4/24/2008
A professor at the University of Central Florida challenged her students to unplug and live a technology-free life for five days, and most discovered they were incapable of doing so. "It's something I'm doing to get us in touch with where our humanity is," said faculty member Mary Ann Murdoch in coverage in the Orlando-Sentinel. "Are they really in charge of these devices, or are all these devices in charge of them?"
4/23/2008
The term "Nomadic" has been used to describe current college students' culture of wireless and mobile connectedness in the sense that they are not "rooted" but incredibility flexible and fluid when it comes to their social connections and their virtual life culture. This refers not only to their uses of social networking tools but also to the reality that they are connected wirelessly in any situation and for any reason. They are essentially nomads when it comes to their life "space."
4/23/2008
Infosys Technologies and the Association for Computing Machinery have given the first ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in Computing Sciences to Daphne Koller, Ph.D., a leading researcher and student mentor at Stanford University.
4/14/2008
In the world if IT security, it's a well known secret that end users in Windows processing environments put themselves at risk whenever they check their MySpace and Facebook pages, or shop for plane tickets, computers and other goods and services--all while at the workplace.
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.
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.
4/7/2008
The MIT Media Laboratory and Bank of America have announced the creation of the Center for Future Banking, a five-year collaboration. The new center, which will be located at the Media Lab on the MIT campus, will explore new ideas in banking by inventing technologies that reveal and leverage insights across a wide range of physical and social scales, from one-on-one customer interactions to global transactions.
4/4/2008
When it comes to infrastructure and operations, research firm Gartner says that virtualization will be the most significant trend through the next four years.
3/31/2008
Survey results conducted at the Infoworld Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), held last week in San Francisco, indicated a positive outlook for open source software.
3/27/2008
Eduventures, which specializes in research and consulting for higher education, has launched a research concentration titled the Academic Leadership Learning Collaborative. The new initiative is designed to help college and university presidents and other executives understand and address campus-wide transformational issues.
3/20/2008
The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has launched an unusual collaborative research effort with the corporate world. The Rochester, NY school has entered into an agreement with telecommunications company PAETEC for the first project under RIT's new "Corporate R&D" program, in which faculty and graduate students will conduct research for companies, with the companies themselves retaining intellectual property rights to the research developed.
3/19/2008
What technologies do researchers need at different phases of their projects? With new possibilities constantly emerging, it seems we must keep reconsidering all our options. Part of research now is not just doing our research, but keeping abreast of new collaboration technologies.
3/19/2008
Yahoo is about to add semantic elements to search. For educators, evolution toward search based on meaning and not just a character-string is highly significant.
3/18/2008
For Microsoft and Intel, the computing universe is going parallel. Representatives from the companies met with reporters Tuesday morning to talk about a new parallel computing initiative involving the launch of two multi-million-dollar Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers--one at University of California, Berkeley and one at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which were selected from 25 universities evaluated for the initiative. The companies have committed $20 million over the next five years to fund the centers, which will focus on applications, architecture, and operating systems.
3/14/2008
Since you've encrypted the data on your laptop, it's safe even if your laptop is stolen, right? Wrong. Researchers at Princeton have demonstrated ways to hack your encrypted data using your own DRAMs against you.
3/12/2008
Each year, Sun Microsystems holds its Worldwide Education and Research (WWERC) conference to bring together thought leaders in education and technology. Campus Technology joined a press conference at this year's WWERC in San Francisco and asked Sun Chairman Scott McNealy and Global Education VP Joe Hartley two questions of interest to higher education...
2/26/2008
This week in San Francisco, Sun Microsystems is bringing together thought leaders in education from more than 30 countries for its annual Worldwide Education and Research Conference, this year themed, "The Power of Communities." Conference organizers are maximizing the reach of the conference through live broadcasts and blogs...
2/20/2008
Migration to the Windows Vista operating system apparently isn't generating much enthusiasm among IT personnel in the enterprise. A survey conducted in November of last year by market research firm King Research supports that notion. The study found that "90 percent of participants have concerns about the migration to Windows Vista."
2/13/2008
Recently Sun Microsystems announced that it would open source both the hardware and operating system for Sun SPOTs, its sensor networking product based on Java technology. CT talked with Arshan Poursohi, a staff researcher in the Sun SPOTs lab on Sun's Menlo Park, CA campus to find out how higher education institutions can incorporate Sun SPOTs in research and instruction.
2/1/2008
Mobile broadband, collaborative Web technologies, and mashups will all significantly impact education over the next five years, along with "grassroots" video, collective intelligence, and "social operating systems." This according to a new report released this week by the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative, the 2008 Horizon Report.
1/25/2008
With the seemingly exponential growth of Web 2.0 technologies, IT professionals in education--and all other sectors, for that matter--face new challenges as control over technology slips away and moves into the hands of users.
1/24/2008
Open source software will nearly double in the education space over the next four years. From its present level of $286.2 million, the market--including software, services, and maintenance--will reach $489.9 million by 2012, according to a report released today by market analyst Datamonitor, which proclaimed that "open source software has the ability to change the face of the education Industry."
1/24/2008
IT security firm Sophos this week let the cat out of the bag, spilled the beans, and otherwise debunked the widely treasured myth that Macs are invulnerable to malware in its "Security Threat Report 2008," released Tuesday. The report said that, among other things, "in 2007 [organized] criminal gangs for the first time arrived at Apple's doorstep with the intention of stealing money." Proof, the firm said, that "hackers are extending their efforts beyond Windows."
1/17/2008
Research and education organization the SANS Institute this week revealed its list of the top menaces facing IT in the coming year. Echoing earlier reports from security watchdog organizations, the group's "Top-10 Cyber Security Menaces for 2008" cited Web 2.0 technologies, converged devices, botnets, and browser addons among the worst, with a heavy emphasis on consumerized technologies and the vulnerabilities they present.
1/8/2008
Eduventures conducted research to better understand the views, attitudes, usage, and future demand/ownership of various technologies and brands among college students. The research, conducted via a Web survey, targeted 18- to 24-year-old students enrolled full-time at a four-year college or university.