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U Pennsylvania Drafts Policy to Minimize Use of SSNs

6/7/2007

The University of Pennsylvania has drafted a policy designed to minimize the use of Social Security numbers at the school after deciding the numbers constitute "sensitive data that can be abused by identity thieves to commit fraud."

DyKnow 5 Enhances Interface, Adds Blackboard Integration

6/6/2007

Education technology developer DyKnow has released DyKnow Vision and Monitor 5.0. Both tools, designed for classroom environments, add enhancements in the areas of compatibility, user interface, and various productivity features.

Apple Upgrades MacBook Pro Notebooks

6/5/2007

Apple has released three upgraded models in its MacBook Pro line of notebook computers. The new models get processor speed boosts across the entire base line. The three new models are avalable with either 15- or 17-inch screens and now come stock with 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 4 GB.

Edu Inventor Points Computer Pen at College Students

6/5/2007

Educational tool developer and inventor Jim Marggraff last week unveiled a new pen computer that is literally that--a pen with a computer, microphone, and camera stuffed inside it.

National Taiwan U Breaks CD Storage Capacity Barrier

6/5/2007

Researchers at National Taiwan University have made a breakthrough in optical storage technology, a process that can boost the capacity of a single compact disc to 150 gigabytes to 200 gigabytes, university spokespeople said.

U Illinois Grant To Tame Unstructured Data for Research

6/5/2007

The Andrew Mellon Foundation last week awarded $1.2 million grant to the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to help find ways to solve the so-called "80 percent problem."

CMU Goes Inside for New Computer Science Leader

6/5/2007

Carnegie Mellon University named a researcher from its own ranks as the new head of its computer science department.

Purdue Names Permanent Chief Information Officer

6/5/2007

After a national search, Purdue University last week named long-time management Boilermaker Gerry McCartney as its vice president for information technology and chief information officer.

UCLA Disputes Position on Congressional Piracy List

6/4/2007

Administrators from the University of California at Los Angeles are disputing the validity of data used by two congressional committees to identify universities that allowed the most illegal downloading of movie and music content on their campuses.

CMU Researcher Uses eCommerce Tool To Digitize Books

6/4/2007

A researcher at Carnegie Mellon University has found a way to turn the process by which people register at commercial websites into a method for digitizing books, the Associated Press reported.

UC Profs See Car Traffic as Basis of a Mobile Internet

6/4/2007

Computer scientists at UCLA are working on a project to use moving cars as nodes in a network to create literally a mobile mobile network.

D2L Releases Learning Environment 8.2

5/31/2007

Education software developer Desire2Learn is releasing version 8.2 of its flagship Desire2Learn Learning Environment starting June 1. The new version expands and optimizes LE's capabilities and introduces new features to enhance the user experience.

Georgia Tech Workshop To Explore Cell/B.E.

5/31/2007

Georgia Tech's College of Computing will host a workshop on the Cell Broadband Engine. The workshop will be held June 18 and 19 and will focus on a wide range of topics, from gaming and home entertainment to high-performance scientific and technical computing.

Apple Rolls Out iTunes U

5/30/2007

Apple has launched a new iTunes feature called iTunes U, a new department in the iTunes Store that provides free education resources from American colleges and universities. The idea is to share resources from these campuses, such as lectures and research, free of charge.

Sakai Launches SCLE 2.4

5/30/2007

The Sakai Foundation recently released version 2.4 of its Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment (SCLE), an update six months in the making. SCLE is an open-source course management system targeted toward schools, colleges, and universities.

German University and SpeechCycle Team Up for Speech Recognition

5/30/2007

Ulm University in Germany and SpeechCycle have partnered to develop complex speech applications for telephony-based voice recognition technology. The research will focus on human to computer communication, according to SpeechCycle.

CTI Awarded $68K in HP Grant

5/30/2007

The Hiram G. Andrews Center's Commonwealth Technical Institute (CTI), in Johnstown, PA, has been awarded $68,000 from the Hewlett Packard Technology for Teaching grant program that includes a teacher's stipend of $19,000 and $48,000 worth of equipment from Hewlett Packard.

Google Bans Ads from Essay-Writing Services

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.

Carnegie Mellon, WPI Grants To Explore 'Intelligent Tutoring'

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.

Drexel Rolls Out Wireless Access Throughout Philly Area

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.

Google Enlists Student Tech in Web Mapping Wars

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.

Medill To Offer J-School Scholarships to Comp-Sci Grads

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.

Distance Educator Tells Court It Has No Fixed Address

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.

Eureka: CMU Prof Solves Classic Computing Conundrum

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.

Academics Joining Ranks Declaring 'E-Mail Bankruptcy'

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.