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

Note to Self: Find Ways to Share What You Learn from Unintended Consequences

When you bring the students something that's state of the art, you also have to think about (a) what's being left behind, (b) how what you bring them is going to change their expectations and behavior, and (c) what's going to happen when they can't use what you created for them.

Wolverine Access is the name University of Michigan students know for the interface where they go to register for classes, check their schedule, drop and add, and so forth. It's a slick system, and replaces a series of systems that go back (for old-timers) to when students waited - in all sorts of weather - to get inside Waterman Gym, in lines that sometimes stretched across the Diag onto State Street, and down past Angel Hall all the way to the Michigan Union.

Wolverine Access is a better system. But problems with it a week ago, on and before the first day of classes, impacted the student body in ways that seem not to have been anticipated. You can read about them here. I hope that the problems and possible solutions are being shared widely.

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Laramie County CC Offers Off-campus Access w/ Single Sign-on

Using EZproxy, students, faculty, and staff can access secure universityresources from wherever they are, rather than just from campus. )...
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"Webster" down--Causing problems at U. Northern Colorado

Webster is UNC's online class registration system. Upgraded last fall,it could not be tested ahead of time for its ability to handle large numbers of users and has been failing under heavy use early in the current semester...
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Ohio State and IBM Teaming Up for Cheap Student Computers

Not just Ohio State, but a statewide consortium of 38 schools have joined what IBM says is it's biggest deal with colleges ever, resulting in 35 percent discounts for students instead of the ordinary 10 percent available many other places....
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Idaho State Investing in Web Services for Alums

The new service is available even to those with only 24 credit hours at the school, and for "guests." Among its features is privacy protection via a "blind messaging" system....
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Schools Seeking Out Napster-like Models for Student Downloads

The Rhode Island Institute of Technology and University of Rochester areamong those looking to find ways to facilitate legal student music downloads....
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Balancing Family and Work with eGraduate School

More than 1.6M students in the US took online classes last year, and mature students are a fast-growing percentage of those....
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Streaming Video -- a Hot Item in K-12

Taking virtual field trips is bringing up a cohort of students who are going to expect more and better in college....
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Issues with Indiana University PeopleSoft Implementation

Nothing's perfect, while most think the implementation is going very well, there are still issues like . . . transferring student loans over to a new academic year!...
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New Sam Houston U. Web Site a Big Hit

The discussion over what to put where, and who decides, seems to have been pretty typical...
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Universities Rushing at Online Class Dollars

The report is a single case study, so its results are open to interpretation, but it shows at least the existence of perceptions that institutions are grabbing at dollars without investing appropriate resources into curriculum and technology....
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What Are the Campus Implications of Skype?

The folks who created KaAaA have come up with Skype, are after the phone companies. "Anyone with access to large numbers of desktops . . . could in theory become a phone company."...
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Accessibility-Checking Bookmarklet

A large collection of bookmarklets to assist Web developers to ensure more accessible sites. Many are useful as design tools. ...
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Dictionary of Learning Technology Terms

A reference provided by the Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards to help people find out about terms used in the field of learning technology standards. This resource d'es not claim to hold the ‘official’ usage of terms, but a way for practitioners to see how others in the education IT are using a term...
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AskERIC -- the Educator's Reference Desk

The D'E has killed much of ERIC, including AskERIC, but much of it is now available in another spot, including the excellent section on educational technology...
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African Virtual U. Extends Deal with Satellite Provider

African Virtual University (AVU) has extended its contract with Globecomm Systems Inc., a provider of end-to-end satellite communications systems, with a deal worth $1.5 million plus options. The new multi-year contract expands the number of sites in the AVU network and includes options for future expansion. Globecomm has been providing AVU with its SkyBorne content delivery platform, which uses Internet Protocol multicast technology to deliver video over IP networks.
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Stanford Deploys Campuswide Management Software

Stanford University is using a service management platform from Paetec Inc. to help manage its campus computing infrastructure. The company’s Pinnacle Communications Management software offers, manages, and bills over 40 IT services, including facilities space, equipment, course fees, software sales, campus card badging, circuits, use of the data center and the Stanford University Network, SUNet DSL, and all traditional telecommunications services.

"Stanford was looking for an industrial-strength application that would allow us to manage and bill for all of our different technology services in the most efficient manner," according to Stanford ITSS director of finance Bill Clebsch.
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New York University Chooses Disaster Recovery System

New York University is installing Backup Express, an enterprise backup and restore product from Syncsort Inc., to provide disaster recovery protection throughout its campus. The university’s LAN service manager, Sherif Samaan, said the system works with both Novell and Windows machines on a storage area network, but is also stable and reliable for enterprise-wide coverage.
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