An email-based sporadic publication of technology-related items for kinesiologists compiled by Ken Daley.
KEN'S NOTE: When trying out this software I had occasion to contact the Fitsoft technical support group. I found excellent support in solving any problem I threw at them.
A Review of the Computer Software "FITeval"
By Sara Daley
sdaley=AT=vax1.mum.edu
Maharishi University of Management
Sioux City. IA. 51104
The FITeval program by FITSOFT SYSTEMS is a valuable resource for anyone involved in fitness assessment. The program enables the user to quickly and efficiently document the results of physical assessment tests, organize these results and compare, graph, and chart the findings easily.
Conducting fitness assessments is at best a tedious and time-consuming process. This program eliminates much of the tedium by doing many of the calculations for the user. The results can then be compared to several data bases:
The program is quite user friendly and alters its calculations to fit the operator's method of fitness testing. Instead of the user wasting valuable time trying to adjust their tests to the computer program, the program adjusts to suit them. Locating a specific test is easy because the user can sort the information according to their specifics- age, gender, first name, etc.
Perhaps the most important use of this program however, is its ability to take test results and create a chart or graph.The computer will compare and graph the individual's test results to a national norm, or will look at the results in terms of overall fitness or anaerobic aptitude, to name a few examples. A print-out of this graph and an evaluation can then be made or saved in the program for easy reference. This would be a useful tool for an athlete or coach who would want to focus the results of their fitness test towards a specific athletic goal. A marathon runner would perhaps be interested in charting their results in terms of aerobic aptitude.
This program only runs on Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, sorry MAC users. We were running on a 486 and found performance was sluggish, I would suggest any serious user would want greater processing power. As well, some of the instructions in the manual were a little vague (these were figured out however, with a little time spent working with the program). Besides these minor inconveniences, I would have to rate this program high on the scale of efficiency and usefulness and find it a valuable tool for the serious fitness evaluator.
Contact Information for FITeval:
http://www.e-com.net/defiactif/index.html
defiactif=AT=e-com.net
Sports information for the disabled athlete. Provides links to
information, such as, the U.S. Disabled Ski Team, and U.S. Electronic
Wheelchair Hockey sites. And much more.
Mike Schelling
mschelling=AT=radix.net
http://www.radix.net/~mschelling
Education, Health, Parenting, Jobs Worldwide and more...
Always wanted to know what those strange sports terms mean?
Soccer - Hockey - Basketball - Football
http://www.firstbasesports.com/glossaries/gover.htm
Jorma Linnakangas
linnajo=AT=mail.dlc.fi
The Health Beat... covers Top Health & Medical Internet Web Sites . Medical Associations . Health Organizations . Government Health Sites . Health News.
Marlboro College in Vermont will begin offering two new graduate programs in January -- a master of arts in teaching with the Internet and a master of science in Internet strategy. "Knowledge-making is changing in every field because of this technology," says the college's president. "We're not focusing just on the Internet, but how people can use this kind of cardinal technology in a broader way." The programs will focus on teaching teachers how to incorporate the Internet into the classroom experience, and teaching managers how to oversee an organization's Internet strategy. (Boston Globe 14 Nov 97)
I have set up a website to host all the back issues of Sports News You Can Use and The Creative Athlete. You can find it at:
http://www.sportstrust.com/sportstrust
WHEN TYPING IN THE URL, IT IS IMPORTANT TO INCLUDE /sportstrust.
Without it you will be taken to the home page of Online Sports, the company that is sponsoring and hosting my newsletter site. Thanks Online Sports. Currently there is no pointer at Online Sports to my home page so you won't get to my site from there.
I will continue to send out my newsletters by e-mail. It is still the fastest and most convenient way to receive them.
Each newsletter comes out approximately every two weeks. If a month has gone by and you haven't received one yet, check with me or check the website (though the website might be an issue or two behind depending on how fast I load the newest issues).
I caught a few typos as I was turning the newsletters into HTML documents. But nothing major so you don't need to download those versions if you don't want.
My long-range goal is to go beyond my newsletters to provide even more services for athletes, students, educators, and families. To do this, I will actively be seeking sponsors. In turn they want (and should expect) a marketing vehicle as an incentive to participate; setting up sponsorable websites is one way to do this.
I have given some thought to establishing up a nonprofit organization to oversee these educational projects. But so far it has seemed more expedient and less bureaucratic not to. The less time I spend on paperwork, the more time I have to spend on information dissemination. ("Keep it simple" has been the operative concept here.) However I am still weighing the pros and cons of doing so and would be happy to receive feedback on the idea.
If you have any problems with the website or my online newsletters, let me know. I have nothing to do with the server operation, but if there are problems with the way the pages appear on your computer, I'd like to know and perhaps I can fix them.
Suzanne Lainson
SportsTrust
Marketing: Integrated/Sports and Event/Online
P.O. Box 2071 Boulder, CO 80306
303 473-9884
slainson=AT=sportstrust.com
For a free subscription to SPORTS NEWS YOU CAN USE, send me an
email.
