Reading and extracting information

VIRTUAL LEARNING

 

Given that universities are at the forefront of technological innovations, it is to be expected that new forms of delivering instruction, at the post-secondary level are emerging. Numerous universities have turned to the World Wide Web as a way to provide instruction to supplement the typical lecture system. In fact, entire courses have been placed on the Web, permitting students access to lecture material at any time and from any place. Students have been encouraged to treat the course Web site as a living document by adding their own links to material discovered in the process of answering assignments or carrying out research projects. Thus, every student can potentially benefit from every other student's efforts. In such a situation, education can become a cooperative enterprise involving teachers and students alike. There is more: courses mounted on the Web are also available around the world so that we might expect to see international competition among universities. In fact many universities now accept admission applications over the Web. There is a danger of uniformity as the globally renowned universities make their presence felt everywhere. How will local colleges and universities compete? They will have to provide a variety of services – hand-on experiences, local special conditions, direct personal attention – not available to distant institutions. It does seem to be the case that educational institutions will have to be flexible, imaginative, and perhaps lucky, to survive in a networked world.

But it should be noted that new technology is not replacing teachers but rather is extending the power of imaginative teachers and curious students to explore the world in ways not previously possible. Well trained teachers, assisted by technical staff, operating with adequate equipment, connected to the Internet, and financed with adequate operating funds are the basic necessities for success in the wired world. Education is usually considered in the context of educational instructions elementary schools, high schools, vocational schools, colleges, and universities – but considerable learning goes on in the workplace as well as in company-sponsored classrooms. Many people have a vision of lifelong learning as a combination of institutionalized instruction and the individual pursuit of knowledge. Traditionally, libraries have played a very important role in enabling motivated individuals to pursue their interests in a self-directed manner.

Now with the emergence of the Internet, and the explosive growth of information, it is not unrealistic to consider the self-education to become accessible beyond reduction of formal institutions. One early proposal is to get electronic books into homes – through a national digital library and small, sharp-screened computers – in an era of declining literacy. It is a vision to have an online library of books, not just public domain ones currently available on a number of Web sites, but newly published ones for which copyright still applies and that would be readily accessible for a small fee. Such a scheme could provide supplementary resources for schools as well and would operate in parallel with the school system.

Notes:

to hand on – передавать, длиться;

lifelong learning – непрерывное обучение;

forefront – передовая линия.

 

Comprehension check

 

Exercise 1. Answer the questions.

1. Why education over the Web can become a cooperative enterprise friendly to teachers and students alike?

2. Why can universities exchange experiences with distant educational institutions be useful?

3. What means can nowadays help teachers and students explore the world?

4. What is the difference between the vision of the traditional lifelong learning and the online learning?

 

Exercise 2. Read the passage below.

Computer scientists, cognitive psychologists, education experts and professors are working on projects that can change the way teachers teach and students learn. According to these scientists, successful education is to develop along seven topic principles:

− Simulating real-life environments (e. g., a stock market, a hospital, a shop).

− Enabling self-paced learning.

− Lowering intimidation factor (e. g., fear of looking stupid).

− Reducing behavioural problems in the classroom.

− Increasing one-to-one interaction.

− Providing access to more information.

− Implementing «situated learning».

 

Notes

behavioural problem – проблема поведения;

cognitive psychology – психология познания;

intimidation – стесненность, закомплексованность;

self-paced learning – индивидуальный темп обучения;

situated learning – ситуативное обучение;

stock market – оптовая биржа.

 

Do the teaching methods of the Virtual College correspond to the above-mentioned principles? Prove your statement.

Exercise 3. Retell the passage paying special attention to the new learning merits. Continue it beginning your talk with the word «However…». Expose your ideas about demerits of such instruction.

 

NEW WAYS TO LEARN

 

In the information economy knowledge is power. However, traditional teaching is expensive and slow. New technologies make learning more productive. In companies centralized training is now giving way to distributed, «just-in-time» learning. The result is increased flexibility, better retention and lower costs. In schools and colleges students surf the Internet, use Lotus Notes, exchange e-mail, use multimedia CD-ROMs and perform simulations. These techniques break down barriers, customize instruction and make education more cost-effective.

 

Notes:

surf the Internet – быстро просмотреть информацию в Интернете;

Lotus Notes – электронный органайзер (ежедневник) Лотус;

retention – способность к запоминанию.

 

Language activity

 

Exercise 1. Complete the sentences with the prepositions given below at, to with, from, on, out, of.

1. Due to Web sites you can benefit … the information obtained.

2. Online libraries could provide … supplementary information for schools.

3. Internet competitions among universities might become possible … the Web.

4. New laboratory is provided … everything necessary to carry … research.

5. Being at the forefront of technological innovations universities were the first to turn … the Web.

6. Students can answer … assignments of the Web course.

7. The departments … computer science were founded at universities.

8. Web courses are available to remote students … any time.

 

Exercise 2. In the texts you have read there were preposition since, during, for which sometimes are quite confusing. Here are some useful rules to help you.

