Two universities are moving forward in their work with Sakai. The University of Hawaii System has adopted Sakai as its official learning and collaboration service, effective this fall, and Columbia University has recently upgraded to a new version of the open source learning management system as part of a pilot program in several schools and departments. At the beginning of August, the New York institution upgraded its Sakai pilot from version 2.4 to 2.5.
Microsoft has released an improved security filter for its Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server that is designed to help thwart SQL injection attacks. The free application, called UrlScan 3.0 (Release-to-Web version), is an add-on tool to IIS that provides real-time verification of HTTP server requests, potentially blocking malicious code.
As a long-time expert in data warehousing and business intelligence (BI), David Wells has seen the technologies gradually come into their own in higher education. Now a consultant--Wells was formerly director of education for The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), a sister institution of Campus Technology--he continues to advise colleges and universities on data warehousing and BI issues.
San Francisco-based Coverity recently announced the release of Coverity Software Readiness Manager (SRM) for Java, a tool to help assess code readiness. This tool is mainly geared toward managers, providing dashboard-type reporting for determining software availability and maintainability before release.
Over the last six years, Stewart Mader has staked his career on the power of wikis. Mader first worked on wiki adoption initiatives in the IT department at Brown University, becoming fascinated by their power and potential. In this first half of a two-part interview, Mader talks about powerful ways to use wikis in education, content ownership issues, and how wikis tend to be used--and why.
Trent Batson takes a look at the National Science Foundation's Report of the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning, "Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge."
Vorex has released an update to its Vorex Online Survey, a Web-based data collection tool designed to allow schools to collect information and gather feedback from education stakeholders.
The Sakai Foundation has released the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment 2.5.2, the first maintenance update to the open-source learning management system since the 2.5 release in March. The new version includes performance enhancements, as well as a number of bug fixes and other enhancements.
Georgia Virtual Technical College has selected the Angel Learning Management Suite (LMS) as the platform for its portal to deliver Web-based instruction to Georgia's 33 technical colleges and one Board of Regents college.
Colorado State University has selected Campus Management Corp. to provide the infrastructure for its new online campus, known as CSU-Global Campus. The technology the Ft. Collins campus will use includes CampusVue, a student information system, and CampusPortal, an integrated, configurable Web site software.