News 05-16-2001
Christopher Dede to Address Syllabus2001
Christopher Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at Harvard's
Graduate School of Education, will present a keynote address at the Syllabus2001
conference Tuesday, July 24 at 8:30AM in the Santa Clara Convention Center in
Santa Clara, California. Titled, "Anytime, AnyWear: A Forecast of Emerging Media
for Distributed Learning," Dede's talk will focus on the impact of emerging
technologies for learning on higher education. Wearable wireless devices and
other emerging interactive media are giving both classroom and distance education
instructors a growing array of information technologies from which to choose.
The repertoire of pedagogical options has expanded to include tele-mentoring,
shared virtual environments, collaborative learning, and small-group inquiry
-as well as the potential to transform both formal teaching and just-in-time
situated learning. Dede, an expert in emerging technologies for Internet virtual
environments, predicts that the power of these instructional approaches is such
that, within a couple of decades, refusal to use interactive media in teaching
will be considered professional malpractice. Dede will describe key instructional
design issues for distributed learning environments that combine the best aspects
of conventional face-to-face instruction and distance education.
A respected expert in emerging technologies for Internet virtual environments,
Christopher Dede's research spans technology forecasting and assessment, emerging
technologies for learning, and leadership in educational innovation. Dede currently
has grants from the National Science Foundation to develop educational environments
based on cutting-edge immersive virtual reality technology and to develop shared
virtual environments with digitized museum artifacts.
For complete conference information and an online registration form, go to
http://www.syllabus.com/summer2001/.
Report from Lumina Foundation Examines Technology Spending
A report from the Lumina Foundation for Education suggests that studies showing
higher education technology spending between $2.7 and $4.4 billion per year
may not fully capture the total cost of technology at colleges and universities.
Based on a survey of state finance officers and experts and institutional representatives
on technology financing, "Funding the 'Infostructure:' A Guide to Financing
Technology Infrastructure in Higher Education" concludes that, because most
colleges and universities lack appropriate plans and policies to finance technology,
the amount of money spent on technology in higher education is unknown. Many
colleges and universities fund technology as an add-on, not as an ongoing part
of institutional planning. Written by Jane Wellman and Ronald Phipps, senior
associates at The Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington, D.C.,
the report suggests policies to help colleges and universities finance technology,
provides a common language to describe the elements of the technology infrastructure,
and presents innovative funding options to help institutions keep pace with
rapidly changing technology.
For a complete copy of the report, visit the Lumina Foundation's Web site at
http://www.luminafoundation.org/Publications/new_agenda.htm.
Select the link for "Funding the 'Infostructure:' A Guide to Financing Technology
Infrastructure in Higher Education."
CREN's Next Tech Talk with the Experts
Thursday, May 17 AT 4 PM
Are you starting to hear the call for Office XP? Want to know when it will
be available? What the feature set is? Who is moving to this new version of
Microsoft Office--and why? Listen to CREN's free Tech Talk on Thursday, May
17 at 4 PM EDT and hear Technology Anchor Bob Mahoney from MIT and Co-Host Judith
Boettcher of CREN interview two experts from a school that is on the fast track
to deploy Office XP: Oregon State University College of Business.
Send your questions to Greg Scott and Tony Saxman during the live Web cast
or ahead of time using the address: expert@cren.net.
More information is available at http://www.cren.net/know/techtalk/events/xp.html.
Source Code to Virtual U Publicly Available
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has announced that the source code to Virtual
U, the university management simulator, is available to the public on the Virtual
U Web site at www.virtual-u.org. Virtual U, a simulation of the daily management
of a university system, introduces managers and university administrators to
the complexities of university management and helps them to assess their own
approaches to the job. Said Jesse Ausubel, program director for Virtual U, "By
opening the source code to our project we hope to share our collective knowledge
and inspire new types of training and public policy tools." The first pass of
the public source version is available at http://www.virtual-u.org/publicsource.html.
Academics and programmers can learn from the project's unique modeling engine.
Virtual U will be published as public source under a license that provides free
use of the source code for any purpose other than commercial projects without
the Foundation's and developer's consent. Modifications to the code must be
provided to the project's community.
Purdue Researcher May Increase Transmission Speed of Internet
Engineers at Purdue University may have discovered a way to make the Internet
faster and more powerful: a device commonly used to untangle signals sent over
fiber optic lines. Said Andrew Weiner, a professor of electrical and computer
engineering, "This is the first time that anybody has realized this technology
could be modified for a different function." The device can turn a single pulse
of laser light into a rapid-fire burst of 21 pulses, each separated by only
two trillionths of a second--at least 10 times faster than the transmission
speed of each channel in state-of-the-art commercial optical communication systems.
The implications of increasing the speed and capacity of optical fibers are
tremendous, considering that optical fibers are replacing wires for transmitting
Internet data over high-speed lines. Weiner and research engineer Daniel Leaird
have demonstrated that the untangling device could dramatically increase the
transmission speed and the amount of data that can be sent over a single channel.
For more information, contact Andrew Weiner,
amw@ecn.purdue.edu.
E-Business Training Available through eCollege
ActiveEducation has joined eCollege's Developers Program, which enables content
providers to put educational or training materials in the eCollege System to
license to other institutions. The deal makes ActiveEducation's e-business technology
courses available to institutions through the eCollege platform. ActiveEducation's
e-business technology content could be valuable to institutions and corporations
trying to meet the demands of their learners by having more courses available
in the eCollege System that will aid in driving student enrollments. The first
of ActiveEducation's e-business technologies eLearning courses to be available
through the eCollege platform include three XML courses leading to certification,
Java, HTML, and ASP+. Institutions interested in licensing the ActiveEducation
content should e-mail developersprogram@ecollege.com.
University Of Illinois Uses AppWorx Job Scheduler
The AppWorx scheduler will play a role in the long-term plans at the University
of Illinois to move to a pure distributed environment. Until now, application
batch processing at the University of Illinois meant manually passing files
back and forth from the mainframe to other platforms. Now, using one scheduling
product, the school can integrate all of its systems.
For more information, visit http://www1.internetwire.com/iwire/iwpr?id=26934&cat=ed