5/29/2007
Google said it would ban advertisements for essay-writing services in an effort to help cut down on campus plagiarism. As part of the ban, Google will not accept ads from companies that sell essays, theses, and dissertations.
5/29/2007
The United States Department of Education has awarded Worcester (MA) Polytechnic Institute and Carnegie Mellon University a four-year, $2 million grant to enhance a computerized program to help middle school students hone their math skills. The tool is designed to tie tutoring to the assessment of student performance under federal teaching and learning guidelines.
5/29/2007
Drexel University and Internet service provider EarthLink Inc. struck a deal to extend the boundaries of its wireless network so that students, faculty, and staff can access university resources or browse the Internet via EarthLink's Wi-Fi networks.
5/29/2007
Google has licensed remote sensing technology developed by a team of Stanford University students to help it compete with Microsoft in the race to build the best photographic Web map of the planet Earth, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News.
5/29/2007
The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University is making scholarships available to those with undergraduate degrees in computer science, as well as programmers and Web developers, under a grant that recognizes that the Web has become an essential media technology.
5/29/2007
The Supreme Court of British Columbia has ordered Vancouver University Worldwide (VUW) to stop granting degrees in the province. The court had upheld a suit by the B.C. provincial government that argued that for profit distance education provider VUW was breaking the province's Degree Authorization Act by offering degrees without authorization.
5/29/2007
Computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University and the Russian Academy of Science will share an award from the Association for Computing Machinery for work on a key unresolved question in theoretical computer science.
5/29/2007
More university professors are joining the ranks of those who have given up or severely curtailed their use of e-mail as a medium for personal--and most of all--private correspondence. They have had enough with electronic spam, come-ons, nonsense and smut-vertisements.
5/24/2007
Peirce College is accelerating its Web applications with Crescendo Networks. The Philadelphia, PA college is using Crescendo's Maestro Application Front End to accelerate Java and ASP services on a student portal that's expected to launch by the end of this quarter.
5/23/2007
The University of Washington, in an effort to improve access to classroom materials for students, has deployed IP-based audio encoding devices throughout 24 classrooms, standardizing on Barix Instreamers.
5/23/2007
Educational software developer Plato Learning recently announced the release of Academic Systems Algebra, a three-course math program designed for entry-level college students. Courses include pre-algebra, elementary algebra, and intermediate algebra, al designed to prepare students for college level courses, according to Plato.
5/22/2007
University information technology officials rated funding for technology as the most pressing issue they face, according to an annual "current issues" survey by the Educause higher education association. The survey asked campus IT managers to rank a series of information technology challenges on their campus, including security, funding, identity management, and strategic planning. Funding was No. 1.
5/22/2007
University of Arizona Chief Information Officer Sally Jackson was named CIO at the University of Illinois, where she is an alumna. Jackson, who will start this week (May 21), will hold a joint appointment as a professor of speech communications.
5/22/2007
An electrical engineering student at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell designed a voice-activated computer cursor in response to a cry for help posted on the Internet from the parents of a 5-year-old Italian girl who's been paralyzed since the age of 2.
5/22/2007
Southern Methodist University is the latest campus to embrace computer gaming as a degree program.
5/21/2007
Ohio University boasted that, following crackdown, illegal file sharing via its campus networks has been eradicated. University CIO Brice Bible said that illegal file-sharing on the university's network had "virtually stopped," according to a report in the Athens (OH) Times.
5/21/2007
Carnegie Mellon University inducted four robots into its Robot Hall of Fame, including a hopping robot; the first car to drive itself across the country; a kit that enables anyone to build a robot; and the android Data from Star Trek.
5/21/2007
The University of Wisconsin-Madison last week narrowed its search for a new chief information officer and vice provost for information technology to three finalists.
5/21/2007
The City University of New York (CUNY) has purchased a software suite to help automate its help desk services. The school, the country's largest urban public university, with 23 institutions, picked the RightAnswers site to drive self-service initiatives across all its service desks.
5/18/2007
A statewide initiative launched in Mississippi will bring Blackboard's CMS and LOM systems to 15 community and junior colleges. The program was initiated by the Mississippi State Board for Community and Junior Colleges.
5/17/2007
The annual Serious Games Showcase & Challenge, which has traditionally focuses on military applications for gaming technologies, this year is expanding its scope to include education technology.
5/17/2007
AlarmPoint Systems has launched a new grant program offering emergency notification systems through its new Crisis Notification Systems Grants Program.
5/17/2007
Howard Community College in Maryland was looking for a way to transform its website into a more user-centric information vehicle that was also designed with security in mind. The college announced this week that it has done that with SiteExecutive from Systems Alliance.
5/17/2007
Microsoft recently announced the launch of Math 3.0, a math and science educational tool for students in grade levels 6-12, as well as entry-level college students. The software is designed for use at home, to assist students with math and science concepts and homework, or for visual examples in the classroom.
5/16/2007
Pearson said this week that it plans to acquire eCollege, an online distance education provider. The deal will cost Pearson $477 million net, including the agreed $41 million sale of eCollege's Datamark division to a group of investors. The acquisition is expected to take place next quarter and has not yet been approved by shareholders.