource persons for their less experienced colleagues; teams will be assembled to take advantage of the individual strengths of participants. Resources provided by the university in the computer labs, through the available on-line tutorials, and your text should enable everyone to master sufficient HTML code to meet the requirements of the class.

SCHEDULE: Due to the experimental nature of our seminar, I am not pre-scheduling our time. We will be flexible and innovative in our use of time, scheduling events as the occasion arises. Our first two classes after the initial meeting will be spent on acquiring basic HTML composition skills. Mr. James Kimbal from the Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology will be our guest lecturer on Jan 19 and Jan 26 to present basic instruction in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) composition and use of Claris Home Page. These two sessions will give you enough of the basics of HTML and Claris Home Page to enable you to continue developing you skill through application as you complete class projects. As these sessions will be our only in-class instruction in HTML, be sure not to miss them. There will be no makeup.

Jan 12	Introductory Meeting: Sign Up for Listproc and "Personal" Server Accounts
Jan 19	James Kimbal: Creating Web Pages with HTML (Part 1)
Jan 26	James Kimbal: Creating Web Pages with HTML (Part 2)
Feb 2	Carol Singer (ACS Library Rep): Introduction to Databases--Meet in library Electronic Reading Room (Lib 126) at 2:30
Feb 9	Read Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital. Post initial response to class listproc by Sundayl, Feb 6; post discussion response to other posts by class time. Be prepared to elaborate on your posts in class discussion. Finish resume projects for today!
Feb 16	Carol Singer: Using Search Engines. Meet in Library Electronic Reading Room (Lib 126) at 3:30. NOTE TIME CHANGE
Feb 23	Using FTP (Fetch). You will need your accounts on the CLASSWORK server for this exercise. Bring your complete resumes in html format to be placed on the server. Also, begin organizing for Group Projects

COURSE PROJECTS:

· Personal Web Page: You will plan, design and create a personal web page. The primary purpose of this web page should be to present your professional credentials on-line.

· Hypertext Scholarship: You will develop a short, illustrated research paper suitable for on-line publication. Prior to writing your paper, you will be required to select a forum for its publication so you can conform the paper to the host's requirements. Forum may be a professional on-line journal or you may use either of my two web sites: The American 1890s: a Chronology (http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/america.html) or The Crystal City: Bowling Green in the 1890s (http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/index.html) NOTE: In order to assure that your project is multi-media, I am requiring you to illustrate your research paper with either photographs or graphics. Any additional uses of media, such as movies or sound, is at your discretion. For this purpose, you may use an existing paper if you have one than can be adapted to on-line publication. Papers designed for publication on either of my sites should be about four conventional pages in length and contain three or four illustrations.

· Team Projects: Because large multi-media projects are labor intensive, they lend themselves to team efforts. The seminar will be divided into teams with the assignment to design a new web page for the ACS Program. As a final project, the entire seminar will come together to review these pages and to consider the possibility of a fourth page that would combine the best features of all three. On completion, these pages will be shared with Dr. Terrie who may at his discretion select one for the new ACS Homepage. If one of your designs is selected, appropriate credit will be given to those who worked on the project.

TEAM PROJECT GUIDELINES

· Journals: Throughout the term, you will keep a journal or diary in which you record your experiences with this seminar. Ideally, you should record all your uses of the computer for this period, including research, composition, reading and discussion, listproc posting, browsing, and whatever else you use the computer for. At a minimum, record your efforts for the seminar honestly and accurately. These journals should enable me to discern who might be having problems, who can be of help to others, and what is being learned in the seminar. These journals may become grist for an article on this course in the future.

· Class Listproc: A listproc has been established for the class to enable on-line discussion. You will need to subscribe the listproc by sending the following message to listproc@listproc.bgsu.edu: subscribe ACS682-WEG Your Name. You also need to open an account on the BGSU Personal server which can be done at the Information Technology center in Hayes Hall. The account on the Personal server is in addition to any email or other accounts you may have with ITS.

RESOURCES:

Tutorials:

Sink or Swim: Internet Search Tools & Techniques (http://www.sci.ouc.bc.ca/libr/connect96/search.htm#intro)

This site contains an introduction to search engines, explaining how each of the major engines works. It also has exercises to be completed by the students to test their ability to understand and use the search engines.

Internet Detective: An Interactive Tutorial on Evaluating the Quality of Internet Resources (http://www.sosig.ac.uk/desire/internet-detective.html)

"Internet Detective is an interactive, online tutorial which provides an introduction to the issues of information quality on the Internet and teaches the skills required to evaluate critically the quality of an Internet resource."

TERENA Guide to Network Resource Tools (http://www.terena.nl/libr/gnrt/index.html)

"The indispensible guide to network tools and innonvations for users of all levels of expertise."

Internet Web Text (http://www.december.com/web/text/)

"a hypertext guide to Internet resources, a partial substitute for a paper-based text about the Internet [which] links you to Internet resources: orientation, guides, reference materials, browsing and exploring tools, subject and word-oriented searching tools, and information about connecting with people."

Scientific American: Special Report--The Internet: Bringing Order from Chaos. http://www.sciam.com/0397issue/0397intro.html

"noted technologists tackle questions about how to organize knowledge on the Internet with the aim of making it more genuinely useful. From a variety of standpoints, they consider how to simplify finding the information we desire (yes, there is life beyond today's search engines). They discuss the best ways to format and display data, so that everyone (including the blind) has maximum access to them, in as many ways as can be imagined. The creative technological solutions that they propose may not be the approaches that are finally adopted, but their ideas will certainly provoke further awareness and constructive thinking about the problems."

HTML Tutorials:

Writing HTML: A Tutorial for Creating Web Pages http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/lessons.html

NCSA Beginners Guide to HTML http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html

BGSU Tutorial and Resource Guide http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/its/techsupport/tutorial/html.html

Teachers Guide to Web Authoring Resources http://www.teachers.net/development/authoring/

University of Virginia HTML Tutorial: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HTML/htmlhome.html

Creating HTML: A Simple Guide: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~bornemjd/chtml/html.html

Webmonkey tutorial http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/index.html

WEBMONKEY: http://www.webmonkey.com

Webmonkey's HTML Basics http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/authoring/html_basics/

Webmonkey's Teaching Tool http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/teachingtool/index.html

Webmonkey's Teaching Tool - the basics of HTML Authoring http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/teachingtool/learn.html

The HTML Help Desk http://web.canlink.com/helpdesk/ HTML

An Interactive Tool for Beginners http://davesite.com/webstation/html/ Good - step by step guide to HTML Page Building

A more directed approach to getting things done is "How do they do that with HTML?"http://www.nashville.net/~carl/htmlguide/

Resource Sites for HTML authoring http://www.builder.com

Image Resources http://images.altavista.com The Altavista Image and Media Search Engine is an excellent way to find images, movies, and other media to insert in to your documents. (remembering issues of copyright, of course.)

The Mars Hotel, an excellent place to find backgrounds for web documents and some good icons as well. http://wwww.themarshotel.com A more "flashy" set of computer generated graphics and visualization resources can be found at http://mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/cg.html