News Update from Campus Technology for Tuesday, October 19, 2004

• 10/18/04

Collaboration Brings Students, Schools Closer Together
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=10255

Share your expertise: Speak at Syllabus2005
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=10284

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News for Tuesday, October 19, 2004

* USC, Dominican U., U Texas, Take Annual USDLA Honors
* Consortium Would Accelerate Open Source Development
* U. Buenos Aires Student Wins Google Programming “Jam”
* U. Michigan Urban Design Program Uses Film as Learning Tool
* Internet Brings Schools, Scholarships, Financial Aid to Desktop
* CT Business: Noteworthy Deals, Contracts in Higher Education

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USC, Dominican U., U Texas, Take Annual USDLA Honors

The United States Distance Learning Association named winners of its 2004
award program at a ceremony in San Francisco last week. In the higher
education sector, three awards were given: The award for “Excellence in
Distance Education Teaching” went to Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, Director of
the Center for Corporate and Community Education at the University of
Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications. In the category
of Excellence in Distance Learning Programming, USDLA named the Master of
Science program at the Dominican University in River Forest, Ill., in
collaboration with LessonLab/Pearson Skylight, a commercial educational
programming firm. The award for Excellence in Distance Learning Programming/
Telehealth disciplines went to the University of Texas’s Medical Branch
Telehealth Center in Galveston, Texas.

USDLA gave its Eagle special recognition award to U.S. Sen. Robert F.
Bennett (R-Utah), for his long support for distance education, and
inducted several others into the USDLA Hall of Fame:

Glenn Jones, chancellor of Jones International University, Englewood,
Colo; Jack Wilson, president of the University of Massachusetts; Boston,
Mass; James E. Vautrot, president and chief executive officer of BAF
Satellite and Technology Corp., Melbourne, Fla; Mary Beth Susman, director
of education services, Rocky Mountain PBS, Denver, Colo; Frank Mayadas,
program director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, New York, N.Y; and Fred
Poker, managing consultant, IBM Business Consulting Services, Potomac, Md.

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Collaboration Brings Students, Schools Closer Together

Collaboration technologies can extend the classroom and change the
ways students and faculty work together. In this new article on
collaboration, learn how you can meet the challenges of a growing
and diverse campus community. Read three examples of how collaboration
technologies are evolving and changing the way groups meet and work,
in and out of the classroom. Visit this special Campus Technology
micro site sponsored by Oracle to find resources on the latest
collaborative tools and technologies redefining the campus enterprise.
Bookmark this special section.

http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=10255

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Consortium Would Accelerate Open Source Development

A group of higher education institutions have formed a coalition to
accelerate development of an open source application suite. The members of
the .LRN Consortium said the applications are based on the OpenACS project,
originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which have been
deployed by the MIT Sloan School of Management as SloanSpace, its primary
class management platform.. Along with MIT Sloan, members of the consortium
include Heidelberg University, The European Union-funded E-Lane Project
and the University of Sydney.

About 40 application modules of the .LRN system are currently deployed at
two dozen universities and research organizations around the world. The
suite of components includes class management, multi-party learning
simulations, and assessment and testing apps.

“The applications and development tools that make up .LRN have been in
continual development for a decade, resulting in a robust collaborative
education platform,” said Al Essa, co-chair of the .LRN Board. “It became
clear to a number of us that establishing a consortium would help make
the suite more available to institutions -- all of which are eager to
capitalize on. LRN's rapid implementation, flexibility and low cost of
ownership."

U. Michigan Urban Design Program Uses Film as Learning Tool

The University of Michigan's Master of Urban Design Program is using the
film medium to help students compare the relationship between human
activity and urban forms across an array of cities and cultures. In the
program's Urban Design Studio I, students view narrative films set in
cities in the United States, South America, Europe, North Africa and Asia.
The films depict a range of settings that reflect the experience of the
program's students, who come from around the world.

Together, students and the instructor examine the background elements of
the film's story and cinematography, and analyze themes such as space,
landscape, skyline and traffic as they relate to the film's plot and
character development. Lessons learned from the films are then applied to
studio design projects. Students create project storyboards similar to
those made by filmmakers to help visualize their work, and use them to
clarify design intentions as they portray the projects in an accessible
and compelling manner for a broad audience.

