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Mobility
11/29/2005
'I love tools. I love blogs, Wikis, and instant messaging,
because they allow people to do what they want to do without technology being the most important thing going on. My version of 'background' is that technology d'esn't slow you down, it lets you do what you want," says Lois Brooks, director of Academic Computing at Stanford University (CA). "So what do we need to do to make this happen? First of all, we need really smart staff. The challenge for us, as the people who need to make this all happen, is that we need to be one step ahead of the faculty and students if possible, to understand the technology and how to support it and make it work. That's one of the keys to hitting that sweet spot. The other key is to have a lot of these wonderful little technologies—blogs, IMs, and so on—available for people, so that they can mix and match as they choose and create a custom classroom and teaching environment out of tools that we know how to support and use. So, we start the process of allowing people to enter the technology that exists in ways that are unique to them." Read the article
One-to-one computing installation
Winona State University (MN) wanted to keep enrollment rates up, maintain the affordability of tuition, combine advanced curricula with the latest technology, and help students become comfortable with technology to be used in their future careers. The university decided to standardize on a single provider, Gateway, and create a Tablet PC program as an improvement over their previous one-to-one computing program. The objectives of the program were to serve the students better, and take back classroom space by eliminating a majority of the computer labs on campus. The university's vision, once realized, gave students access to the Internet, and the ability to communicate with faculty and other students anywhere on campus. School officials believe that standardizing allowed the faculty to focus more on teaching, instead of having to solve various IT issues, according to Gateway spokespeople.
Emergent technologies for students—a hot topic
The Syllabus2005 Executive Summit Survey reveals what's on the minds of top-level decision makers in higher ed, as reported in the August issue of CT. Linking IT to mission-critical objectives; enabling anytime, anywhere learning; securing institutional data; and supporting students as customers were the highest-rated strategic themes. Emergent educational technologies, digital content, and emergent technologies for students (file sharing, P2P, and podcasting) were the most popular topics for discussion. From the first expert interview conducted in the study phase to the final exchanges at the end of the Executive Summit meeting, commentary and diverse views from participants were abundant. A snippet on security issues from Mark Bruhn, chief IT Security and Policy officer and acting associate VP of Telecommunications for Indiana University: "It used to be a very unpopular position to take on university campuses, but more and more IT people are taking control—if not of the devices, than of the network connections to and from those devices." More details on this survey
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