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FAST Launches Campus Security Grants

11/6/2007

First Alert System Text (FAST) has launched a new grant program for colleges and universities, offering no-cost implementation and service for its text message-based emergency notification system. Through the Secure Campus Grant program, 100 higher ed campuses in the United States will be awarded the notification system.

Mobile Educational Gaming To Triple by 2012

11/5/2007

The market for mobile educational gaming will more than triple by 2012, according to a new forecast released late last week by research firm Ambient Insight. Demand for mobile educational gaming will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 26.5 percent over the next five years, with annual revenues expected to hit $185 million by 2012, up from the current $57 million.

Google Seeks Social Networking High Ground

11/5/2007

Google's attempt to grab moral high ground in the social networking development is a step in the right direction, according to industry analysts.

USRA To Lead NASA's Undergraduate Student Research Project

11/5/2007

NASA has launched an educational initiative designed to provide "real-world" experience to undergraduate students of STEM subjects. The Undergraduate Student Research Project (USRP) will be headed up by the Universities Space Research Association, in Maryland.

Admissions Sites Get Low Budgetary Priority

11/2/2007

Just how much priority should admissions sites be given? For prospective students, they're crucial, trusted, and highly utilized sources of information. But according to new research from education consultancy Eduventures, higher ed admissions departments give them a much lower priority--at least in terms of budgeting.

Louisiana State Moves to Moodle

11/2/2007

Louisiana State University is replacing two learning management systems on its campus with Moodle, an open-source LMS/CMS popular in higher education and elsewhere. According to information released by LSU's Office of the CIO, the move comes on the heels of a two-year system review process headed by the university's Flagship Information Technology Strategy (FITS) Task Force for Teaching and Learning that gathered input from the entire campus community.

Survey: Good News for COBOL Programmers

11/2/2007

Yes, COBOL. Believe it or not, in higher education, COBOL--one of the oldest programming languages and second only to FORTRAN in comedic value--still has a future. According to a survey of CIOs by technology provider Micro Focus, more than 75 percent said they intend to recruit COBOL programmers over the next five years, but 73 percent said they're having a hard time finding such programmers. COBOL was invented in 1959 as an alternative to the most popular programming language of the day, Cuneiform.

Ethernet Alliance Draws Higher Ed Crowd

11/1/2007

Nine universities have joined the Ethernet Alliance, a group advocating the adoption of and research into Ethernet technologies, through the Ethernet Alliance University Program (EAUP). The Ethernet Alliance has also launched its first-annual White Paper Challenge Program through the EAUP.

Open Source Adoption Low but Growing

11/1/2007

An Independent Oracle User's Group (IOUG) survey found that business deployment of open source solutions (OSS) was not extensive relative to proprietary solutions. The survey was based on 226 responses from the IOUG membership.

Palo Verde College To Deploy ERP, Portal Solutions

11/1/2007

Palo Verde College is revamping its enterprise resource planning with the adoption of Datatel Colleague, becoming the 40th community college in California to adopt the solution. The college is also deploying Datatel ActiveAdmissions for recruitment and ActiveCampus Portal as its portal solution.

U Akron Migrates to D2L eLearning Suite

10/31/2007

The University of Akron is replacing its previous learning management system with Desire2Learn's Enterprise eLearning Suite. The move is designed to facilitate both online and Web-enhanced delivery of courses.

9 Universities Deploy Orion CRM

10/31/2007

Education technology provider Intelliworks reported recently that nine colleges and universities are deploying its flagship constituent relationship management platform, Orion, for recruiting, outreach, and communications.

Cognos Launches Enrollment and Tuition Planning Blueprint

10/31/2007

Business Intelligence and performance management provider Cognos has launched a new higher ed performance management solution called Enrollment and Tuition Planning Blueprint.

