Is Google Making us Stupid?

What is the Internet doinig to our brain?
Remember in 2001: A Space Odyssey where the astronaut was coldy disconnecting the memory circuits as Hal pleads "Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it." Is that what the Internet is doing to our brains? In the article in the Atlantic, author Nicholas Carr writes that "media supplies the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." For those of us who spend much time with the Internet medium, this article is definitely required reading.
Source: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Atlantic July/August 2008

Science Animations; Interactive Tutorials

This site makes it so much fun to understand scientific theories and phenomena, including plant life cycles, plate tectonics, bacterial growth, severe weather, how lasers works, and much more. It even has microbiology, Anatomy and physiology I & II, biology, ecology, geology, physics, and lots of general collections. The NASA simulations and downloadable multimedia from Penn State are awesome.

Science Animations: Movies and Interactive Tutorial Links

New Database: Campus Research

The Connecticut Digital Library (ICONN) is discontinuing access to LexisNexis Academic July 1 and replacing it with Thopmson's Campus Research. Campus Research is a comprehensive collection of news, business and law-related information for students--organized and packaged with timesaving tools and an easy-to-use interface. It offers full-text information on a wide range of academic disciplines – information that can't easily be found on the Internet or any other readily available source. Remember to try it out on July 1 and frequently after that.

You Get:
Thousands of news databases arranged geographically and topically
Hundreds of newspapers, newswires, magazines, and broadcast transcripts
Business, trade, and professional journals such as Financial Times and New England Journal of Medicine
More than 800 law reviews and journals, including Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal
Federal and state caselaw, including cases from the U.S. Supreme Court
The full text of the United States Code Annotated (USCA) and Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)

Instruction on use of the database is available for anyone in the Goodwin community.

Free Chemistry Audio Shows

Every other month the Nature journals are publishing a FREE audio show, 'ChemPod', specifically for the chemistry community, from interviews with Nobel Prize winners, to discussions on nanotechnology research and much, much more...

The shows feature important research from the Nature journals as well as interviews with the people behind the science, in-depth commentary, location reports and analysis from journalists covering chemistry around the world.

2008 podcasts
March/April 2008: Audio (mp3 file)

In this episode of Chempod, we get caught up in catalysis, discover drawbacks to some Alzheimer's drug candidates, and bring you a round up of the best of the American Chemical Society meeting in New Orleans.

January/February 2008: Audio (mp3 file)

In this show, we find out how DNA is helping researches build crystals out of nanoparticles, discover a clever chemical trick for manipulating uranium, explore the controversial field of DNA conductivity and talk to chemist Bruce Gibb about re-building life and lab after hurricane Katrina.

Go to Chempod
To download a show to your computer, right click the Audio link and select 'Save target as/Save link as' and save the file to your computer or a CD.

Source: Nature

Entrepreneurship: Not Just for Business Majors

Entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing subjects in the undergraduate curricula, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education this week. Entreprenuerial ingenuity and risk-taking may seem like traits that can't be taught, but colleges are attempting to do just that--and in nontraditional contexts. More than 2,000 colleges are now offering some sort of entrepreneurship course. The artcle is highly recommended and essential reading for members of the curriculum and standards committees.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education June 20 2008

Case Against Assessment Tests

250 presidents, senior administrators, faculty leaders, and trustees gathered last week for The Chronicle of Higher Education's Executive Leadership Forum. What seems to worry these campus officials the most is proving the value of college to students, parents, and politicians at a time of rising tuition and tightening credit. In recent years, spurred in large part by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings's National Commission on the Future of Higher Education, some people have called for a better measure: assessment tests.

Higher-education leaders have railed against such one-size-fits-all efforts, and those at the Chronicle forum heard perhaps one of the strongest arguments against a test from the opening speaker, Daniel H. Pink, best-selling author of A Whole New Mind. Read the whole article in the Chronicle at the library or request an email copy from the librarian.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education June 20 2008

Homeland Security Critical Releases

Critical Releases in Homeland Security [June 2008]
Every two weeks, the Homeland Security Digital Library identifies "Critical Releases in Homeland Security," a targeted collection of recently-released documents that are expected to influence homeland security policy & strategy development.

Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information, Together with Additional and Minority Views
United States. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on Intelligence

National Response Framework: FEMA Needs Policies and Procedures to Better Integrate Non-Federal Stakeholders in the Revision Process
United States. Government Accountability Office

Maritime Dimension of International Security: Terrorism, Piracy, and Challenges for the United States
RAND Corporation

Intelligence Community Legal Reference Book [U]
United States. Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Homeland Security Presidential Directive 24: Biometrics for Identification of Screening to Enhance National Security [June 5, 2008]
United States. White House Office
Source: Homeland Security Digital Library

Psychology Resources: PsycINFO & PsycARTICLES

PsycINFO gives members of the Goodwin community access to a critical mass of over 2.5 million abstracts of worldwide behavioral literature. From the historical perspective to cutting-edge research, the PsycINFO database is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. Quickly find abstracts of specific types of documents such as journal articles, book chapters, book reviews, editorials, and research methodologies (such as clinical case reports, empirical studies, and literature reviews.

PsycARTICLEs is the largest full-text database of psychology journals. This databse provides student researchers with full-text access to the complete collection of peer-reviewed journals from the leading publisher in psychology,the American Psychological Association (APA). PsycARTICLEs contains more than 124,000 articles from APA-published content from 1894 to present. These are subscription databases available to Goodwin students on and off campus.

Fuel Economy Information

Since Connecticut has the highest gas prices in the country, we all could use some help with fuel economy. The federal government has stepped in with information on your car's gas mileage and energy impact rating.

The site

also tells you where to find the lowest gasoline prices, and even tips on improving your mileage.

source: Environmental Protection Agency

iTunes University: Global Perspective

Welcome to iTunes U.
Higher education has gone high tech. Thanks to iTunes U, professors can post lectures, discussions, and videos of classes on the school’s iTunes U site. Students can download them and put them on their iPods. Then they can learn wherever they are, whenever they want — all free of charge.

If Goodwin college doesn’t yet post content to iTunes U, no problem. Students can access free content from dozens of universities around the world, with topics on everything from business to science to law. At last count, there were more than 60,000 educational audio and video files available. Whether on or off campus, now college comes to you.
Source: Campus Technology June 4 2008

Locating E-resources in the Goodwin Library

The Goodwin Library has over 38,000 electronic periodicals--magazines, newspapers, journals. So how on earth do you find them? Very easy!On the library page, the "Finding Articles-Databases" is the EBSCO A to Z locator tool that now links to the Goodwin College academic databases with digitized peer-reviewed articles on a huge variety of topics. At this site, you can go directly to a database to search or you can choose to search in a particular journal or magazine or you can find journals or magazines by subject. You can use the list to see if the library has a specific source. This is incredibly easy to use. Please try it out.

National Trails Day June 7

Looking for a free and healthy weekend activity? Well,Saturday is National Trails and there are more than 130 guided hikes and outings scheduled in Connecticut. Trail Days events in Connecticut are coordinated by the Connecticut Forest and Park Association (CFPA). Trails Day is a nationwide celebration that brings awareness to trails and the many joys and benefits they provide. Organizations participating in our state include the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), local and regional land trusts, town agencies,and outdoor-minded businesses. Brochures are available from the CFPA . You can download a complete Trails Day 2008 brochure. Connecticut is a beautiful state. Go out and enjoy it this weekend. Get in shape for the Goodwin hiking club outing later this month.

Source: Connecticut Forest and Park Association

Van Gogh Free Exhibit at Yale Art Gallery

The Yale University Art Gallery is exhibiting two of Vincent Van Gogh's most renowned paintings, Cypresses and Starry Night, side by side for the first time. Together, the paintings reveal the artist's vivid and tender vision of Saint-Remy as he observed the French countryside from his window--by day through the night. Exhibit runs from June 15-September 7.
Source: Yale Art Gallery

Ed-tech Success Story

Since the early 1990s, Maine has been at the forefront of educational innovation, thanks largely to the adoption of new standards--called the Maine Learning Results--as a driver for 21st-century teaching and learning. A critical outcome and guiding principle of these standards is to graduate all students from Maine high schools to be clear and effective communicators. Read this fascinating article about Maine's success story: "Maine writes a new ed-tech success story".