Roy Strickland, Director of the Master of Urban design program, began using
film while teaching Urban Design at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and introduced the medium to Michigan's program three years
ago. "Using film enables people to sit in one place and be in Beijing,
Hong Kong, or Brooklyn. Through film they can enter both the physical and
cultural aspects of place: Strickland said.

U. Buenos Aires Student Wins Google Programming “Jam”

Sergio Sancho, a computer science student at the University of Buenos
Aires, won the Google Code Jam, Google's annual computer programming
competition, which comes with a $10,000 first prize. Sancho competed
against 7,500 programmers from around the world for first place. A second
place prize of $7,000 went to Po-Ru Loh, a mathematics student at Caltech.
Third prize of $5,000 was awarded to Reid Barton, a math major at MIT, and
fourth place and $3,000 went to Tomasz Czajka, who is studying for a
doctorate in computer science at Purdue University.

Additional cash prizes went to the other top 50 finalists, who are working
or studying in the United States and in 16 other countries, from Scandinavia
to central Europe to Hong Kong, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Google
flew all finalists to its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters this week to
compete in the championship round. In 2003, Jimmy Mardell of Stockholm,
Sweden, took home the grand prize.

Internet Brings Schools, Scholarships, Financial Aid to Desktop

Students facing the college application and financial aid season, which
kicks off this month and runs through January, increasingly have an array
of Internet tools to help the them choose, finance, and fit it socially
to prospective colleges and universities. Among them are:

-- CampusDirt.com, a free online service that gives students and parents
an “insider's” perspective on life at more than 825 campuses, based on an
ongoing survey of more than 80,000 college students and recent grads.

-- CampusClix.com, a social networking site that enables prospective
students and alumni to connect to campus communities, allowing them to
keep in touch with friends, meet people, tap into campus news, parties and
events.

-- Financialaid.com, a free scholarship search engine, which lets students
complete a personal profile and then matches you with potential scholarships.

-- FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). In order to receive
any type federal or school-based financial aid, students will need to
complete this form, which you can obtain online at www.fafsa.ed.org

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Share your expertise: Speak at Syllabus2005

Plan to speak at Syllabus2005, July 24-28 in Los Angeles. Call
for Papers is now open and we are accepting proposals until
November 30 in six content areas applicable to higher education
technology.

For complete details go to http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=10284.

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CT Business: Noteworthy Deals, Contracts in Higher Education

-- A Consortium of nine public and private Florida Universities
universities have formed a statewide high-performance network to facilitate
collaborative research and education in a full spectrum of disciplines,
including hurricane-related studies.

Members of the consortium include Florida Atlantic University (FAU), Florida
Institute of Technology (FIT), Florida International University (FIU),
Florida State University (FSU), Nova Southeastern University (NSU),
University of Central Florida (UCF), University of Florida (UF), University
of Miami (UM), and University of West Florida (UWF) Networking infrastructure
vendor Level 3 Communications is provide its (3)Link Dark Fiber and
(3)Center Colocation services under a multi-year, multi-million-dollar
agreement.

-- Texas A&M Engineering and Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. opened the Freescale
Digital Systems Laboratory at a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week. The
Freescale lab is a 1,550-square-foot lab that will support ongoing efforts
to educate undergraduate students. It will also create research opportunities
for students and faculty members, particularly in the areas of advanced
semiconductor testing methodologies and embedded processor systems
development.

In supporting the new lab, Freescale provided a cash donation of $150,000
and helped secure equipment donations in excess of $400,000. Motorola, Inc.,
contributed another $60,000 through the Motorola Foundation. The research
part of the lab includes two testers: one donated by Freescale; the second,
by Teradyne. The academic part of the lab hosts two undergraduate courses
for sophomore students and beyond, with a third course planned.

Columbia University will use HyperContent, an open-source Web content
management system it developed, to enable content experts, designers,
developers, and administrators to collaborate on the production of Web
sites with consistent navigation and design. Unicon Inc. will assist
clients in the installation, configuration, training, and troubleshooting
of the system. Columbia contributed the HyperContent CMS to the JA-SIG,
which promotes the use of Java technologies and architectures within the
higher education community.