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Lehigh University Debuts Open Virtual Classroom

9/12/2007

Lehigh University has added a virtual class to its curriculum this fall called Bioscience in the 21st century. The multidisciplinary class is designed to allow anyone interested to watch lectures and study course material or PowerPoint presentations posted on the university's website for free. Lectures are also available from iTunes U, according to Lehigh University.

[Your College Here] Wants to Be Your 'Friend'

9/6/2007

In the past five years, social networking has rocketed from a leisure activity to a "phenomenon that engages tens of millions of internet users," according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit that follows the impact of the internet in differing social environments. In a recent national survey on teenagers and social networking conducted by Pew, more than half of all online American youth ages 12 to 17— 55 percent to be precise—are heading to online social networking sites. What does this mean for higher ed? Simply this: Your incoming students are now expecting a presence of your college or university on social networking sites.

Drexel Upgrades Internet Library as Learning Lab

9/4/2007

Drexel University will collaborate with the University of Michigan and Florida State University to help transform its 10-year-old Internet Public Library (IPL) into a "virtual teaching and learning laboratory for digital reference," the university announced.

Live Help Initiative Expanded for Higher Ed

8/30/2007

Software on demand provider Velaro is ramping up its Academic Live Help Initiative by making its services available to the higher ed community as a whole. The company currently provides live help services to a number of universities.

LectureShare Takes Open Source Approach to Education

8/29/2007

LectureShare has debuted its free online course management system (CMS) at lectureshare.com, which lets instructors upload class announcements, documents, and audio and video files.

Berkeley Warns Freshman To 'Learn Before You Burn'

8/28/2007

University of California, Berkeley has mounted a publicity campaign to warn its incoming freshman class of the consequences of downloading copyrighted music. The message of the campaign is "Learn Before You Burn" and is directed at the 95 percent of incoming freshman who own computers and may have not been aware that most music is not, in fact, free.

DOC Cop Delivers Free Anti-Plagiarism Tools

8/23/2007

A new service has been launched to help instructors in both higher education and K-12 institutions detect plagiarized work submitted by students. The service, DOC Cop, is an entirely Web-based tool that provides free and automated assistance in locating "source material" (ahem) used in assignments submitted to teachers.

How Dartmouth Produces Video Podcasts

8/22/2007

With an $8,000 investment, Dartmouth's Department of Physics and Astronomy has set up the capability to provide video podcasts for courses that enable students to watch lectures they may have missed or that warrant review.

SUNY-Maritime College Partners with History Channel for Online Courses

8/22/2007

The State University of New York-Maritime College this fall will debut two new online courses developed in collaboration with The History Channel. Both courses are to be based around History Channel television series and will be offered for credit, marking the first time The History Channel has developed a course for college credit.

LOC Funds U Illinois Virtual Content Preservation Project

8/21/2007

The Library of Congress announced $2.5 million in grants for projects to establish digital format standards for preserving photos, films, music, and video games. The funding covers eight organizations involved in significant digital content projects, including UCLA's Film and Television Archive and the "Preserving Virtual Worlds" project at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Facebook Bluetooth App Maps Friendship Networks

8/21/2007

Researchers at the U.K.'s Bath University have developed a tool that uses the unique electronic IDs of Bluetooth devices, such as a mobile phone, to map the physical paths of friendship networks, the BBC reported.

U Penn To Put Special Collections Online

8/17/2007

Penn Libraries, the University of Pennsylvania Library system, is embarking on a project to digitize its special collections, including rare books and historical documents. The project will kick off this summer and culminate in a fully searchable collection of rare books online.

Columbia Southern U Launches Social Networking for Alumni

8/15/2007

Columbia Southern University has launched a new online service for its alumni. Dubbed "CSU Click," the service provides social networking functionality for the school's graduates at no charge.

Research: College Students Use Internet for Education ... Huh

8/15/2007

Whatever else your students are doing on the Internet, they are using it for educational purposes as well. According to a study released last week by Houghton Mifflin, more than half of college students use the Internet "to keep up with course work and prepare for exams."

U Oklahoma Taps Day for Content Management

8/15/2007

The University of Oklahoma will deploy Day Software's Communiqué, an enterprise Web content management suite, to help revamp the school's various portals for students, staff, and alumni.

Yahoo! To Open Illinois Office To Tap Engineering Talent

8/14/2007

Yahoo! will open an office in University of Illinois's home town of Urbana-Champaign. The office, which will pursue a cross-section of the Web giant's operations and business interests, will employ about 100 engineers, according to Ken Timmons, vice president of operations for Yahoo!

Internship Lets CS Students Pitch Proposals to VC Firm

8/14/2007

Three teams of University of Illinois computer science students are spending the summer trying to launch their own companies with the help of an internship that requires them to pitch their own software or web based services to potential investors.

College Tookit Offering Simple Tuition Loan Search Tool

8/9/2007

Online higher education information provider College Toolkit (Brooklyn, NY) has partnered with SimpleTuition (Newton, MA) to provide online research tools to help students and parents visiting collegetookit.com analyze and compare student loan options using Simple Tuition's service.

Inside Indiana U's Move to ChaCha

8/8/2007

Indiana University's alliance with search firm ChaCha, announced last week, may portend how universities, librarians, and Internet search engines will work together in the future.

Google Offers Researchers a 'Drink from the Fire Hose'

8/7/2007

Google Inc. announced it would make two new services available to the higher education research community--access to Web search and machine translations--as part of a new University Research Programs effort. The search firm made the announcement at its higher ed Faculty Summit held July 26 to 27 in Mountain View, CA.

C++ for Tots: MIT Hatches Programming for Novices

8/7/2007

Computer programming is not just for grownups anymore, thanks to developers at the MIT Media Lab. Researchers in the Lab's "Lifelong Kindergarten Group" have created a program called Scratch, a graphical programming language that is designed to be used by programming novices, including children and teens.

IU & ChaCha: Reports of Google's Demise Greatly Exaggerated

8/6/2007

Earlier we reported that Indiana University has partnered with Internet search service ChaCha, also based in Indiana, to create an alliance for developing research tools and services via the Web. Since then, we've had a chance to speak with Brad Wheeler, vice president for information technology at IU, to provide some clarification on the move, including information that contradicts other reports out there.

USC Unveils TrojanTV Entertainment Site

8/3/2007

The University of Southern California has launched TrojanTV All-Access, a multimedia website featuring a variety of Trojan Athletics content ranging from live broadcasts of games, video archives or previous games, a talk show, and other original programs for Trojan fans across the 'Net.

Multiple Universities Deploy Xythos Document Management

8/3/2007

More than a dozen colleges and universities have joined the ranks of campuses using technology from Xythos Software to collaborate with, store, share and manage their documents.

HU Leverages CRM To Smooth Interactions with Recruits, Students

8/2/2007

Virginia's Hampton University (HU) will deploy technology from higher education customer relationship management (CRM) vendor Intelliworks to streamline communications with prospective and current students.