Students now teachers

Educators say an interesting dynamic occurs when computer-literate students teach faculty members how to incorporate PowerPoint presentations and other technology into the learning process.

At the University of Vermont, the Technology Collaborative Action Teams program (TechCats) paired undergraduate Paul Dame with lecturer Willard Morgan after the faculty member requested assistance in brushing up his Web page design skills. The two are pictured below with Dame showing Morgan how to build a Web site.

“I originally thought it would be weird teaching someone not only older than me but also an established faculty member,” Dame said. “But it was not nearly as awkward as I thought it would be.”

Morgan said Dame’s knowledge was instrumental in helping him and his students develop Web-based formats to display their ideas.

Spammers like Oprah, mortgage rates, drugs

What do Oprah Winfrey, mortgage rates and online pharmacies have in common? All were cited in the most commonly sent spam messages of 2003, says America Online.

AOL released the list to tout its claim that it stopped a half-trillion pieces of spam from reaching its members in 2003, and to encourage users to set their spam filters to reject e-mails with certain words in the header.

“The spam fight roared louder than ever this year,” AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said.

AOL said its list of the most common spam subjects was neither scientifically assembled nor ranked by volume. Graham also pointed out that spammers often attempt to evade filters by slightly obscuring the words in the message subject lines.