OPINION

At First Glance--And Later On

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

One of the best things in cyberspace is expanding, and that’s a good thing. MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative (OCW) has been around now for a while. I first visited OCW only about a week after the first one or two courses were available. They were pretty high-powered courses without much useful content on line and I left a bit disgruntled, thinking that there was not much there a person could work with, especially without direct access to the pertinent faculty. It’s a different site now, with nearly 1,000 courses available. You should go there and maybe poke around for some interesting courses.

As I did so recently, a strong memory came back to me from when I visited a number of top graduate schools in anthropology in 1973, trying to decide which of many offers I would accept. At each school I registered for a day’s worth of official visits, but then I arrived early and unofficially sat in the back of classes and watched faculty and students interact. At one such school, in the south, during my “stealth day” visit, one of the lead faculty members stood at a podium and droned on from class notes that were on yellowed paper and crackled as he turned the pages. Although I went through the official visits the next day, the image of those dry, dusty, old lecture notes kept that school from my serious consideration.

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IT NEWS

War Down to the Wire: PeopleSoft and Oracle Battle On

PeopleSoft's board, saying that the Oracle bid of $24 per share devalues the company, have rejected Oracle's final offer. Now it's up to shareholders who have until Friday night to consent to Oracle's bid. (USA Today)
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California State Hayward Administrator Makes Advances with eTextbooks

Inefficient procedures used to cause problems and lose money for the Cal State system in purchasing eBooks for disabled students, but an administrator at Hayward who spearheaded what has become the CSU Center for Alternative Media, is making it work smoothly and save dollars, too. (The Argus)
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Penn State Staff Are "Segwaying" Around Campus

Penn State joins Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and Louisiana Tech, among others, in using this new transportation technology on campus. (The Digital Collegian) (USA Today)

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Central Michigan Steps Lightly During Construction

The Woldt Computer Center will only be closed for one month of construction of an adjacent residential restaurant, but for many months, access in and out will be difficult for safety reasons, causing IT staff some grief. (Central Michigan Life)
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Catholic University of America Struck by Internet Outages

Students are strongly affected, but administrators point out that it is infected student computers on the network that are causing most of the problems. (The Tower Online)
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North Carolina State's Technology Incubator to Let Startups Use Grid

The plan is a complicated collaboration that will let startup companies which usually cannot afford to access high-speed computing resources access the university's network. (Triangle Tech Journal)
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Community College of Southern Nevada's High-Tech Film Lab a Big Hit

The decade-long fight between film and digital is over, and this community college's students have a state-of-the-art facility and technology as good as anyone's--it generates enthusiasm. (Las Vegas Review Journal)
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UT Arlington Technology Fair--Robot Canine Soccer Players

Sounds like UT Arlington has the formula for a successful technology fair down pat. (The Shorthorn Online)
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Penn State Student Upgrades Registration

A Penn State student developed and implemented his own enhancement to the school’s registration process. His program notifies users by e-mail when class openings appear in the Penn State registration system. (The Digital Collegian)
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Viruses Slow Down Apogee Connection at Ithaca College

Looks like it took a month or two for problems to really hit on some campuses this fall. At Ithaca, the whole system has been down intermittently, once for 2-3 days-- and as usual mostly due to student infections. (The Ithacan)
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Wireless, Broadband to Drive Net growth, Tech Leaders Say

Venture capitalists are opening up their wallets again and betting on wireless and broadband to open the floodgates to profits--or so it was said at the recent TechNet Innovation Summit in Mountain View, California. (USA Today)
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Security Scans Reveal Value of Bad News

It's probably going to be a trend on campus, too, but especially in federal agencies, information security managers are more and more relying on vulnerability scanners to find and report on network security risks. (USA Today)
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RESOURCES

How Researchers Make Good Use of Dark Fiber

There's a lot of "dark fiber" in the ground and this article covers the National Lambda Rail's most recent accomplishments using it. (CMP’s Advanced Technology)
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DEALS, CONTRACTS, AWARDS

UT Austin to Upgrade Student Information System

UTA just spent $4.5M on PeopleSoft and is beginning to implement it. The student information system will be mostly funded by students' computing and information technology fees. (The Shorthorn Online)
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University of Tennessee-Martin to Launch "myUTMartin" Portal

The portal, which opens in November amid a launch of student educational sessions, is partly funded by a $1.5M grant from the CampusEAI Oracle Portal Grant Program. (The Pacer)
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University of Kansas Sports Fans Waiting in Line for Wireless

In September students voted to spend $45k on wireless so they can stay online while they wait for tickets, but they're miffed that it's not happening yet. (Kansan.com)
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25-Mile Fiberoptic Cable in Mid-Michigan

Central Michigan University, Saginaw Valley State, and other government agencies are collaborating on the new cable, which should bring huge savings to CMU's Internet access budget. (Central Michigan Life)
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Blackboard Expands BbOne Reach (Smart Card) with 12 New Universitie

BbOne lets students and faculty use university ID cards as payment with off-campus merchants. BbOne is now headed to: Berkeley College, California Institute of Technology, The Claremont Colleges Consortium, Clemson University, The State University of New York at Geneseo, Louisiana State University, University of New Haven, the University of Oklahoma, Spring Arbor University, Texas A&M University - Commerce, The University of Washington, and Wesleyan University, among others. (Yahoo Finance/PR Newswire)
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