9/19/2007
Blackboard today launched a new language pack for its course management systems in support of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, the day on which people across the globe can use expressions like "ahoy" and "yar matey" without fear of retribution.
9/19/2007
422 Group, a Microsoft Certified technology services company serving higher education institutions, has launched Continuum 422 a "constituent" relationship management system for colleges and universities seeking to create and maintain relationships with prospective and current students, alumni, and donors.
9/19/2007
College and career-planning services provider ConnectEdu has released its C!Doc college admissions tool for free to help high schools more easily connect students with higher education institutions.
9/19/2007
Novell next month will begin shipping two new workspace and collaboration tools for its Open Workgroup Suite: Novell Teaming and Novell Teaming + Conferencing. The tools are designed to boost team productivity and streamline processes involved in creating, managing, and sharing information.
9/19/2007
The AT&T Foundation has launched a $1.5 million competitive grant program aimed at integrating wireless communications technologies into educational outreach programs. The 2007 AT&T Foundation Wireless Competitive Grant Program is open to public charities and "government instrumentalities" in the United States, excluding Alaska.
9/18/2007
The number of students who own a laptop at the University of Wisconsin at Madison jumped to 77 percent this year, up from 64 percent in 2006, according to an online survey conducted by the school's Division of Information Technology (DoIT). The increase corresponds with a jump in the number of students who rely on wireless services, which went from 30 percent usage in 2006 to 50 percent this year.
9/18/2007
Five independent Australian universities have agreed to link their individual computer clusters together to form an enterprise grid that will enable them to perform experiments and applications they would not have been able to do otherwise, Computerworld Australia reported.
9/18/2007
Social Web hotspot Facebook is the focus of a new course at Stanford this semester designed to teach both techies and non-science majors how to build "engaging Web applications." In fact, the name of the course is called--in Learning Annex-style--"Create Engaging Web Applications Using Metrics and Learning on Facebook."
9/18/2007
The University of Arizona named Sylvia Johnson, an attorney working in its Office of the General Counsel, as the university's first information security officer.
9/17/2007
Georgia Tech librarian Brian Matthews has teamed up with GT computer science professor Blaire MacIntyre to develop a space in the Second Life virtual world from which students could "check out" land parcels in order "to hang out, explore, and learn the basics of the software."
9/17/2007
Duke University named John Board, an associate professor and associate chair of electrical and computer engineering, as its associate chief information officer, Duke Chief Information Officer Tracy Futhey said.
9/17/2007
Women in Technology International, a professional organization for tech-savvy women, inducted Lucy Sanders, Executive in Residence at the University of Colorado's Atlas Institute, into its Hall of Fame. Sanders is also CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology.
9/17/2007
Three university researchers have won a nearly $1 million grant to chart the group dynamics of zebras electronically in an effort better understand techniques for conservation and eventually to study human consumer behaviors as well.
9/14/2007
The Storm worm, a massive botnet that its developers have been amassing over the last several months, is starting to attack computers that have been set up to defend against it. The botnet is set up to launch a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against any computer that is scanning a network for vulnerabilities or malware, IW reported.
9/14/2007
A Loyola University Chicago computer containing the Social Security numbers of 5,800 students was discarded before its hard drive was erased, according to a letter from the school's chief information officer, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
9/14/2007
Motorola has expanded its MOTOwi4 lineup with a new fixed point to point wireless Ethernet bridge: the PTP 25600, a modified version of the PTP 600. The new 2.5 GHz, 300 Mbps solution is targeted toward Educational Broadband Service license holders and is designed to provide secure broadband access for online courses and other instructional programs. It's available now in the United States.
9/14/2007
Naugatuck Valley Community College in Connecticut has deployed online math curricula for 11 of its remedial math classes this fall. The school is using Academic Systems Algebra from Plato Learning.
9/14/2007
In a study of more than 1 million spam e-mails, computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego have concluded that most scams are hosted by individual Web servers even though thousands of compromised computers might be used to relay spam to end users.
9/14/2007
Federal law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies sent representatives to one of the world's biggest hacking conventions, in part to recruit gifted computer security aficionados to join the United States government and military ranks.
9/14/2007
FETC, a part of 1105 Media's Educational Technology Group, and CUE, a leading producer of professional development events for the educational technology community, are partnering to produce an annual event in Northern California, beginning October 2008. This conference will target K-20 educators, the education community, and administrators of all levels and will focus on identifying and sharing innovative teaching and learning solutions to enhance student achievement. FETC holds one of the nation's premier educational technology conferences in Florida each year, while CUE produces the largest educational technology conference on the West Coast.
9/14/2007
A demonstration by University of Akron student Rick Deacon on ways to hack MySpace accounts backfired when Deacon discovered that his own account was disabled immediately following his presentation at the recent DefCon computer security conference in Las Vegas.
9/13/2007
With an eye on reliability, scalability and security, the Indiana Institute of Technology has deployed a new campus network using a TeraScale E-300 switches/router and S50 access switches from Force10 Networks. The combination of the TeraScale E300 at the network core and S50s providing access gives Indiana Tech a network that can scale to 10 gigabit Ethernet for its campus, which serves more than 3,000 students.
9/13/2007
Medical and pharmaceutical programs at three colleges have recently implemented 1:1 tablet PC initiatives for students and faculty through IT solutions provider CDW Government, which provided hardware, software, and consulting for the three deployments.
9/13/2007
University of Michigan researchers are working on new optical technology that could lead to the faster development of quantum computers and ultimately to tougher data security techniques and faster encryption cracking.
9/13/2007
St. Mary's University in Texas won an $87,000 grant from the United States Department of Education's Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program to help develop a computer security lab at the school.