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Mobile Computing for Teaching and Learning at Wake Forest - What Are the Critical Infrastructure Services?

with guest experts David G. Brown and Jay Dominick of Wake Forest University

May 16, 2002

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Transcript

Wake Forest University has chosen an evolutionary path that puts it on the leading edge of higher education institutions adopting mobile information technology on campus. Tune in to Tech Talk on May 16 and discover what Wake Forest has learned about critical infrastructure services to support mobile computing on campus.

Here are some definitions that David introduced during the discussion:

  1. Ubiquitous Computing—all members of the academic community have appropriate and timely access to the Internet, usually via a computer they own. Access may be either by desktop or laptop or handheld.
  2. Portable Computing—same as #1 except computer must be a laptop
  3. Mobile Computing—same as #2 except laptop must be wireless.
  4. Very Mobile Computing—same as #3 (i.e. wireless) except that the computer is a Palm Pilot or Blackberry or Equivalent

During the call, Robert Vineyard, robert@gatech.edu, emailed in with information and some links to Georgia Tech's open source encryption protection project for wireless networks. It's called LAWN. Here are some links: a very basic information site, faculty/student instructions, a paper by Georgia Tech's CIO (PDF), and info from its former CIO. There was discussion of standards and guidelines for students regarding mobile computing. Here are the Student Computer Ownership guidelines (SCO) from Georgia Tech, as well.

Guest Experts

David BrownDavid G. Brown is Vice President and Dean of the International Center for Computer Enhanced Learning at Wake Forest University. Over the past two years David has consulted with more than 300 colleges and universities regarding their use of technology in the classroom and administratively. He has served as President of Transylvania University, Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Provost at three universities (Wake Forest, Miami of Ohio, and Drake) and chaired several national groups including the American Association for Higher Education, Higher Education Colloquium, ACE's Council of Chief Academic Officers, and NASULGC's Academic Council. He is editor-in-chief of the Gallery of Courses Taught With Technology and a member of EDUCAUSE's current issues committee. He founded the N.C. Center for Creative Retirement, the Annual Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, and the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.

As Wake Forest Provost, David chaired the committee that brought ubiquitous laptop computing to the university. An active user of technology in his own classroom, he has been recognized as an "inspirational teacher of undergraduates" by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His classes have been featured on the front page of the New York Times, as a special on British Broadcasting Worldwide Network, as well as in the Chronicle of Higher Education, USA Today, and Business Week. Trained at Denison and Princeton universities, his most recent course has focused upon "The Economists' Way of Thinking About College Basketball."

Jay DominickJay Dominick is Wake Forest University's Chief Information Officer. He is responsible for strategy, planning and operations for Wake Forest University�s highly regarded information technology efforts. Wake Forest University is consistently ranked as a leader in the use of Information Technology in the teaching and learning process. Jay directs efforts of the Information Systems Department, including networking, computer operations, help desk, telecommunications, programming and systems development. Was responsible for the implementation and support of the ubiquitous laptop computing project at Wake Forest which established a new model for Technology deployment in Higher Education. Active in statewide networking as chairman of the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN) advisory board and is a co-founder of WinstonNet—a community technology initiative in Winston-Salem.

Co-Hosts

cohosts Howard Strauss (above, left), Manager of Academic Applications at Princeton University, is Tech Talk's Technology Anchor.
Judith Boettcher is CREN's Executive Director.

Together, Judith and Howard will ask the really tough questions—and relay the questions you email to them at expert@cren.net.

Background & Resources

A great place to start on background for new Tech Talks is our archives of years of previous Tech Talks. Pertinent to this forthcoming event, you will find:

Start your review of what's up at our guests' campus here, where you can learn about their proprietary PocketClassroom software. You can see that Wake Forest's been doing this for a while by reading this press release from 2000. And here's a huge list of Wake Forest University press releases on mobile computing. Also, here is Wake Forest's Information Systems front page.

David's frequently interviewed. Here are a couple of news items with input from him:

Here's a link to a Chronicle story about a recent, massive effort by Case Western University to make computing ubiquitous on its campus.

SHere are a lot of additional institutional links about some neat stuff:

Wearable computers and their applications to enhance the ambient environment for users, are a fascinating subject - so here are some resources: Two EDUCAUSE Constituency Groups have areas of interests which overlap with this Tech Talk. The Personal Digital Assistants Constituent Group "is designed for discussion of issues and challenges that arise from the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in higher education. Topics include basic tools, special uses, wireless access to the campus network, web services for PDAs, and others." The Wireless Local Area Networking Group's topics of concern include authentication, authorization, roaming, IEEE standards, vendor interoperability and bugs, scalability, RF site surveys, and RF congestion and interference in the ISM band.

The latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review contains a set of papers, each of which is a valuable tool for understanding the context of especially some of the newer technologies - including mobile stuff - in higher education. These papers came out of the latest Ubiquitous Computing Conference. Best to link into each PDF file through the hyperlink above. The titles and authors (who include CREN Tech Talk guests and our Technology Anchor Howard Strauss) are:

A couple of last-minute links from our international correspondent, Arun Tripathi Kumar: