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JanFeb2004

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Car, And A Tank Of Gas Away. Candidates Are A Plane Trip, A Connection, A Rental Sometimes, Great At SMU Cox, our recruiting efforts are as extensive as our curriculum. Our admissions staff visits more than 150 high schools every fall to handpick potential BBA Scholars, who enjoy admission to SMU Cox as freshmen, competitive scholarships, and opportunities to learn from the best in the business. When it comes to attracting the world's top students from over 45 countries and all 50 states, we go the extra mile. 214.768.1110 w w w. c ox .smu.edu SMU will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, or veteran status. SMU's commitment to equal opportunity includes nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. serve education, it would likely have to be both e-book and Web browser with wireless capability. It would have a screen size and visual resolution conducive to viewing content, and be lightweight, durable, and portable with long battery life. And it would help if it cost less than $200, Gerdenich says only half-jokingly. But when it comes, he says, "we'll be able to make digital content really fly." Loker to develop the current version of her interactive text- book, titled Designers as Entrepreneurs. Students navigate the book via hyperlinks and dropdown menus. Loker also incorporates video that she provides on CD-ROM to accommodate students who may not have high-speed access to the Web. The textbook has evolved as a series of small tasks over the years—the only way to tackle such a large and complex project, Loker emphasizes. The option isn't for everyone, she admits, but for many educators interactive The Digital Printing Press Like Getz of the Owen School, Suzanne Loker is another educator-cum-digital evangelist. A professor in the textile and apparel department at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Loker sought funding to create an online interactive textbook for her entrepreneurship course for fashion design- ers. At first, she supported the project through small academ- ic grants. Eventually, she received an endowed professorship to pursue the project, making her the J. Thomas Clark Professor of Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise. It took three years and the help of a Web designer for pline," says Loker. "The real question is simple: Are you gaining anything from doing it this way? If it's more efficient and accessible for the student, if there is some educational reason that students will learn better in this medium than another way, then professors should do it." As professors such as Loker and Getz have found, creating interactive textbooks from scratch is often a labor of love that not all educators are ready for. Although sales of digital text- books are growing with vendors like South-Western, McGraw-Hill/Irwin, and XanEdu, they still represent a very small part of the educational market. Still, Moretti of CCNMTL likens this moment in time to environments may provide a better way for students to learn. "There are pockets of people doing this in every disci- years, search engines and hyperlinks might supercede bibli- ographies and indexes, while "search inside the book"-style technology could replace concordances. Although those who enjoy the experience of turning pages and browsing through the library stacks may mourn its coming, an inter- active culture with seemingly unlimited access to information is on the way. And for many of those whose lives center on study and research, it can't come too soon. ■ z BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2004 29 the years after Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century, when people were first exploring its significance. "People are still inventing uses for digital media," he says. "The horizons of new media have just begun to be glimpsed." For students entering college classrooms in the upcoming

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