House of Netflix: Streaming media and digital lore

This article focuses on the emergence of a nascent streaming industry. The media industry studies conceptualization of “industry lore” can be read during times of transition for media industries. Streaming lore is a re-articulation of existing industry lore accompanying the advent of streaming technology and distribution. Contemporary streaming acts as a site of rupture, wherein industry discourses related to digital media are rendered visible. The article proposes three categories of emergent streaming lore and analyzes their relation to a growing streaming media industry. These categories include (a) Netflix as “quality” streams, (b) the algorithmic audience, and (c) cord-cutters and cord-nevers.     

Clinicians' satisfaction with Grateful Med: an exploratory study

End-user search software is designed to simplify online searching for the casual searcher. User-friendly features provide relatively easy online access to remote databases without the need for expert search systems. At issue is whether the simplified features of such software compromise what is potentially retrievable, and if so, whether the missing information is critical to the end user. A study was designed to address this question, particularly as applied to clinicians using a user-friendly search software package such as Grateful Med. Clinician participants compared their Grateful Med search results with a full Elhill search (as performed by an intermediary) and indicated whether references unique to either search were or were not critical to their information needs.     

Partners in Collaborative Cataloging: The U.S. Government Printing Office and the University of Montana

Collaboration is a necessity in the current library environment where time, money, and resources are limited. This is particularly noticeable for institutions housing federal government documents. In addition to keeping up with the influx of current publications, federal depository libraries must address historical documents for which bibliographic records are not readily available. This report discusses how the United States Government Printing Office and the University of Montana Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library are working together to increase access to pre-1976 United States Forest Service publications and gray literature within the same subject area.     

The Status of Civic Education: A Preservice Program Response

Civic education is an issue of growing and serious concern. There is diminished time for civics, fewer course offerings, and gaps in students’ civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. The role of teacher education in addressing this problem is one area deserving additional focus. This article describes the project begun by the secondary education faculty at one university to provide teacher education candidates in all content areas with the ability to address civics in meaningful ways.     

Social Studies Education in the Age of Testing and Accountability

With 3 years and counting since its inception, the scope and impact of No Child Left Behind is now being felt in classrooms across the nation. Although some successes have been identified, concerns about the implementation and expectations of the legislation are emerging. As a result of the legislation's emphasis on the development of standards and assessment systems in reading, mathematics, and science, educators of other core and elective subjects are weighing the impact of being left out of the No Child Left Behind formula of testing and accountability. In an attempt to ascertain the perceptions and sentiments of social studies teachers concerning the impact of No Child Left Behind and the concomitant issue of state-level testing and accountability policy, a tristate study was conducted. The findings of this research indicate that although elementary, middle, and high school social studies educators recognize the negative consequences of being left out of No Child Left Behind, they are not convinced that being included would be better for them, their students, or social studies education in general.     

Extending the Broadcast: Streaming Culture and the Problems of Digital Geographies

This article examines the recent move by many television sports broadcasters of streaming their content online behind geographically restricted “geofences.” Despite the increasing use of this distribution method, we argue that Internet users are increasingly bypassing geofences that center sports consumption within a nationalized television broadcasting framework through the use of VPN (virtual private network) technologies. Importantly, the geographic fluidity of the Internet often allows users to do this legally—producing meaningful ruptures in the logic that seeks to replicate the structures of mediation central to the television broadcast model within the space of the Internet. We argue that the streaming of sports content, then, should be understood and analyzed as an enforcement of corporate media strategies and reflection of telecommunication policy, as well as a cultural practice and tactic. Large transnational media corporations, typically the holders of popular sporting rights, attempt to bend digital sports content consumption to the broadcast models that they have historically employed. Yet, amidst this emerging model of digital broadcasting lie the problems of digital geography and the cultural practice of a streaming culture within the conditions of post-convergence. This practice often rejects the restrictions and stipulations of digital broadcasting in favor of a globetrotting, station-hopping exercise of content hunting.     

“从基因到社会”——约翰·霍普金斯大学医学院新型课程体系的设计逻辑与实施进程

2009年,约翰·霍普金斯大学医学院实施了一项全新的课程体系——"从基因到社会",其目的在于:更为宽泛地重构健康与疾病的相互关系,鼓励学生们在一个包含社会、文化、心理和环境等多维变量的综合系统中探索与患者的健康状况相关的生物学特性。本文描述了新课程的设计理念及其五年规划过程,包括课程目标的确定、课程的构建、新教学楼的建造、学生自身能力及教师发展的促进、横向和纵向结构的建立等。应对新课程挑战的关键因素在于:领导的支持、与教职员工的对话和沟通、不同群体和层面的广泛参与、避免井蛙之见、通过课程试点来测试教学理念和方法等。