Tech Tuesday:Espressos and Changing Grades

As if TV On Demand wasn’t enough: Harvard University is the most recent institution to start using the Espresso Book Machine, which prints any out-of-copyright book the university has digitized in about four minutes — about the time it takes to make an espresso.

The “ATM of books,” made by the New York-based firm On Demand Books, is already in use at about 15 libraries or book stores throughout the U.S., UK and Canada, and the firm plans to ship out 10 more machines by next spring. But the machine at Harvard’s Bookstore will be the first to benefit from a deal between the firm and Google last week, which will give users access to 2 million public-domain texts (printed before 1923) digitized by Google in addition to the 1.6 million offered by On Demand Books, according to an article in the Harvard Crimson,

The machine, which will be available to Harvard students Sept. 29, can print a 300-page paperback book in about four minutes, according to the article. Students can request a book be printed online or in the store, and can either pick up the book “within minutes” or have it delivered by bicycle.

This is great for all of those 18th century lit scholars out there, but somehow I’m not sure my class on health care reform will benefit from texts published before 1923 …

Next time, just show Mom the bad grades: A former Florida A+M student was given an 84 month (7 year) sentence for his involvement in a grade changing scandal last year.

According to an article in Famuan Online, the university’s student newspaper, Marcus Barrington was the last of three students to be sentenced for the scandal, which raised concerns about academic dishonesty on the Tallahassee campus.

Barrington, along with two other students from the university, were charged and indicted for tampering with computers to change grades for a total of 650 students, and to change residencies from out-of-state to in-state for another 90 students.

The three students allegedly installed a keystroke logger on computers in the university’s registrar office , which transmitted user names and passwords to a private e-mail account they created. With this information, they accessed student records and changed them.

Barrington’s co-conspirators each got a 22-month sentence, which they began in April and May, respectively.

Sunday Roundup: Yo Money

Happy Sunday!

This is going to be a quick roundup. College Ave is on the road and heading back home to Ithaca tomorrow at 5:30 a.m. (College Ave needs some beauty sleep).

Basically, it’ll be a recap without my fun, witty, quirky interpretations. Tragic, I know. But I’ll probably come back and touch on these later in the week.

For some reason, this week has been all about money for me. Most of the stories that caught my eye revolve around it … loans, bills, costs. Enjoy (or, cry.):

Take that, big bad banks: House Passes Bill to End Bank-Based Lending, which will  “end subsidies to student-loan companies and use the projected $87-billion in savings to expand aid to students and colleges.” (The Chronicle).

I’d really like to know the answer to this one: Why College Costs Rise, Even in a Recession. Look for my favorite line, “Is this where we are supposed to stand up and cheer?”,  in response to a report from the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities that said the average tuition increase is the lowest in years, which  at 4.3 is still higher than inflation.(New York Times)

Oops Moment: The Daily Iowan, U. Iowa’s student newspaper, said it’s university was hypocritical when it accepted a donation from ExxonMobil (The Daily Iowan).

See you Tech Tuesday!

Tech Tuesday: Tracking Swine Flu

As if helping you catch the guy that stole your phone wasn’t enough, now the iPhone can actually help you track cases of swine flu (and other infectious diseases).

Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and the MIT Media Lab released the “Outbreaks Near Me” application Sept.1, combining the phone’s GPS with Healthmap.org, a web crawler that “mines official and unofficial Internet data sources for information on outbreaks of emerging, infectious diseases,” according to an article in The Harvard Crimson. It is available for free in the iTunes store.

“If people know what’s happening around them, they might be more likely to take basic precautions,” such as washing their hands and getting vaccinated, Healthmap co-founder John S. Brownstein told The Crimson.

And another local swine flu update – Swine Flu’s First Death occurred in College Ave.’s hometown of Ithaca New York. A junior at Cornell University died last Friday because of complications related to the H1N1 virus. See campus reaction and  who is not talking.

Sunday Roundup: Israeli boycott, round 2?

Followers of College Ave might remember what I like to call the most recent “Israeli boycott mess” in May 2007, when the University and College Union (UCU), a 116,000-member organization of British academics, agreed to circulate a Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions for “information and discussion.” The motion to discuss passed by a vote of 158 to 99.

The number of members who agreed to hear out the call to boycott worried many across the world, and the fear that a boycott would actually happen caused somewhat of an international panic.

President of the U.S.’ Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, waged a counter-UCU campaign a few months later, which, which culminated in an August 8 full page New York Times ad co-sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, signed by more than 300 U.S. college and university presidents, which as College Ave alumni Aaron Munzer wrote “essentially said, So you’re gonna boycott Israelis? Well then, boycott us too! All of us. You big jerks.” That Munzer has a way with words.

Ultimately, the boycott never passed, but last month it seems another call was made — this time, for the country as a whole, and by a professor who teaches at a prominent Israeli University.

Neve Gordon, an Israeli citizen and chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, published an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times,  “An Israeli Professor Tests the Limits of Academic Freedom,” arguing that Israeli is an “apartheid state,” and called for a boycott of his country (and his university).

