Weekly Reader

QR Codes Explained by Common Craft
"You may have seen these little codes around.  They're in newspapers, on storefronts and products.  They're called Quick Response (QR) Codes and they're meant to used with your smartphone. They could be a very big deal in the future.  This video is one of our most requested titles and explains how QR codes make the real world clickable." -- Lee Lefever, Common Craft, 9/6/11

To Fix Higher Education, Start by Eliminating Tenure
"No one knows for sure if the higher education is the next "on-the-bubble" industry that is about to burst, but there certainly is considerable concern about the sustainability of traditional higher education. It's not that anyone suspects the top tier institutions are in jeopardy. But with over 3,500 institutions, and many of them struggling to attract sufficient students while balancing their budgets, there is a good chance some will not be here in the next decade. In response to the many problems faced by colleges and universities, a whole host of experts have written books offering solutions for what ails higher education." -- Steven Bell, Library Journal , 9/6/11

(Moral) Hazards of Scanning for Plagiarists: Evidence from Shoplifting
"Students are being scanned as well to make sure that the words in their papers were not swiped from other sources.  Scanning papers began a decade ago when anti-plagiarism software was created to compare the phrases of student papers with other sources.  The leading anti-plagiarism software is Turnitin, which compares student papers with academic journals, Internet web pages and its library of previously submitted papers.  On its home page, Turnitin quotes an instructor as saying, “I used to spend hours on Google searching for unusual wording when I suspected that the paper was not written by the student. Now, I can search quickly with Turnitin!” -- David Harrington, David Harrington Economist, 9/4/11

Trading In ‘.edu’ for ‘.com’
"The news that, after what seems like forever, new Internet domain names will be allowed has sparked conversations among college CIO’s and communication specialists about the limits of the “.edu” domain. The news has also provoked serious talk about what might be gained by trading in those three letters strongly linked to higher education for Web addresses like “yourgreatuniveristyhere.com” or even something that ends in “.weberstate” or “.brownuniversity.”" -- Josh Fischman, The Wired Campus, 9/2/11