The IEEE Transactions on Education, the peer-reviewed journal of the IEEE Education Society, has announced a Special Issue addressing Virtual Laboratories. The deadline for submission is 2 June 2006. High quality laboratory experiences enhance the learning of model-based knowledge domain concepts and theories and provide the bridge from concept to practical understanding. However, access to real-world laboratories is limited because of the number of students who need access and the cost of equipment, supplies, and maintenance.

This CFP does not involve remote access to real laboratory equipment.

Authors wishing to contribute to this Special Issue should refer to the Transactions’ Web site at: www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/es/ToE-manuscript.html for information relative to the scope of Transactions and manuscript preparation.

For complete details, go to Virtual Laboratories Call For Papers.

Impatica for PowerPoint makes it easy to add narrated business presentations to your web site or e-mail marketing programs. Now you can deliver fully narrated and animated PowerPoint presentations to essentially any Internet device without plug-ins and even at normal modem speeds. It is the software of choice for the EdSoc's Distingished Lecture Series presentations.

For more information, pricing, to view demos of the software, and to download fully functional trial software, go to: Impactica's Web site.

Today's corporations continue to deliver new patented technologies at an amazing pace, and by far the most cited publisher in new patents is IEEE. The most influential and valuable patents – the "blockbusters" – are the ones which are highly cited by later patents. Typically these too rely heavily on IEEE publications. High citation rates correlate with patent "licensability," successful products and increases in sales, profits, and stock value. The bottom line: Citation impact is a direct indication of quality and research has proven that patents which reference the IEEE are cited more often than those that rely on the science of other publishers.

For more information go the Top Patenting Organizations Rely on IEEE Research article.

There are a number of very interesting items that have (or soon will have) the attention of the EdSoc officers and Administrative Committee (AdCom). Some of these items will be more obvious to the average member than others, they all have far-reaching impact. Our Publications: The Editors of our 2 major publications, the IEEE Transactions on Education and The Interface have coincidentally announced their retirements from these positions. It seems that the plan of action is to select new editor so that they can have a reasonable period of overlap with the outgoing editors. It is reasonable to expect the process of selecting new editors at the June AdCom meeting in Chicago. Also, the question of establishing a second peer-reviewed publication has surfaced, and this has very interesting possibilities.

Chapters Committee: The Society has grown from 9 chapters in May 2003 to 51 chapters today. This was a tremendous accomplishment on the part of many IEEE leaders throughout the world. The task-at-hand is to develop and deploy a strategic plan to support the needs of these new chapters and the existing chapters. The Chapters Committee is moving toward this goal. One of the major goals of the Chapters Committee is to construct an operating budget and submit that to the AdCom at its Chicago meeting.

Globalization: In light of our growth in the number of members, in the number of chapters and just given the fact that globalization is happening all around us, several new lines of thinking are being developed. For example, our current policy is that a manuscript that is going to be considered for publication in our peer-reviewed journal, the IEEE Transactions on Education, must submit that paper in English. But if we are broadening our reach, we may need to adopt a procedure so that those authors who are not functionally fluent in English can have their paper proceed through the peer-reviewed process before they need to translate it into English. Also, if the paper is going to be rejected, the author should be told that before he/she has the manuscript translated into English.

Communications: We need to become familiar with technologies that are readily available to us, which will allows us to communicate with each other in real-time. We need to become familiar with technologies that will enhance our communications (go beyond email). Voice over the Internet (VoIP) can be gotten from software that is free-of-charge and does not require any special plug-in or unique knowledge on the part of the user. I am referring to Skype, which is available at www.skype.com. Skype is a terrific piece of software. It allows voice-to-voice contact over the Internet and it provides for, up to 5 people, to talk simultaneously-a conference call!

Professional Development: We need to become familiar with technologies that will provide professional development workshops/seminars without the need to attend the session in-person. See, for example, the most recent presentation in the EdSoc's Distinguished Lecture Series.

Conferences: High profile conferences are terrific, our FIE conference is unsurpassed. But we also need to develop high quality regional conferences (perhaps even using local college/university housing so as to impact the cost).