Since is used to show the starting point of an action, to say when something started. It is often used with the Present Perfect tense.

Example: I have studied English since 1981.

For is used to indicate the duration of an action (how long something has gone on).

Example: I have studied English for eight years.

During is used to indicate the period in which an action occurs.

Example: Herbert played tennis during the summer.

Try this exercise.

1. John has worked here … 1984.

2. I have known him … two years.

3. I have been working here … hours.

4. I’ve been working here … 2 o’clock.

5. He’s been sleeping … ages.

6. I saw them … my stay in London.

7. He spoke … three quarters of an hour.

8. I have been waiting … weeks.

9. It rained … the night.

10.I stayed there … two months. TEXT 4

Word-study

 

Exercise 1. Check the transcription in the dictionary and read the words listed below.

Nouns:

structure, autograph, immoderation, notification, recipient.

Verbs:

apply, sign, cause, search, indicate.

Adjectives:

official, preliminary, unacceptable, overloading.

 

Exercise 2. Explain and remember the terms.

Business etiquette, e-correspondence, business letters, logotype, digital format, hacker.

Exercise 3. Match the equivalents of collocations.

1) strict rules	a) строгие правила
2) to be stored in digital format	b) сохранять в цифровом формате
3) preliminary scanned	c) предварительно отсканированный
4) attachment	d) приложение
5) extension	e) расширение
6) different fonts	f) различные шрифты
7) encode the message	g) закодировать послание
8) recipient	h) получатель
9) confirmation of receiving	i) подтверждение получения
10) correspond to the requirement	j) соответствовать требованиям
	k) список получателей
	l) автоматическая доставка
	m) усложнить поиск

 

Scan-reading

NETIQUETTE

 

Business etiquette and the rules of good form apply to e-mail also. In English there even appeared a neologism «netiquette», derived from words «net» and «etiquette». Especially strict rules apply to business e-correspondence with partners and clients. Official and business letters are written on the forms of the company, that are to be stored in digital format on your computer. There is a logotype, an address and the phones of your organization on such a form. And you use the same strict structure and the style of the letter as if you were writing it on the paper. You can sign your letters with the autograph, preliminary scanned and saved in digital format.

In case when you send some attachments with your letter, you have to indicate the number of pages which these files were fit to. If this is graphics, you have to indicate also their extension, format and quantity.

In official letters no misprints, usage of different fonts, graphical immoderations, emotions express and mixing of Latin and Cyrillic are allowed. A lot of Internet users prefer to communicate in Russian using Latin font. This technique is unacceptable in business correspondence.

It is a bad form to send documents attached while leaving the letter blank. All files, sent via e-mail must be accompanied by greeting and some comments.

When you receive a business letter, it is required to send a short notification of it immediately. You can send a detailed reply later, when it is needed. But if you have received a letter, which is evidently addressed not to you, you may not answer it.

It is not recommended to send secret files which can be opened by any hacker. However you can encode your messages. It is clear that the recipient should know about it and have a decoding program.

Before sending a text or graphic files, make sure that they do not contain viruses.

There is a function of automatic delivery of your messages in e-mail, to someone’s address or fax number. You shouldn’t use this function too much, because it often happens that your computer, without having received the confirmation of receiving, continues sending the message again and again. That causes overloading of recipient’s mailbox or uses out all the paper in the fax machine.

We suggest to save the recipient's addresses in the special address book in the integrated folders, such as «friends», «business partners», «clients», «colleagues», etc. If you save all of the addresses in one place, this would not only make the search of the needed recipient harder, but also can lead to incidents, such as you may send a letter that you wrote to your beloved woman, to your boss, after you had clicked the wrong line. By the word, if you have discovered that you had sent a message to the wrong address, you should send apologies and explanation in pursuit.

The address book allows you to choose as many recipients as you wish, and after that the same letter will be sent to all these addresses. This certainly saves your time but doesn’t correspond to the requirements of business etiquette. The point is that every recipient gets the full list of addresses, that you have sent the letter to, with the message itself.

 

Notes

attachment – приложение;

by the word – одним словом;

Cyrillic – кириллица;

fit to – вводить (в компьютер);

folder – папка;

form – (зд.) бланк;

Latin – латиница;

misprint – опечатка;

notification – уведомление;

recipient – адресат;

the point is – дело в том.

 

Comprehension check

Exercise 1. Answer the following questions.

1. What does a neologism «netiquette» mean?

2. What rules are you to follow in business correspondence?

3. What are you expected to do when you receive a business letter?

4. What can you tell us about a function of automatic delivery?

5. Why are you to save the recipient's addresses in the special address book?

Exercise 2. Look at the two similar sentences. Which one is true? What makes the second sentence false?

1. Netiquette rules are especially strict in business correspondence.	1. Netiquette rules are especially strict in private correspondence.
2. Attachments to your business letters are allowed in e-letters correspondence.	2. Attachments to your business in e-correspondence are not recommended.
3. While e-mailing your business letter you needn't observe formulas of politeness.	3. All business letters sent via e-mail must be accompanied by a greeting.
4. It is not recommended to send via e-mail secret information.	4. It is safe to send via e-mail secret information.
5. You should use either Latin or Cyrillic font in official letters.	5. Mixing Latin and Cyrillic fonts in official letters is allowed.
6. You should not overuse the function of your message's automatic delivery in e-mail.	6. You may use the function of your message's automatic delivery in e-mail as often as you need.

 

Language activity

 

Exercise 1. Summarize your knowledge on the Gerund.

I. Translate the sentences into Russian. Point out the Gerunds.

1. The old companies were afraid of being removed from the market by the recently appeared companies.

2. The great advantage of the so-called graphic computers lies in solving design problems.

3. Having spent half an hour waiting for their home page to load some users are gradually getting nervous.

4. On leaving school I hoped to find a job that would suit my dispositions.

5. Security considerations prevented the banks from adopting the Internet as a mean of funds transfer.

6. The firm would like to be sure of following the right course of actions.

7. The hacker was accused of having secretly used other people's private information.

8. Success depends on being in the right place at the right time.

II. Translate the sentences into Russian. Point out the Gerundial Constructions.

1. Our having accomplished the work so quickly surprised everybody.

2. Some doctors object to children's playing computer games too often.

3. A good way to learn about a company's doing business on the Net is through the Commerce Net.

4. You can't start work without a precaution against a computer failure being taken.

5. Computers were appreciated for their having completely changed many fields of human activity.

6. Computer expert system advising a user how to solve a problem approaches to a human expert.

III. Begin the following sentences with the given expressions.

A) be sure of, be fond of, be interested in, be engaged in, be proud of.

B) rely on, insist on, prevent from, succeed in, result in.

A)… meeting his friends at the conference.

… setting his business.

… working day and night at the project.

… surfing through the Net.

… having found the solution for the problem.

B) … our going on with the work.

… working out a new televised course.

… using the Web as a tool for exchanging scientific information.

… his having done everything well.

… making a wrong decision.

 

Exercise 2. Put the verbs in brackets into the correct form.

1. If I had known that you were in hospital I (visit) you.

2. If I (know) that you were coming I'd have baked a cake.

3. If you (arrive) ten minutes earlier you would have got a seat.

4. You would have seen my garden at its best if you (be) here last week.

5. I wouldn't have believed it if I (not see) it with my own eyes.

6. I (offer) to help him if I had realized that he was ill.

7. If I (realize) what a bad driver you were I wouldn't have come with you.

8. If he had known that the river was dangerous he (not try) to swim across it.

 

TEXT IV

Word-study

Exercise 1. Check the transcription in the dictionary and read the words listed below.

Nouns:

virus, sophistication, vendor, environment.

Verbs:

encounter, misidentify, ensure, urge, seek.

Adjectives:

various, manual, prevalent, malicious.

 

Exercise 2. Match the synonyms:

Adverbs:

1) rapidly	a) actually
2) actively	b) likely
3) previously	c) essentially
4) truly	d) formerly
5) originally	e) idly
	f) quickly

 

Verbs:

1) predict	a) correct
2) propose	b) spread
3) extract from	c) defend
4) protect	d) derive from
5) drop	e) go down
7) fee	f) forecast
	g) offer

 

Comprehensive reading

VIRUSES

 

About 16.000 viruses have been encountered by various antivirus research labs, and that number is expected to continue growing rapidly.

Though it is difficult to predict what the next major class of viruses will be or when it will hit, the place it hits is likely to be the Internet. Viruses are spread due to human contacts, such as exchanging disks or posting an infected file on a server. But they move from system to system also by themselves actively seeking out new computers to infect.IBM researchers have proposed an automated system that can identify new viruses as well as develop and disseminate the antidotes. The software will be able to identify a previously unknown virus by either analyzing changes to a file or studying the characteristics of a file for code common to viruses. When a potential virus is identified, the infected file will be sent to the virus-lab computer. If the virus is known but not recognized by the user's system because of out-of-date software, updated antivirus data will be sent back to the user.

If the virus is truly unknown, the virus-lab computers will let it spread within a secure environment and then study the way the virus behaves, extracting its signature based on the common characteristics of the infected files. The signature will be tested to ensure it didn't misidentify clean files as infected. If the signature passes, it would be sent back to the machine on which the virus was originally identified and the virus will be removed.

