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IT in Review 2004: From the Biggest Non-Story to the Biggest Real Story
12/22/2004
People Start Going to Jail
A few people went to jail for hacking into secure servers or creating worms or viruses. The public outcries about that seemed to be particularly lacking, so I think it's safe to say that more people will go to jail in 2005.
Lawsuits/Legal Music Downloads for Students
Apparently everyone agreed in 2004 that college-age students must have their music, and when and where they want it, too. The RIAA brought lawsuits left and right while IT staffers and policy folks tried to ensure that institutions weren't liable for the students' behavior, while at the same time trying to modify the students' behavior. And then, we decided to provide it for them, beginning with the Nittany Napster program and followed by a whole bunch of related pilot and test programs at colleges and universities.
New Levels of Mandated Technology Required for Students
More schools are requiring laptops, especially with more extensive wireless networks, and those networks themselves are feeding back into the demand for laptops. Duke University "gave" freshmen iPods, not just for music of course, and now we find that "podcasting" is a new development that has to be taken into account on campus, both in course development and curriculum. When Duke said the iPods were also for curriculum, I guess it meant it!
Moves Toward Getting IT, Physical, and Academic Planners Together
Maybe I should call this cross-disciplinary collaboration. The types of folks who come together at Syllabus or NLII conferences and workshops often are multidisciplinary in their departmental origins anyway. That's what makes these conferences so much fun--the fact that there are academics from multiple disciplines interacting with administrators from a variety of departments. This year there has been more of that and one great example of that was the NLII Focus Workshop on the Design of Learning Spaces where about 80 people came together to talk mostly about IT in classrooms but left having drilled deeper down and focused on simpler learning space design principles that have little to do directly with information technology.
And The Biggest News of the 2004…
Google, Google, Google
Well, this was the year of Goggle. The most recent issue of MIT's Technology Review magazine, which just arrived on my desk, d'es an amusing letter and color play on the word "Google" by displaying on its cover the blue "G," the red "o," and the yellow "o," with the second "o" turned into a "d" and just a hint of the left-side curve of the next letter, the blue "g." And that's about right. What did we get to use/learn/manage from Goggle in the past year?
--We got to watch it go public, probably the most watched IPO of the current century, and that news will continue because the verdict's still out on its success for anyone but the major shareholders;
--We saw Gmail up the ante for "free" Web-based e-mail systems with great searchability and 100 gigabytes of storage space;
--We saw the introduction of Google News Alerts. This particular Google feature was the most valuable of the year to me personally: the ability to receive an e-mail every time Google indexes a news article on a topic in which I have an interest. That has been wonderful. I had no idea there were so many articles published each year about disc golf!
Recommended Reading
- Web 2.0 :: Wednesday, October 8, 2008
:::::: THE BUZZ
: The Institutional Path For Change in This Age: Andragogy, not Pedagogy
:::::: PRODUCTS AND APPS
: College Students Find WiFi Essential to Education, Survey Reports
: Digital Arts Alliance Adds Fordham U
: Amazon To Host Microsoft Solutions in the Cloud
: Online University Aims To Boost Rural Math and Science Teachers - News Update :: Tuesday, October 7, 2008
:::::: NEWS
: Coming to Terms with Cloud Computing
: IBM Aims To Boost Mainframe Competency with Scholarship Program
: Microsoft's 'Dublin' App Server Tied to .NET 4.0
: Payment Card Security Toughens with DSS 1.2 Release
: 6 Universities Join NASA Astrobiology Institute
: Amazon To Host Microsoft Solutions in the Cloud
: CRM Pushing into New Areas of Higher Ed
: U Washington Aims To Streamline Data Access with Amalga
: Silverlight 2 Release Candidate Available - IT Trends :: Thursday, October 2, 2008
:::::: INTERVIEW
:: CRM Pushing into New Areas of Higher Ed
:::::: IT NEWS
:: Integrated Collaborative Environment Leverages Web 2.0
:: You Say You Want a Runtime Revolution?
:: Visual Studio To Include jQuery Library
:: Browser Makers Seek Clickjacking Fix
:: China's Southeast University Upgrades Wireless LANs Across 6 Campuses
:: Aruba To Increase Wireless Performance with ARM 2.0
:: More Universities Sign with Hothand Wireless To Deliver Mobile Marketing - SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, October 1, 2008
:::::: ELEARNING TIPS
: Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students
:::::: NEWS and PRODUCT UPDATES
: Stanford Testing iPhone Application Suite
: North Seattle CC Adds Plato Online Algebra Course to Math Formula
: Second Life Mashup Helps Boost Distance Ed Retention at Huntington JC
: DePaul Weaves SS&C Tech Finance Material into Hybrid Graduate Course
: Serena Acquisition Takes Aim at Microsoft Project - Web 2.0 :: Wednesday, October 1, 2008
:::::: THE BUZZ
: The Generative Nature of the Digital Economy and Its Challenge to Educators
:::::: ELEARNING TIPS
: Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students
:::::: PRODUCTS AND APPS
: College Crime Gets Google Maps Mashup at UCrime.com
: Second Life Mashup Helps Boost Distance Ed Retention at Huntington JC
: UW-Stout Taps Echo360 Lecture Capture To Connect with Distance Students
: Turnitin Integrates Plagiarism Tool into New Online Writing Service - News Update :: Tuesday, September 30, 2008
:::::: NEWS
: Second Life Mashup Helps Boost Distance Ed Retention at Huntington JC
: Seton Hall Monitors Recruitment Dollars with Coremetrics
: Universities Tackle Mainframes in IT Courses
: Windows 7 Bits To Be Released at PDC'08
: Serena Acquisition Takes Aim at Microsoft Project
: United States Tops List of Sources for Botnet Attacks
: Malicious Code Hidden in Rich Content Files Tough To Detect, According to Finjan Report
: Purdue Team Driving SiCortex Low-power Supercomputer in 2008 Cluster Challenge
: U Arizona To Optimize Wireless Networks on Campus
