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Angel LMS To Integrate with Classroom Response System

5/27/2008

Angel Learning has teamed up with eInstruction to integrate the Classroom Performance System into Angel's learning management system. The integration will bring real-time gradebook input to Angel LMS, including attendance, assessments, and grade posting.

Harris Intros Facebook-based Alumni Connections

5/27/2008

Harris Connect has launched a new alumni and student relations tool built on the Facebook Platform. Dubbed "Community Connections," the application is designed to provide secure connections between schools and their Facebook-using constituents and keep them engaged with news and other information.

Georgia State Pilots Incident Response System

5/27/2008

Georgia State University in Atlanta is piloting a new incident response system from Risk Mitigation Systems. FIRSTResponder provides planning and two-way voice, text, and e-mail communications response.

Office Live Workspace Beta Released Internationally

5/23/2008

Microsoft this week released an international beta of its Office Live Workspace (OLW) suite of productivity tools. The company also quietly launched an Office Live Update last week that takes on performance issues and brings in some additional functionality when working with Office 2007, XP, and 2003.

College Students Prefer Online Banking to Paper Checks

5/23/2008

According to a new survey of 1,547 college students nationwide, debit cards and online tools are the backbone of students' money management. Eleven percent reported they have never been to a physical bank to make a transaction. Seven out of 10 prefer to use a debit card when making a purchase. Only 16 percent are likely or very likely to use a credit card.

Moodle 1.9.1 Gets Performance Improvements, Minor Fixes

5/23/2008

Moodle has released Moodle 1.9.1, the first maintenance update to the popular open-source learning management system since the 1.9 launch in March. The new version includes a number of minor fixes, as well as performance improvements and some new functionality.

Columbia School of Public Health Hires Magazine Site Designer To Revamp Web Site

5/23/2008

Columbia University has selected Format-Studio to develop a new website strategy and design for the Mailman School of Public Health. Format has designed websites for major magazines, including New York Magazine, Prevention Magazine, Glamour and Field & Stream.

Randolph College Virtualizes on SAN

5/22/2008

Randolph College, formerly Randolph-Macon Women's College, has upgraded its storage to an IP-based storage area network (SAN) from StoneFly. The Lynchburg, VA-based school implemented the StoneFly Hybrid Storage Concentrator (HSC), an iSCSI SAN with 8 TB of capacity, after evaluating solutions from several vendors.

Orphaned Accounts Are a Growing Security Concern, Study Says

5/22/2008

IT auditors examine accounts just like their financial auditing counterparts. Instead of trial balances, they look at system user accounts to determine who signed on when and who did what. But what about who's logging into what account and when? More important, are these people even around anymore?

Microsoft's High Performance Computing Server 2008 Beta 2 Debuts

5/22/2008

This weekend Microsoft announced the release of High Performance Computing Server 2008 (HPC Server 2008) Beta 2, the next-generation version of Compute Cluster Server 2003.

Astaro Updates Security Appliance

5/22/2008

Astaro Corp. announced an updated version of its security appliance, Astaro Security Gateway. The latest release allows IT managers to recognize, classify, and block Skype connections and other instant messaging and peer-to-peer programs, such as AOL Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, IRC, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. Version 7.2 provides granular access control down to the user level.

Microsoft To Adopt ODF, Take Role in Format Development

5/21/2008

Microsoft Wednesday posted plans for expanding file format support in the next major revision of Office 2007. The move follows charges from the ODF Alliance and the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) that Microsoft has been stifling options for users by favoring its own OOXML format.

New Hyper-V Release Candidate Out

5/21/2008

Microsoft has published a new release candidate (RC2) of its first enterprise-class hypervisor, Hyper-V. The release marks the next step of what has been a quick march to commercial availability for a critical product in Microsoft's emerging virtualization lineup.

American and Brazilian Students Collaborate via Virtual Classrooms

5/21/2008

Four universities--two in the United States and two in Brazil--are testing inter-continental distance learning in a program facilitated by technology from Wimba. The U.S.-Brazil Consortium enables global collaboration among teachers and learners at The University of Georgia in Athens, Utah State University in Logan, Universidade Federal do Ceará and Universidade Estadual Paulista, Bauru.

Shanghai's Tongji U Overhauls Network, Deploys Load Balancing Software

5/21/2008

Tongji University in Shanghai has deployed Radware AppDirector 3020, a load balancing utility, as part of the overhaul of its campus network. With 78,660 students and staff, the campus network covers 17 network systems, including portals, authentication, and student management. The goal of the overhaul was to address network overload, uneven traffic distribution, and server instability, the school said in a statement.

San Jose State Sets Up Firewall from Palo Alto Networks

5/21/2008

San Jose State University has selected a firewall from Palo Alto Networks to stop threats and provide application visibility and control on its campus networks. The school, part of the California State University system, has installed the PA-4000 Series firewall.

BYU Applies Software to Job of Integrating Output from IT Management Tools

5/20/2008

Brigham Young University (BYU) has implemented Managed Objects BSM (business service management) from Managed Objects to strengthen its adoption of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework. BYU tapped the software to integrate, correlate and model data from multiple IT management tools in order to understand the relationships and dependencies among the school's IT components from a comprehensive service perspective.

Citrix Takes On VMware with XenDesktop

5/20/2008

With a tiered pricing structure designed to undercut VMware's offerings, Citrix has announced the availability of XenDesktop, its much anticipated and discussed product offering in the increasingly important desktop virtualization arena. At the company's Synergy event in Houston, it also took the wraps off of some important product portfolio details.

NSA and DHS Designate 10 Universities as Centers of Excellence in Security Education

5/20/2008

The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have designated 10 universities as new National Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education. The program is intended to reduce vulnerabilities in the national information infrastructure by promoting higher education in cyber security and increasing the number of professionals with security expertise.

Adobe Launches Bundles for Online Learning

5/20/2008

Adobe this week launched a new slate of bundles and resources for educators looking to use Acrobat Connect Pro in their online teaching efforts. Adobe just introduced the new version of Acrobat Connect Pro about two weeks ago.

Maryland Institute College of Art Upgrades Administrative Systems To Manage Growth

5/19/2008

The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), a private art college in Baltimore, has upgraded to Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Release 9.0. MICA completed a move to PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management, Campus Solutions, Contributor Relations, and Enterprise Portal and is now upgrading to Enterprise Financial Management 9.0.

Plagiarism Tool Scans 1 Million Papers

5/19/2008

CMS/LMS provider Blackboard reported Monday that its plagiarism detection service, SafeAssign, has now been used to scan more than 1 million student papers. Blackboard debuted SafeAssign about nine months ago.

Alliance Weighs In on Microsoft Interoperability in Education

5/19/2008

Last week, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency referred a complaint to the EC about the impact of Microsoft's interoperability issues in education. Now the ODF Alliance is stepping in with support for Becta's move.

Beta Version of Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool Now Available

5/19/2008

Microsoft has released a beta version of its Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool on the Microsoft Connect site. The intent of the software is to maintain up-to-date operating systems, servers and applications for large numbers of virtual machine environments, according to information posted on TechNet.

SightSpeed Releases Free MySpace Widget for Video Mail and Chat

5/19/2008

SightSpeed has launched SightSpeed Light on MySpace, a free widget that adds integrated video mail, public video posting, and video chat for members of MySpace. The widget was built using MySpace's Developer Platform, introduced in February.