101 BEST PRACTICES >> Connectivity

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101 BEST PRACTICES >> Connectivity

11/23/2006

59 :: INTERACTIVE KIOSK RESEARCH

Smart Technologies and the FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis (TN) are collaborating in a research project called the Memphis Intelligent Kiosk Initiative, to investigate the preferred and most efficient forms of human interaction with information kiosks. Across the campus, Smart’s Actalyst interactive overlays fasten over large flat-panel kiosk displays to offer a touch-enabled interface; a camera and speech-recognition system allow the kiosks to identify approaching users and interact with them verbally. Researchers are studying kiosk recordings to determine how visitors access information. More info here.

60 :: CONNECTING STUDENTS TO SUCCESS

ePortaro’s online portfolio system

Social networking sites such as Friendster, Tribe, Facebook, and MySpace have collectively linked millions of individuals in ever-expanding circles, based on common interests and self-describing profiles. Columbia College Chicago hopes to tap into students’ yearning for such networking, and strengthen it with the kind of content that only a college community can provide. The institution will be using ePortaro’s online portfolio system—custom integrated with the school’s Jenzabar student information and portal software—to provide ways for students to display their talents for the benefit of potential student co-collaborators and also for potential future employers. Jenzabar’s student system will handle authentication of students and verification of academic data about students, such as their majors and course enrollment. More info here.

61 :: STUDENTS CONNECT 24/7

The 6 and 7 of 24/7 are critical to many students’ success, as are the hours after 5 p.m. Cary Israel, president of the Collin County Community College District (TX), notes, “Many students have full-time jobs and are students outside ‘8 to 5’ only.” CCCCD has a Weekend College program, allowing students to take a full load of classes on the weekend, and those students, especially, need around-the-clock access to many campus resources and services via the web.

Besides accessing distance learning courses online, students can utilize such online services as admissions and registration, tutoring and writing labs, grades and transcripts, and bookstore and library resources, all optimized for student success. Israel adds, “Learners reach their intellectual peaks at various times, and they have a better chance of meeting their goals with 24/7 access. By being flexible and eliminating time and space barriers, we enable our students to participate and, ultimately, to succeed.”

62 :: SECURING THE PERIMETER

Nothing can stop connectivity cold faster than an internet security violation. At George Washington University (DC), technologists implemented a technology from Reconnex to ensure that certain internet traf- fic complies with federal privacy regulations laid out in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. The tool, dubbed iGuard, sits on the network perimeter and scans all outgoing web traffic for sensitive files or data that could violate the law. The tool searches e-mails for sensitive information such as Social Security and credit card numbers. If the device identifies something that violates campus policy, it blocks the message and notifies the sender immediately.

Amy Hennings, assistant director of information security, says iGuard has become the school’s primary defense against identity theft. Though skeptics have questioned whether the school is invading the very privacy it’s trying to protect, Hennings’ team is working to fight this perception. “We want to make sure that everyone knows we’re not interested in reading their e-mails,” she says. “We just want to make sure all of the e-mails satisfy compliance requirements.” More info here.

63 :: CYBER INFRASTRUCTURE IS BURGEONING…

…and services connected through that infrastructure will bring benefits for education and research. Krishna P.C. Madhavan, a research scientist for the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing at Purdue University (IN), reflects: “Top-notch models of central IT support for research and learning have emerged at US universities. Centralized consolidation of IT services (such as storage, network, computational power, software support, and security) is the new paradigm. Such central services allow researchers and educators to focus on an institution’s dual mission of research and education. Time and space are now referred to as ‘anytime, anywhere.’ The maturity of IT services has led to mobility, social networking, and the ability to contribute to one’s field more easily than ever.” Yet very large, growing, centrally supported systems have their challenges, as Steve Acker, director of special projects at The Ohio State University points out: “About two years ago, OSU moved from a campus version of WebCT to an enterprise version of Desire2Learn. Although the central server infrastructure, access to network bandwidth, and security have supported a rapid increase in use of the eLearning system, size comes with its own set of costs. For example, the migration process took us approximately 18 months.” More info here.

64 :: GRAPHICAL AUTHENTICATION

There is an alternative to old-fashioned, username-and-password security. The Engineering department at California State University-Chico has deployed AuthGard, a system from Authernative that provides knowledge-based (“what the user knows”) strong authentication for web logins. The key authentication factor is graphicsbased, offering higher levels of security while making the user’s experience easier and more engaging. Instead of a textbased password, users select a “passline”—a series of positions plotted on a grid on which each position is represented by a number that the system changes with every login. The passline forms a shape that’s both easy for the user to remember and extremely difficult to hack. Each time the user logs in, the numbers representing the memorized shape have changed, and the system can add yet another level of security by asking only for specific parts of the passline to be transmitted as a login (a different request each time).

65 :: WHAT IS PRIVACY IN A CONNECTED WORLD?

A principal analyst for identity and privacy strategies at the Burton Group, Bob Blakley gave a talk this past September at Digital ID World in Santa Clara, CA, titled, “What is Privacy, Really?” In a separate interview, CT logged Blakley’s comments relative to privacy and technology: “Conventionally, people think of privacy in terms of secrecy. They think that privacy means the obligation to protect information that we have observed, maybe in the course of our job, about other people. There’s another part of privacy that we don’t speak of so often—which is equally important, or perhaps more important— and that is our obligation not to pry into other people’s affairs; to avert our eyes or close our ears if we come across something that is obviously private. And our obligation as a society is to censure people who don’t fulfill that obligation, because that kind of behavior—voyeurism and gossip—is destructive to civil society. There may be a way to construct a right to privacy on these grounds, if it continues to be the case that lots of private information is exposed.” More info here.

66 :: GOOGLE GHOSTS

Staff at the Office of News and Information at the University of Washington in Seattle were surprised when they received a barrage of responses to older press releases they had issued as far back as 1997. It seems that the Google spider crawled not just their main news page, but also some of the subsidiary pages, without sensing the correct creation date of each news story; older releases were being picked up by internet searchers as freshly indexed stories via Google News. Bob Roseth, UW’s director of news and information, advises, “Recognize that some aggregators are probably going to get it wrong at some point. Be vigilant, identify the problems quickly, and move swiftly to minimize them.” More info here.

67 :: CONNECTING TO CAMPUS INFO

This past January, to provide students with a steady stream of vital information, St. John’s University (NY) installed five 46-inch LCD displays from NEC in the Queens campus’ student center, cafeteria, residential students’ dining hall, library, and on the school’s Staten Island campus. The digital signage now notifies students of emergencies or schedule changes; promotes special campus and community events and broadcasts them via live video feed; displays student information, services, location maps, registration dates, and other campus information; promotes athletic events and schedules; and more. St. John’s manages all digital signage content internally; proposed messaging is submitted to a team of campus web desigers, then reworked to give everything a consistently branded look and feel. Content is refreshed daily to ensure it continually attracts students’ attention.