Features
- Information Security Set for Explosive Growth
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4/24/2008
Driven by compliance and public confidence issues, information security is expected to expand dramatically over the next few years, according to new research released by Frost & Sullivan and (ISC)². Worldwide, the number of information security professionals will grow from 1.66 million in 2007 to about 2.7 million in 2012, experiencing a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent.
- The Unfair Advantage at RIT: Sponsored Research Services
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4/24/2008
When Bill Destler was named president of Rochester Institute of Technology in March 2007, he summarized his vision for the Rochester, NY school this way: "Take advantage of your unfair advantages."
- MySQL Keynote: An Open Source Love Fest
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4/17/2008
Sun Microsystems's acquisition of MySQL was "a billion-dollar vote for the LAMP stack." That's how former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, now senior vice president in Sun's Database Group, characterized the deal during his keynote speech at this week's MySQL Conference and Expo. "It's a game-changing move in the industry, and we can all be proud that it's happening," he said.
- Will the CafeScribe Acquisition Give a Boost to Electronic Textbooks?
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4/16/2008
The digital textbook is one of those technologies that seem obvious but can take a long time to gain traction. In March, the concept got a boost when long-time textbook distributor and retailer Follet Corp. acquired Salt Lake City-based Fourteen40, and, along with it, CafeScribe, a Web site in its beta phase of offering electronic textbooks.
- CIOs See Declining Budgets in Q1
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4/10/2008
Although IT budgets are expected to grow in 2008 overall, about a fourth of CIOs in the United States reported decreases in their budgets in the first quarter of 2008, according to a survey released by Gartner this month and highlighted at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo: Emerging Trends event this week in Las Vegas.
- U Wisconsin Expands Collaboration with Office Live Workspace
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4/9/2008
Students at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside can now enjoy file collaboration capabilities via a free software-and-service product from Microsoft called Office Live Workspace. The university, which last year outsourced its student e-mail accounts to Microsoft Live@edu, now offers students, faculty, and staff the ability to store, share, edit, and collaborate on documents in common Microsoft file formats.
- Scheduling To Reduce Energy Consumption
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4/9/2008
Two companies have partnered to help institutions reduce their carbon footprint. CT interviewed PeopleCube President and CEO John Anderson about the integration of his company's Resource Scheduler with BSL's Footprint Tracker energy consumption and carbon emissions tracking solution.
- University of Houston Study: Hybrid Courses More Effective for Students
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4/8/2008
A technical report from a University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance researcher finds that students in a hybrid class that incorporated instructional technology with in-class lectures scored a letter grade higher on average than their counterparts who took the same class in a more traditional format.
- Data Mining at UCF Helps Measure Goals Against Booming Growth
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4/3/2008
Rapid enrollment growth is great, but can bring its own set of challenges. Ask administrators at the University of Central Florida, one of the fastest-growing universities in the country. With 46,000-plus students, the university has seen enrollment jump 35 percent in 10 years.
- Blackboard Vows To Press On
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4/2/2008
Despite last week's apparent setback in the Patent Office, Blackboard is vowing not to go down without a fight even as Desire2Learn and the Software Freedom Law Center--the two groups that sought to have the patent revoked--celebrate victory. We have the first interview with Blackboard's chief legal officer, Matthew Small, since the action. He discussed Blackboard's plans moving forward and why he sees that patent as still being valid and strong.
- USPTO Rejects Blackboard Patent Claims
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3/28/2008
[Update 10] Blackboard's e-learning patent looks to be going down. The United States Patent and Trademark Office this week sent out a "non-final" determination on the reexamination of Blackboard's patent in which all of the claims on the patent were rejected. Blackboard still has a period of two months to respond to the determination.
- 10 Tips for Injecting New Technology into Your Campus
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3/26/2008
Introducing new technologies to faculty members can be a challenge--they are often simply too busy or don't see the point of mastering yet another tool.
- The Ins and Outs of Access Control at a Community College District
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3/20/2008
Campus security takes many forms--emergency notification, monitoring for Web breaches, data privacy protection, video monitoring. But when was the last time you thought about the security offered by your school's doors?