Web 2.0 Entails 'Sleeping Giant' Security Risk

10/30/2007

As increasing numbers of enterprises climb aboard the Web 2.0 bandwagon, it's more important than ever for software developers to keep security in mind during the development process. So says Danny Allan, director of security research at Watchfire, the Waltham, MA-based Web-app security company acquired by IBM in July. Allan was in Santa Clara, CA to speak at this year's AjaxWorld show, and he took a few minutes to talk with me before his presentation.

IBM Targets Problematic SOAs

10/30/2007

Some organizations may not be happy with their service oriented architectures (SOAs). They may have "unhealthy" SOAs as a consequence of partnering with inexperienced system integrators. They may have proprietary SOA technology in the mix, and it may be difficult to scale operations.

SNS Hunts Down Sensitive Data

10/30/2007

That sensitive data resides on less-than-secure systems is a fact of university life. Over the last few years, there have been dozens of incidents in which stolen, lost, or hacked computers, hard drives, or removable storage devices resulted in more than 4.9 million reported users--students, faculty, staff, patients--having their personal or financial information exposed. And there isn't a lot IT staffs can do about it when they don't know which systems contain such sensitive data.

2008 Technology for Teaching Grants Open

10/30/2007

HP has opened up its 2008 Technology for Teaching Grant program, offering $6 million to K-12 and higher education institutions in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The initiative is aimed at efforts to improve education through the use of innovative uses of technology in the classroom, increase the number of underrepresented students on a path toward high-tech careers, and enhance student success in math, science and engineering.

Voorhees Cuts Telecommunications Costs with VoIP, Videoconferencing Solutions

10/30/2007

Voorhees College in South Carolina has completed a multi-phase deployment of new voice and data solution to enable distance learning, increase bandwidth, and add emergency communications services. The college partnered with CDW-G for planning and implementation, with systems provided by Verizon and Sprint.

Live! Integration Coming to Sakai Open-Source LMS

10/29/2007

Education technology developer Elluminate is bringing its Live! collaboration suite to the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment, an open-source learning management system. The move is part of a new alliance with Unicon, a company that specializes in providing support and services for open-source software to education.

Adobe To Release Flex Builder 2 Free for Education Users

10/29/2007

Adobe last week announced its intention to release Flex Builder 2 free for students and faculty at education institutions. Flex Builder, which retails for $499, is an integrated development environment for the Flex framework, which powers cross-platform rich Internet applications on the Web.

STEM Equity Gets Boost from NSF

10/29/2007

In an effort to explore methods for encouraging females to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), the National Science Foundation has awarded the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) Education Foundation an extension services grant. The grant comes through the Research on Gender in Science and Engineering Program and was awarded to implement NAPE's five-year STEM Equity Pipeline project.

Grid-Enabled SOA for Scalability

10/26/2007

The use of data-grid technology in service-oriented architectures (SOAs) was the subject of a keynote address at the first annual IT Architect Regional Conference in San Diego, which took place last week. Dave Chappell, Oracle's VP and chief technologist for SOA, spoke on the topic of "Next Generation Grid Enabled SOA" at the IASA event.

OLW Comes to Live@edu

10/26/2007

Microsoft has rolled its Office Live Workspace technology into Live@edu, the company's portal, communications, and collaboration suite for higher education. According to Microsoft, this is but the first in a "new wave" of Office Live services making its way into the higher ed space. The Live@edu service itself has also been upgraded to provide greater storage capacity and additional features.

Apple Launches iPhone Dev Center

10/25/2007

Apple has created a new suite of development resources tailored specifically for the iPhone. Dubbed the "iPhone Dev Center," the service provides a range of resources, including guidelines for optimizing Web apps for the iPhone, sample code, video tutorials, and other reference material.

IBM Funds University Collaboration Studies

10/25/2007

IBM has provided grant funding to three universities that are using the company's Jazz collaboration solutions for software development. The universities--including the University of California at Irvine, the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria--received Jazz Faculty Grants from IBM.