IBM estimates that the entire process should take only about 3 minutes. Within a day, the updated virus signature will be sent out to all computers running IBM's software, protecting them from possible infection. This automated system will be faster than the manual process used in today's antivirus software, which typically takes several weeks to a few months to send new virus signatures to all subscribers. Other disaster faces the antivirus community in the coming years. As computer prices continue to drop and more users get connected, the general level of user sophistication goes down. As a result, hoaxes have begun to spread around the Internet like wildfire. They are so prevalent that most users are more likely to be bothered by hoaxes than by actual viruses.

A hoax typically takes the form of an e-mail message: it warns the user of a virus spreading as part of another e-mail message that will cause damage to the user's computer. The message urges users to send the warning to all their colleagues. In fact there is no virus, but the hoaxer's message can take on virus like characteristics as it replicates from system to system via e-mail. Although it is possible for a virus to spread via e-mail, such a virus has yet to be seen and studied.

Most users do not understand the difference between viruses and other malicious threats. Because of this, anti-virus vendors will have to continue extending their products to address more types of security problems, as well as to better detect the rapidly increasing number of viruses.

 

Notes:

antidote – противоядие;

hoax – дезинформация, трюк;

seek out – выискивать;

signature – отличительный признак, сигнатура;

replicate – воспроизводить;

sophistication – (зд.) профессионализм;

 

Comprehension check

 

Exercise 1. Answer the following questions using the information from the text:

1. What are two main infections spread in computer – Internet world now?

2. What are the sources of viruses actively spreading in the world?

3. What is the aim of the IBM anti-virus research laboratory?

4. What two anti-virus methods did IBM researchers develop?

5. What is the advantage of the IBM automated anti-virus system?

6. Is the virus problem the single problem facing now anti-virus community?

7. What is the reason of this new malicious threat?

 

Exercise 2. Topics for discussion.

Summarize the information about the method of identifying new viruses developed by anti-virus laboratories.

Don’t you think that hoaxes may be qualified as a computer terrorism?

 

Language activity

 

Exercise 1. Read the table below.

Two or more nouns can be combined in several ways.

1....‘s possessive (Dollerith’s invention)

2.... one noun used as adjective (office hours)

3.... phrases with of (flow of information)

4.... compound nouns forming one word (workplace)

 

Exercise 2. Reread the chapters II and III and write noun combinations under the following four headings:

…‘s possessive one noun used phrases with «of» compound nouns forming;

as adjective one word

Exercise 3. Translate the sentences into Russian. Point out the For + Infinitive Constructions.

1. Everything has been done for Internet shopping to be of great interest to everyone involved in commerce.

2. It is already possible to talk to a computer for a speech to be accepted directly (voice input).

3. For the results to be a success much work is to be done.

4. Almost every family was eager for a PC to be bought and applied to home holding.

5. For the data on every happening to be the freshest the information on the Web is being constantly updated.

 

Supplementary reading

TEXT V

Exercise 1. Retell the text using the words and expressions: as the result, besides, to be noted, unfortunately, widely used.

 

3D SCANNERS IN ARCHEOLOGY

 

For nearly two decades, Cyberware has developed and produced the world’s most advanced 3D scanning products and software. These innovative products include 3D scanners and the supporting software that continuously provides three-dimensional imaging. Cyberware 3D Scanners and software have been used in applications such as artistic product design, research, animation and special effects for film, reconstructive and cosmetic surgery medical appliance design, anthropometry, ergonomics, and personal portrait sculpture.

Computer technologies are more and more widely used in different fields of human activities. For example, the using of scanners in archeology. A French 3D scanner has been installed at an archeological dig site in Greece.

The excavation was on the slopes of Mount Olympus and was managed by specialists of the Department of Archeology and History of Art at the University of Thessalonica.

The site included a temple complex dating 413 ВС, with associated baths, stores, lodgings and other structures. Among the many artifacts found at the site are hundreds of sculptures varying from 3 feet tall to life size. Between them were the goddesses Demeter and Aphrodite.

The scanner has been installed on site to scan these sculptures and other artifacts. It captured the shape and color of an object in about 17 seconds. A graphic workstation was also used. It immediately showed the results of the scan as full-color 3D model, allowing users to rotate and view the model from all sides. Special software tools instantly measured the object’s size and volume.

The smooth, light colored stone from which the Greek sculptures were carved made an ideal subject for 3D scanning. As some of the sculptures were quite large, the software was used to automate the process of assembling multiple scans into a complete 3D model. (The possibility of scanning individual potsherds and using software to help reassemble the pieces into a 3D model of the original pot is under consideration).

One of the goals of the project was to give viewers a virtual-reality experience of the artifacts.

Notes:

artifact – произведение искусства;

dig site, excavation – раскопки;

goal – цель;

goddess – богиня;

potsherd – черепок, осколок глиняной посуды.

 

TEXT VI