Almost immediately, the president of that university responded with an angry letter that also appeared in the L.A. Times, raising the issue of academic freedom and saying that Mr. Gordon had stepped beyond that.

“At the same time, by calling on other entities, including academic institutions, to boycott Israel — and effectively, to boycott his own university — Gordon has forfeited his ability to work effectively within the academic setting, with his colleagues in Israel and around the world. After his very public, personal soul-searching in his Op-Ed article, leading to his extreme description of Israel as an “apartheid” state, how can he, in good faith, create the collaborative atmosphere necessary for true academic research and teaching?”

In a Chronicle of Higher Education article this week, Gordon said he was not surprised by the large number of people who disagree with his position, but said the president’s comments in that letter were “a form of harassment and intimidation.”

The president told The Chronicle “There is an inherent contradiction between calling for academic boycotts and fulfilling the responsibilities of leading an academic department in research collaboration, publications, and international conferences.”

She also said the essay had “branded Ben-Guiron as a radical, left-wing university and was endangering potential donations, crucial for future development.” She also said major donors are threatening to stop their support of the university unless it takes action against him.

This round of boycott talk is not only digging up the “Israeli Boycott” discussion — it’s now reaching into the academic freedom debate, too.

According to The Chronicle, almost 200 Israeli faculty members with tenure signed a petition supporting the professor’s right to express himself. It’s not clear how many people share Ms. Cami’s view — or if the university will actually do anything to remove him.

Whatever happens will likely set a precedent for academics define academic freedom in Israel, and likely in the U.S., too.

Week in Review: Swine Flu

I hate hearing about the Swine flu as much as someone who avoids medicine the next person — but I can’t ignore it anymore.

Our story starts at Duke, where this summer a number of students attending Duke University’s Summer Camps had the virus. In August, the university confirmed that 99 of it’s football players had the flu– some of them since the start of training camp Aug 5.

From there (based on coverage by the Chronicle of Higher Education):

- Sororities at The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge

- More than 80 students at Wake Forest University

- More than 50 students at Emory University, which led to a voluntary quarantine

- And the zinger: More than 2,000 students at Washington State University
That’s just a taste. As recently as Friday, Cornell University (in College Ave’s hometown of Ithaca, NY) reported one student hospitalized with swine flu and another 140 with symptoms.

I’m not breaking out the surgical mask yet — but it will be interesting to see if we can provide a sufficient amount of H1N1 vaccines.

Labor Day Delivery: The Freaky

Like the postal service, my delivery was delayed this week because of Labor Day.

But this one-wheeled tale is worth it.

Calling Ambitious, Unemployed, Cowboy Ridin’ graduate students: Why take Labor Day off when you can ride a unicycle? According to The Daily Revielle, Louisiana State University’s student newspaper, a graduate student spent one day this past weekend riding a unicycle from Baton Rouge to New Orleans — a 117 mile journey that took about 15 hours.

The student’s top speed was 15.6 miles per hour, according to the article — which he hit at mile 100.

From the article: “Just before riding off, Huber saluted the city of Baton Rouge, reset his odometer and yelled “yeehaw.” Then, the Louisiana State University geology graduate student peddled away – his blinking red taillight fading in the distance down River Road.”

Huh? “Yeehaw” is right.

But apparently this is nothing unusual for the student, who regularly rides the unicycle to classes.

It sounds rough: “Riding around on game day, having a bunch of people chant ‘Unicycle, Unicycle!’ and falling in front of them is on the embarrassing side,” he said. “Nobody beats me up, but they laugh at me.”

Don’t believe me? Here’s a video. Next stop: Ringling Brothers.

(Double) Tech Tuesday

First let me apologize for my absence — even College Ave can run into back-end tech issues. We should be good to go from here.

To compensate (and so I don’t have to change the name of this feature to Twitter Tuesdays), here’s a mini Tech Tuesday roundup.

Take this, Twitter haters: Tweeting may actually be helping students develop prose, according to a  Chronicle of Higher Ed article about the Stanford Study of Writing, run out of Stanford University. Early results of the study, which collected academic and extracurricular writing of 189 students over the course of five years, showed “students took pains to cultivate tone and voice, and to address a particular audience.” There are critics of the theory — as the Chronicle points out — who say Twitter hasn’t made a significant impact on things like test results. I guess we’ll have to wait for the final results, but so far, I haven’t seen any sonnets pouring through my feed.

“Wait, does this thing have GPS?”: A student at Carnegie Mellon University helped police catch actors who robbed him at midnight last Friday — thanks to his iPhone. The senior cognitive science and human-computer interaction double major was approached by the suspects, who took his iPhone and debit card as well as his pin number, while walking down a street alone, according to an article in The Tartan, the university’s student newspaper. After the suspects left, the student returned to his apartment, downloaded Skype and called his friend. Together, the two contacted police and tracked the suspects’ movements through a combination of MobileMe, an Apple app that syncs and iPhone and displays it’s exact location using GPS, and GoogleMaps, watching as they spent hundreds of dollars around the city. Finally, when they stopped for dinner, police arrived and took them into custody. Guess those iPhones are better for something than just looking like a hipster important.