News 03-18-2003
Questionmark: Assessment Software for Educators
Click here for Dr. Will Thalheimer's new white paper "The Learning Benefits
of Questions." Questionmark enables educators to write, administer, and report
on assessments via PCs, LANs, the Internet, and intranets. http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=701
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=701
Field Narrows in Collegiate Programming Competition
Sun Microsystems Inc. announced the 50 Java and C++ programmers remaining in
its 2003 Collegiate Challenge. The tournament is being hosted by TopCoder Inc.,
which organizes programming competitions for its members and will award a total
prize purse of $100,000 to the highest-rated college-level Java and C++ computer
programmers in the world. The programmers are ranked based upon their performance
during weekly online competitions. The top ranked members are then invited to
participate in four online elimination rounds of regional competition. The winner
of each region will be named Regional Champion on March 24, and automatically
advance to the final field of 16 competitors. The remaining 16 will compete
in the tournament's semifinal and championship rounds, which will be held April
4 and 5, 2003 at the University Park Hotel in Cambridge, Mass. There, the tournament
champion will win $50,000. The 50 programmers that participated in the Regional
Championships represent 34 schools from eight countries around the world. CalTech
had the strongest representation with six programmers, followed by MIT, Duke,
Stanford, and Georgia Tech, each with three programmers.
Faculty Best Practices: What are Colleagues Doing?
Discuss key issues and hot topics with the experts and your colleagues in the
Syllabus Forums at www.syllabus.com/forum.
David Brown of Wake Forest University leads a forum on faculty best practices
and how to use technology to improve teaching and learning. How are you using
asynchronous discussions? What tips do you have for others? Weigh in with your
thoughts and questions and see what solutions your colleagues might have.
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=529
VCU Student Wins Circuit Board Design Competition
Jonathan Andrews, a student at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of
Engineering, won a $2,000 scholarship from HP and Mentor Graphics Corp. as the
winner of a competition on printed circuit board design. Andrews was picked
as the winner in the University and Training Institutes category for his data
acquisition system design prototype entry. "Although the competition was really
an afterthought as I worked on this project, I learned a lot and was constantly
amazed, as I worked more with the tools, how I could simplify tasks I had previously
struggled with," said Andrews.
Meetings: Carnegie Mellon Hosts Wireless Security Workshop
The Sustainable Computing Consortium (SCC) of Carnegie Mellon University is
hosting a workshop to bring together thought leaders from academia, industry,
and government to focus on the "hard problems" of interoperability, dependability,
and security in mobile, wireless, grid, and other always-on environments. The
workshop will be held March 31 - April 1 at the Wyndham Buttes Resort in Tempe,
Ariz. "Mobile and wireless Internet access—with more than 100 million users
already—is fundamentally changing the ways in which people and organizations
both interact and transact," said Dr. William Guttman, director of the SCC.
"As consumers and enterprises continue to embrace these technologies, issues
of trust and interoperability become increasingly critical. This workshop will
serve as a forum for leading experts to address emerging trends, challenges,
and future opportunities."
Meetings: Santa Clara U. Confab to Explore IT and Globalization
The Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Santa Clara University will
host a conference April 24 on the issues surrounding information technology
and globalization. "Networked World: Information Technology and Globalization,"
will especially address the gap between the information "haves" and "have-nots."
"The information age did not evaporate with the bursting of the bubble," said
James Koch, executive director, Center for Science, Technology, and Society
at SCU. "It's only begun to transform the social fabric of cities and regions
around the world, and now is a perfect time to survey the landscape of our networked
world." Among the speakers are: Walter Bender, Executive Director of MIT Media
Lab; Allen Hammond, Program Coordinator for Law and Public Policy, Santa Clara
University School of Law; and Michel Laguerre, UC Berkeley Center for Globalization
and Information Technology.
For more information visit: http://sts.scu.edu/globalization
New Deals, Awards, Contracts in Higher Education
FIBER NETWORKS—The Morehouse School of Medicine signed an agreement
with AGL Networks to provide dark fiber connectivity from its main campus to
a carrier access point that will allow for Internet access and high-speed data
swaps with Emory, Georgia Tech, and Georgia State Universities. Morehouse School
of Medicine will also have access to alternate telecom services providers.
FAST ETHERNET—Ohio State University said it will deploy a Nortel
Networks optical Ethernet to create a high-speed, converged campus network for
faster and more convenient delivery of distance learning, course "content-on-demand"
and other services to university students and educators. Expected to roll out
in April 2003, the system will allow Ohio State to deliver voice, data, and
video on one streamlined campus network. It will also provide Ohio State with
the bandwidth and enhanced network performance required to enable learning applications
that were previously considered too expensive or too difficult to implement
over legacy networks.