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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
- IT Trends :: Thursday, August 28, 2008
:::::: CAMPUS WIFI
:: Saint Joseph Builds Out Wireless Network in Multi-year Upgrade
:::::: IT NEWS
:: California Community Colleges Partner with Waterfall Mobile on Statewide Emergency Notification Coverage
:: King's College and ASU Add e2Campus for Improved Emergency Notifications
:: Vista Ramp Up Is Happening Now, Study Says
:: Talisma Launches New Version of CRM with Built-in Application Management
:: Ferrum College Enrolls Juniper Networks To Extend 10 Gigabit Ethernet
:: California Community Colleges Adopt SunGard Banner Software
:: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore - C-Level View :: August 27, 2008
:::::: EXECUTIVE VIEW
: Let the Games Begin! Google vs. Microsoft
:::::: WORTH NOTING
: California Community Colleges Adopt SunGard Banner Software
: McGill U Library Scanning Rare Books with Kirtas
: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore
: Report: Green Efforts Improving on Campuses
: Oracle Releases Student Administration Integration Pack - SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, August 27, 2008
:::::: COLLABORATION
: Bringing Composers into Classrooms Through Skype
:::::: NEWS and PRODUCT UPDATES
: Columbia U Going Live on iTunes U
: Tiffin U's New Online College to Use Pearson's eCollege for Course Management
: Luidia Releases eBeam Interact 2.1 for Interactive Whiteboards
: McGill U Library Scanning Rare Books with Kirtas
: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore - SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, August 27, 2008
:::::: COLLABORATION
: Bringing Composers into Classrooms Through Skype
:::::: NEWS and PRODUCT UPDATES
: Columbia U Going Live on iTunes U
: Tiffin U's New Online College to Use Pearson's eCollege for Course Management
: Luidia Releases eBeam Interact 2.1 for Interactive Whiteboards
: McGill U Library Scanning Rare Books with Kirtas
: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore - News Update :: Tuesday, August 26, 2008
:::::: NEWS
: Report: Green Efforts Improving on Campuses
: Polytechnic Institute of NYU Deploys Array Networks Equipment for Access Control
: Oracle Releases Student Administration Integration Pack
: Red Hat Hacked, Company Issues Security Advisory
: Sun Open Sources Mobile Toolkit LWUIT
: Vulnerability Management Needed for Security, Study Says
: Microsoft Details SharePoint-SQL 2008 Integration
: Higher Ed Growing into BI, Data Warehousing
: LectureShare Updates Free Course Management System - Campus Security :: August 22, 2008
:::::: CASE STUDY
: Corralling Identity Management
:::::: CAMPUS SECURITY NEWS
: Vulnerability Management Needed for Security, Study Says
: Wayne State Deploys Q1 Labs QRadar to Manage and Secure Network
: KU Medical Center Installs Real-time Beacon System
: Virginia Tech Tries 'Compliance Sheriff' To Improve Web Site Accessibility
: Microsoft, BearingPoint Team Up To Provide Risk-Based Compliance Solution
: Collaboration Key to Security, Microsoft Says
: IBM Unveils New Software Designed To Streamline eDiscovery
: Security Woes Up, as PHP and OSS Make the List