For a free subscription to THE CREATIVE ATHLETE, send me an
email.
http://www.anes.uab.edu/medhist.htm
plain text: gopher://gopher.anes.uab.edu in "Anesthesia
History" menu
AJ Wright, MLS
Dept of Anesthesiology Library
School of Medicine
University of Alabama at Birmingham
meds002=AT=uabdpo.dpo.uab.edu
"E-RATE" HELPS SCHOOLS PURCHASE TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES
On January 1, 1998, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will begin distributing 2.25 billion dollars in annual funds--on a first-come first-served basis--to help eligible schools and libraries receive discounts on telecommunication services.
The funds, known as the "e-rate," were approved under the Snowe, Rockefeller, Exon, and Kerrey Amendment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The "e-rate" acknowledges that schools and libraries play a crucial role in preparing students, parents, educators, and the public to communicate in the 21st Century. Schools will be eligible for 20-90 percent discounts on services such as basic Internet access, e-mail capability, local and long distance telephone service, cable technology, inside wiring, network file servers, and wireless local area networks (LANs). Computers and other hardware, most software, fax machines, modems, teacher training, and electrical system upgrades are not covered by the "e-rate."
The FCC and the U.S. Department of Education are designing application forms for the program. To be eligible for funds, a school must be an elementary or secondary school with nonprofit status and must not have an endowment greater than $50 million. Discounts will be determined by the number of students in each school who are eligible for free or reduced lunch under the national school lunch program.
For more information about the "e-rate," contact the FCC at 1-888-CALL FCC, or visit their web sites at http://www.fcc.gov/ccb/ or http://www.fcc.gov/learnnet. The U.S. Department of Education offers some tips for how you can prepare to apply for funds and provides updates on the program at their Web site at http://www.ed.gov/Technology/.
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George Graham, Ph.D.
Health and Physical Education Program
206 WMH, Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061-0313
Phone: 540/231-7545 Fax: 540/231-9075
PE CENTRAL-http://pe.central.vt.edu/
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Swedish telecom giant Ericsson says it has developed a new technology that allows users to make phone calls and access the Internet simultaneously over the same line, at speeds nearly four times what is currently possible. The technology eliminates the need for phone customers to subscribe to an Internet service provider -- rather, the phone companies would sell modems for between $100 and $200, and users could "switch" their Internet connection on and off. (Wall Street Journal 26 Nov 97)
Learning Technologies Interactive founder Luyen Chou says most interactive software today is basically boring: "With my background as a teacher, one of the fascinating things I've seen is how quickly kids -- and even Gen Xers -- are becoming bored with the genre-based multimedia titles, whether they're shoot-'em-up games or reference products. What we're hearing from the marketplace is a growing impatience with pseudo-interactivity. They're looking for something that interacts with their synapses as much as their fingertips." (Upside Jan 98).
DO CELL PHONES AFFECT LEARNING?
European regulators are taking a hard look at research by University of Washington professor Henry Lai that indicates exposure to microwave radiation hampered the ability of lab rats to learn a maze. Lai found that exposing the rats to 45 minutes of microwave radiation similar to levels that might be absorbed by a typical cell phone user slowed the rats' ability to master the task. The effects of the waves could be ameliorated by pretreating the rats with drugs that target two neurochemical systems in the brain -- the endogenous opioid system and the cholinergic system, leading Lai to propose that these systems are affected by microwave-frequency fields. The Wireless Technology Research Group, an industry-funded group, is now planning its own experiments. Meanwhile, at least one company in Germany already began advertising "low-radiation" cell phones this past summer. (Scientific American Dec 97)
The Commerce Department is expected to decide early this year whether to provide funding to learning technology ventures through the Department's Advanced Technology Program, which has funded such things as better refrigeration technologies and improved health information systems. Program manager Richard W. Morris says: "If we migrate to the Web, all of a sudden the economies of scale change dramatically. If we do the technology right, we can re-use and update and integrate the pieces of instruction in almost an infinite number of ways so all the advantages of the Internet make for a new economy of learning." (New York Times Cybertimes 4 Jan 98)
Companies may be cutting back on paper clips and office space, but information technology spending is still full speed ahead. A survey of 250 senior information technology managers indicates that two-thirds of the respondents intend to boost their budgets, by an average of 18% over last year's spending. "People are not building traditional factories or oil wells, but they're spending a huge chunk of money on information technology," says an chief economist at Standard & Poor. For most managers, Year 2000 conversion is at the top of their IT list, with PC purchases and upgrading to Windows NT 5.0 second and third. (Information Week 5 Jan 98)
Project Oxygen received pledges for a chunk of financing last month, with tentative agreements for $1.4 billion coming from 35 telecommunications carriers. The undersea "super Internet" project aims to link 175 countries to a voice and data network that can support speeds between 320 Gbps and 1 terabit per second.
John Kessler, president of research firm KMI Corp., said the undertaking, which aims to have its first phase operational by 2000, is "the most ambitious project in communications of the 20th century."
Moving Together is not an official publication of Maharishi University of Management. It is nothing other than a personal try to share / create a collective wisdom in the area of technology as it impacts professional Kinesiologists.
Ken Daley
kdaley=AT=mum.edu
http://www.mum.edu/exss_dept/daley.html
Associate Professor
Department of Exercise and Sport Sciences
Maharishi University of Management
Fairfield, Iowa USA 52557
Member of the Internet Developers Association