News 01-31-2003

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Research Lab Tech Would Track Global Supply Chain

The Auto-ID Center, located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it would open its first research lab in Asia. The lab will be located on the campus of Keio University, and led by Jun Murai, professor at Keio University who is credited for the adoption of the Internet in Japan. Founded in 1999, the Auto-ID Center is designing critical elements and creating global standards for an international bar coding scheme. When fully deployed, the system could automatically identify any single product in a global supply chain from manufacturing to point of sale and provide companies for the first time the ability to actually "see" their supply chain in real time—anytime—anywhere in the world.

For more information visit: www.autoidcenter.org

Sponsor: Nish Sonwalkar of MIT Evaluates Online Learning
www.syllabus.com/radio/index.asp

Syllabus Radio features interviews with established leaders, creative thinkers and education technology experts in higher education. Log on to www.syllabus.com/radio/index.asp and hear Judith Boettcher and Nishikant Sonwalkar discuss multidimensional evaluation tools that work well for online learning and assessing pedagogical effectiveness. Log on and listen to this interview and others covering the hottest technology issues on campus.

Deals, Awards, Contracts in Higher Ed

Canada’s College of New Caledonia upgraded its campus network with new switching and network management systems that will increase bandwidth on campus desktops from 10 to 100 megabytes. This will also accommodate software such as Auto CAD and ArcInfo that is required for advanced degree programs in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and engineering design. The college is using network management software from Avaya, as well as its P580 MultiService Switch as the campus backbone.

The Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) has formed an alliance with SCT to offer a variety of the company’s administrative, e-learning and course management packages at special prices to its 150 member institutions. Gerry Brown, president of ACCC said the deal "illustrates the value of strategic alliances with the college system as a whole." He added the arrangement with SCT "allows our members to more easily standardize on a common technology."

New Products, Technology, Services for Higher Ed

E-TEXTBOOKS—Atomic Dog Publishing, which develops electronic college textbooks, released version 3.0 of its online learning software, MyBackpack. The latest version is targeted at assisting instructors with features that allow them to edit, delete, and renew their courses; annotate and create custom content to be inserted directly into their textbooks; and track student performance in real-time. New features would also enable students to customize their textbook learning environment. Enhanced navigation features include an intuitive Flash-based toolbar which allows searches by figure, word, or phrase and a button to access study guides from any point in the text.

RESEARCH TOOLS—Thomson ISI ResearchSoft, a producer of bibliographic management software, unveiled WriteNote, a Web-based research and writing tool for the undergraduate market. WriteNote, sold as an annual, site-wide subscription to institutions, is designed to help students conduct their research and write papers. The system provides students access to library resources (e.g., Gale, WilsonWeb) where they search for content, and capture references into their folders. Students can also annotate and save Web pages. WriteNote also offers the same Cite While You Write feature that creates a paper with properly formatted citations as the desktop products-EndNote, ProCite, and Reference Manager.

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