- Homegrown Software Boosts Interactivity at Community College
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3/19/2008
In search of an inexpensive solution to engage students in challenging courses like physics and astronomy, a semi-retired professor has created a popular interactive software tool that reportedly increases classroom participation and boosts grades and learning.
- Desire2Learn CEO Makes Case Against Blackboard Patent, Court Ruling
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3/17/2008
In this exclusive interview, John Baker, Desire2Learn's president and CEO, discusses the company's recent patent infringement case, its impact on the company and its customers, and the implications for education technology as a whole.
- Electronic Transcripts at the Tipping Point
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3/13/2008
In an age of electronic information, it seems obvious--exchange student transcripts electronically, thereby cutting costs, speeding the process, and making fraud more difficult. But in a process that has taken many years, student transcripts are just now being pushed and pulled into the 21st century. Often on a state-by-state basis, high schools and colleges are gradually adopting technologies to allow them to exchange transcripts electronically.
- Engineering Collaboration at Virginia Tech
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3/12/2008
What does it take to convert a soon-to-retire engineering professor enamored of the chalkboard into someone who loves a technology tool? For Virginia Tech Alumni Distinguished Professor Charles Bostian, it took a collaborative teaching tool that he is using in engineering classes as large as 180 students.
- Trustworthy Computing: Examining Trust
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3/11/2008
When Richard Kemmerer first joined the board of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory initiative as one of its inaugural members, he had a caveat for the software giant. "One of the things I told (Microsoft) was that if you're looking for a yes man, you're barking up the wrong tree, looking in the wrong place, you got the wrong guy. I'm going to call it like I see it."
- Social Networking: The New Face of Recruiting
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3/6/2008
Social networking sites aren't just for fun. In what may be the future for college recruiting efforts, some 300,000 students now use a social networking site called Zinch specifically to network with colleges. On Zinch, prospective students can enter a personal profile that gives colleges in-depth information well beyond grades and test scores. From the other side, Zinch says that more than 450 colleges and universities are using Zinch as a high-powered recruiting tool.
- Micro Blogging with Twitter
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3/5/2008
Depending on your point of view, Twitter--an online social networking/micro-blogging service--is either a cool new way to connect with people or yet more online noise. But Twitter as an academic tool? In this interview, we talk with David Parry, Assistant Professor of Emerging Media at the University of Texas at Dallas, who recently blogged about using Twitter in class.
- Creating a Collaborative Syllabus Using Moodle
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2/27/2008
A "collaborative syllabus" is one in which the students have the ability to help determine the specifics of a course. Those specifics can be any element that a professor is willing to be flexible with and include such items as the objectives, grading, attendance policies, types of assignments, and so on.
- Adobe Releases AIR Runtime for the Desktop, Opens Flex
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2/25/2008
In a move that will let Web developers use their existing skills to build rich Internet applications for the desktop, smart clients and browsers, Adobe Systems Monday released the first version of its widely anticipated AIR cross-operating system runtime, along with updates to its Flex framework for Windows and Mac OS X platforms.
- Silverlight 2.0: The Wait Is Almost Over
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2/21/2008
The first public beta of Silverlight 2.0 is expected from Microsoft in the next few weeks. By all accounts, those that have seen the private beta report that the features outlined by the General Manager of Microsoft's Developer Division, Scott Guthrie, in a November blog posting are pretty much on track.
- Print Management Automates 'Greening' of IT at Saint Mary's
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2/14/2008
Rarely do bad habits change just because somebody has brought your attention to them. Most of the time, change requires some form of vigilance, whether self-imposed or provided by others--or even better, by automation. In the case of Saint Mary's College, a women's college in Notre Dame, IN, the bad habit was paper waste.
- Ashes2Art: Modeling the Past in 3D
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2/13/2008
An art history project focusing on the ancient Greek site of Delphi has students themselves using three-dimensional modeling software to create exact renderings of ancient structures. The project is part of a collaboration between two universities called Ashes2Art, in which students use computer modeling software to recreate and study ancient ruins.
