Robert Beard, a professor at Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, wrote in September 1998: "As a language teacher, the web represents a plethora of new resources produced by the target culture, new tools for delivering lessons (interactive Java and Shockwave exercises) and testing, which are available to students any time they have the time or interest — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is also an almost limitless publication outlet for my colleagues and I, not to mention my institution. (…) Ultimately all course materials, including lecture notes, exercises, moot and credit testing, grading, and interactive exercises will be far more effective in conveying concepts that we have not even dreamed of yet.”
Russon Wooldridge, a professor at the Department of French Studies, University of Toronto, Canada, wrote in February 2001: " My research, conducted once in an ivory tower, is now almost exclusively done through local or remote collaborations. (…) All my teaching makes the most of internet resources (web and email): the two common places for a course are the classroom and the website of the course, where I put all course materials. I have published all my research data of the last 20 years on the web (re-edition of books, articles, texts of old dictionaries as interactive databases, treaties from the 16th century, etc.). I publish proceedings of symposiums, I publish a journal, I collaborate with French colleagues by publishing online in Toronto what they can't publish online at home. In May 2000, I organized an international symposium in Toronto about French studies enhanced by new technologies. (…) I realize that without the internet I wouldn't have as many activities, or at least they would be very different from the ones I have today. So I don't see the future without them."
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) officially launched its OpenCourseWare (OCW) in September 2003 to put its course materials for free on the web, as a way to promote open dissemination of knowledge. In September 2002, a pilot version was available online with 32 course materials. 500 course materials were available in March 2004, 1,400 course materials in May 2006, and all 1,800 course materials in November 2007, regularly updated then, with some of them translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese with the help of other organizations. MIT also launched the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCW Consortium) in November 2005, as a common project for educational institutions that were willing to offer free online course materials, with the course materials of 100 universities worldwide one year later.
1996 > THE @FOLIO PROJECT, A MOBILE DEVICE FOR TEXTS
[Summary] The @folio project is a mobile device for texts designed as early as October 1996 by Pierre Schweitzer, an architect-designer living in Strasbourg, France. It is meant to download and read any text and/or illustrations from the web or hard disk, in any format, with no proprietary format and no DRM. The technology of @folio was novel and simple. It is inspired from fax and tab file folders. The flash memory is "printed" like Gutenberg printed his books. The facsimile mode is readable as is for any content, from sheet music to mathematical or chemical formulas, with no conversion necessary, whether it is handwritten text, calligraphy, free hand drawing or non-alphabetical writing. An international patent was filed in April 2001. The French start-up iCodex was created in July 2002 to develop and promote the @folio project.
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The @folio project is a mobile device for texts designed as early as
October 1996 by Pierre Schweitzer, an architect-designer living in
Strasbourg, France.
It is meant to download and read any text and/or illustrations from the web or hard disk, in any format, with no proprietary format and no DRM.
The technology of @folio was novel and simple. It is inspired from fax and tab file folders. The flash memory is "printed" like Gutenberg printed his books. The facsimile mode is readable as is for any content, from sheet music to mathematical or chemical formulas, with no conversion necessary, whether it is handwritten text, calligraphy, free hand drawing or non-alphabetical writing. All this is difficult if not impossible on a computer or ebook reader (in the late 1990s and early 2000s).
The screen of the lightweight prototype takes 80% of the total surface and has low power consumption. It is surrounded by a translucent and flexible frame that folds to protect the screen when not in use. @folio could be sold for US $100 for the basic standard version, with various combinations of screen sizes and flash memory to fit different needs.