Summer Punch List Mania

By Will Craig

It’s that time of the year again – everybody else is out enjoying the weather but we’re struggling to complete classroom upgrade, renovation, and construction projects that need to be open this fall. In the rush to find, hire, and oversee the work of contractors who are themselves overworked, a lot of things can get overlooked. Here are issues we found on a recent college classroom project inspection (all in one room) and what they may portend for the room’s future use if not corrected.

First, a note on punch lists: In order to be able to hold a contractor’s feet to the fire for correcting items that do not meet your standards, you have to have those standards written into your contract with them. The most straightforward way to do this is in your specifications. The more detailed they are with respect to standards, aesthetics, materials, and execution, the more the final product should resemble your original intent...

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Defense Grant Produces Disappointing Results

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security earmarked millions of dollars to be given in the form of grants to education institutions...

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Senate Approves Technical Education Bill

The U.S. Senate has passed legislation to renew the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act...

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Tech Focus in High School Can Lead to Higher Ed

The Department of Education’s statistical arm issued a report that details the postsecondary educational experiences of students who...

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Mobile Technology Speeds up Processes for Indiana U. Med School Students

By Linda L. Briggs

Personal digital assistants, or PDAs, have proven especially popular with medical schools, where the volume of data such devices store for easy retrieval can help students easily access both clinical data and reference materials.

At Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, a PDA initiative has replaced paper forms that were creating time lags of days or weeks. The handheld program has enhanced the school’s learning environment and improved efficiency. The university has nine different satellite campuses throughout Indiana, and all third- and fourth-year medical students from any of the other eight campuses come to Indianapolis at some point for clerkship rotations.

The push for a new system occurred when the accrediting body for U.S. medical schools introduced a new mandate, according to Information Systems Librarian Amy Hatfield and Assistant Director of Educational Technologies Michael Bangert. Under the new rules, medical students must track their clinical rotations, documenting what they are actually seeing in encounters with patients, and how those encounters relate back to learning objectives...

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Special Report: Open Source Vision

By Matt Villano

Open source has changed everything about student computing at Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL. Over the last few years, when students wanted to utilize mission-critical systems, they had to log in to separate systems to access basic functions such as e-mail, course registration, and financial aid. Students couldn’t toggle from one application to another. To switch, they had to log out of one and log in to the next. The progress was both tedious and time-consuming. By 2005, technology officials knew they had put up with the situation for far too long. The time had come to find a solution.

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From the Reader Response Forum

"Smart" Classrooms

Posted by: Carine

Hello,

I read with great interest this blurb in your May 24 piece in Campus Technology. We are preparing to build 13 "smart" classrooms and were looking for a solution that would let instructors access the DVD/VCR, but not the rest of the AV equipment. You read our minds! In perusing the Middle Atlantic Web site, however, I wasn't able to come up with a picture of a cabinet put together as described here. Might you know where such a photo exists?

Thanks!

Photos of the cabinet in question can be found here. Model numbers are available as well.