Source: eSchool News June 2, 2008

Women's Rights

Are violence and discrimination against women declining?

Women around the world have made significant gains in the past decade, but tens of millions still face significant and often appalling hardship. Most governments now have gender-equality commissions, electoral gender quotas and laws to protect women against violence. But progress has been mixed. A record number of women now serve in parliaments, but only 14 of the world's 193 countries currently have elected female leaders. Globalization has produced more jobs for women, but they still constitute 70 percent of the world's poorest inhabitants and 64 percent of the illiterate. Spousal abuse, female infanticide, genital mutilation, forced abortions, bride-burnings, acid attacks and sexual slavery remain pervasive in some countries, and rape and sexual mutilation have reached epic proportions in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. Experts say without greater economic, political and educational equality, the plight of women will not improve, and society will continue suffering the consequences. The full report is available online from CQ Global Researcher

Source: CQ Global Researcher May 30, 2008

Free Business Plans: Bplans.com

Bplans.com contains the largest single collection of free sample business plans online. In addition to that, it has helpful tools and know-how for managing a business. Bplans.com includes practical advice on planning, interactive tools, and a panel of experts who have answered more than 1,400 questions from people like our students.

Warning to Colleges from Accreditors

If colleges want to avoid onerous and ham-handed forms of government regulation, they should become much smarter about analyzing and responding to their own internal student-achievement data. That, in a nutshell, is the message that six representatives of major regional accrediting organizations delivered during a panel discussion Monday at the annual conference of the Association for Institutional Research.

The accreditors told the assembled scholars that they have a responsibility to persuade their deans and faculty colleagues of the importance of using internal data to improve student learning.

Several of the panelists emphasized that their accrediting organizations would continue to respect colleges' distinctive missions. But colleges must be candid with the public about how they measure their success, the accreditors warned, or risk inviting government regulation that is not so respectful of colleges' individual identities. Read the entire article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education May 27, 2008

EPA Libraries Re-open in Tiny Spaces

Closed Environmental Protection Agency libraries return in shamefully small spaces. Political appointee assert control over all libraries.

Ordered by Congress to re-open its shuttered libraries, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is grudgingly allocating only minimal space and resources, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA is issuing a series of edicts placing virtually every aspect of library operations under centralized control of a political appointee.

In a May 8, 2008 e-mail to EPA employee unions, the agency announced its plan for re-opening four of the closed libraries effective September 1. The unions were given until May 22 to reply or object. The announced plan for the Chicago library, for example, formerly the largest regional library serving the entire six-state Great Lakes area, stipulates:

The re-opened library will be in a vacant reception area on the 16th floor of a federal building;
The re-opened library will occupy less than one-tenth the area of the closed library and will be only slightly larger than the typical men’s restroom in that same building; and
No provision is made to restore the unique Great Lakes ecological collection or to recover any of the other holdings from the former library.

Source: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

Facebook-based Alumni Connections

Harris Connect has launched a new alumni and student relations tool built on the Facebook Platform. Dubbed "Community Connections," the application is designed to provide secure connections between schools and their Facebook-using constituents and keep them engaged with news and other information.

Read More!

Some New Books

Now or coming soon to Goodwin Library:

Skinny Bitch by Freedman and Barnouin
Our Iceberg is Melting by John Kotter
Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
Audition by Barbara Walters
Oxymorons: The Mytth of the U. S. Health Care System by J. D. Kleinke
New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle (Oprah's Book Club)
Curious You: On Your Way by H. A. Roy
Flipping Brilliant: A Penguin's Guide to a Happy Life by Chester & Regan
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Just War: The Just War Tradition: Ethics in Modern Welfare by Guthrie & Quinlan