Terry Calhoun, IT Trends Commentator
Society for College and University Planning (SCUP)
University of Michigan

They're Not Like Us: Shouldn't We Do Something About That?

A year ago this week, professor David Starrett of Southeast Missouri State University, and director of that institution's Center for Scholarship in Teaching and Learning wrote here as a guest commentator, HIG, R U n2 CP?: The Technology is the Easy Part, about the level of acceptance students have for information technology tools and resources and the difficulty we have in understanding even what their expectations of us are, much less meeting those expectations. In the past year, I've also written in The Feral User about the raw, relatively unrestrained online behavior of many young people, who've grown up in cyberspace without any acculturation influence from teachers or parents.

Since then, I've seen article after article and news item after news item that makes me think about just how different from us these new undergraduate students are. Is it really possible to understand their expectations? I think we can do it with surveys and by measuring responses to things, but I am more and more convinced that as a Baby Boomer, I am beyond ever really understanding them. They're really different, they inhabit a different universe. But one news story last week was different - a young student did the right thing. Was this a sign of positive change, or anomalous behavior by a unique individual?
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COW to Improve Phone Reception at Stanford

A second mobile cell-on-wheels (COW) station is being placed on the Stanford campus. Meanwhile, the paper's editorial board called for "a middle ground between unobtrusive cell-on-wheels trailers and tall ugly towers" to solve what it says are annoying problems with mobile service coverage.
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Is Torvalds Really The Father of Linux?

A controversial report suggests that Linus Torvalds owes more to an earlier operating system, Minix, than is admitted. The report's conclusions are hotly disputed by both Torvalds and the author of the earlier system.
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Wolverine Access Too Accessible

A student recently notified the University of Michigan that he had been able to view way too much of his own personal information on the Web and a check revealed that a new interface for Wolverine Access may have had an open loophole since February. “It’s just crazy because it wasn’t hard to get to at all. It took about five clicks and required no secret code at all,” the student said. (The loophole required using the Safari browser.)
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PeopleSoft Continues Focus of Budget Struggle at Cal Poly

After it circulated for two weeks, one-fifth of Cal Poly's faculty have signed a petition asking the school not to borrow $15M to pay for deploying PeopleSoft's student administration software module.
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GIT's Technology Square Links Old Campus to New Campus

The high-tech, media-union-type building is intended to revitalize midtown Atlanta. The area in question is separated from the Georgia Institute of Technology main campus by a 14-lane freeway, which is now virtually bridged by high-speed optical connections.
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Update on Stanford Oracle Financial System Implementation

Much improved data quality and access, plus a slightly better user experience are pluses on the Stanford campus, but system instability and an increase in the amount of time it takes staff to do their related jobs are minuses. This is an excellent example of a report to the community on system implementation.
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WIISARD at UCSD and Cal-(IT)2

Using the pre-existing UCSD Cyber Shuttle as a mobile command center, civic and university officials recently conducted a WIISARD (Wireless Internet Information System for Medical Response in Disasters) test run using a hypothetical "dirty bomb" explosion situation. WIISARD speedily deploys a sophisticated and secure wireless net as a communications aid to major disaster response.
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Stanford Students Track Shuttle Buses With Online Map Using GPS

The tracking takes place on a Web site. Not everyone thinks it's a useful tool, but many do. And it's not just for passengers, the wireless reporting includes vehicle performance, passenger counts, fuel usage, and more.
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NETI@home - Georgia Institute of Technology Uses Distributed Data Collection

An open source software package "collects network performance statistics such as average response time, average round trip time, connection times, download times, and number of packets and bytes sent and received" - not from servers, but from volunteer users' computers, all over the world. The data is used to analyze overall Internet performance.
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Facebooks - What Are They Really All About?

For one thing, they are a rapidly growing part of the evolution of the use of information technology for social purposes, driven by student-age users at a pace old fogies can't even comprehend.
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New Workbook Gives Students A Jumpstart On College Applications

For kids and parents worrying about the college application process, a new easy-to-use workbook gives students an early start and takes them step-by-step to success. Published by The NETWORK Inc., "Check Yourself into College" is neither voluminous nor verbose, begins as early as ninth grade, offers comprehensive and convenient tools, and brings focus and control to the college application process.
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Microsoft, U. Virginia, Thomson Collaborate to Design New Instructional Tools

The University of Virginia, Thomson Learning, and Microsoft Corp. announce a collaboration to develop and deliver digital course material and tools that will help instructors better serve their students and help those students learn and retain more. The pilot project, involving the university's College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, will bring rich digital content and learning applications to Tablet PCs.

U. of Kentucky to Improve Student Services with SAP

The University of Kentucky will leverage SAP(R) Campus Management, the student administration system, and SAP Grants Management, coupled with the SAP NetWeaver integration and application platform to reduce the cost of operations and enable innovation across 15 UK colleges over three years.

UT-San Antonio Awards First HACU Gateway Award

UTSA worked with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) and Gateway to award a fully loaded Gateway M275E laptop to student Michael McNeil. A similar award will be given twice a year to exceptionally achieving UTSA students who were initially admitted with less than complete admission requirements.
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McGraw-Hill Offers 900 eTextbooks at Discount Prices

McGraw-Hill Higher Education is addressing affordability issues that face many college students and professors. They are offering 900 e-textbooks at significantly reduced prices, providing students and professors with an affordable alternative to traditional print texts. In addition to its e-textbooks that span all disciplines, McGraw-Hill is also offering over 9,000 case studies and more than 5,000 readings and articles in a digital format.
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